The Pool of Siloam Opened for Full Excavation

Found by accident

In 2004 a repair crew working on a drainage line in the City of David cut into a run of ancient stone steps. Excavation by Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron followed and identified them as the northern edge of a large stepped pool from the Second Temple period. Most of the pool lies under an adjoining orchard and has never been dug.

What was announced

The December 2022 announcement was that the whole pool would now be excavated, in stages, in view of the public, and eventually joined to the walking route running up from the City of David to the Temple Mount area. This is a plan, and worth reading as one: what it changes is access to the site, not what is known about it.

The two pools, and why the dates differ

Water has been collected at this end of the ridge since the First Temple period. The Gihon spring fed the city, and Hezekiah's tunnel was cut to bring that water inside the walls ahead of the Assyrian siege - work the book of Kings records directly. The stepped pool exposed in 2004 is later, from the end of the Second Temple period, and was substantial: steps on multiple sides, of a size that fits use by pilgrims arriving for the festivals, very plausibly for ritual immersion before going up to the temple.

Where it sits in Scripture

John 9 has Jesus send a man born blind to wash in the pool of Siloam, and notes the name means Sent. That is the pool of the Second Temple period - the one whose steps were found in 2004 and which is now to be uncovered in full. Isaiah's reference to the waters of Shiloah that go softly belongs to the earlier system. Both are the same water, several centuries apart.