"When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and that he intended to wage war against Jerusalem, he consulted with his officials and military staff about blocking off the water from the springs outside the city, and they helped him. They gathered a large group of people who blocked all the springs and the stream that flowed through the land. 'Why should the kings of Assyria come and find plenty of water?' they said." 2 Chronicles 32:2-4. Hezekiah was a Judean King from 715 to 686 BCE. The tunnel was built in preparation of an Assyrian attack. The tunnel transported water from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam. The Gihon Spring was the City of David’s main source of water, whose name means “to gush forth.” It is located east of the city and in order to fortify Jerusalem optimally, the spring had to be left out of the city’s walls. This left the city without a reliable source of water during imminent attacks. Its construction is mentioned in the bible. II Chronicles 32:30 states: "This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David" and also on an “ancient five line Hebrew inscription … was found near its south end.” The inscription was found in 1880 and was chiseled out and is currently displayed at the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. “Its language, script, and content suggest that it was inscribed in the late eighth century during the reign of the Judean king Hezekiah.” “The inscription describes how two groups of men began working at each end of the tunnel and how, after a bit of difficulty, they met in the middle. At that time, the water began to flow from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam and has continued to do so!” [2014, Rasmussen]

The author was not able to find "Duration of Construction."

The tunnel was S-shaped. Henry Sulley in 1929 first suggested that Hezekiah’s tunnel followed a natural crack in the rock while Dan Gill argues that the two crews of diggers followed a natural karstic dissolution channel. (Bibleplaces)

Fig. 2: Entrance from the Gihon Spring.

1. http://holylandphotos.org/browse.asp?s=1,2,6,19,359,363&img=ICJOTHT12
2. Rasmussen, 2014: http://holylandphotos.org/browse.asp?s=1,2,6,19,97&img=IJOTHT06
3. Rasmussen, 2014: http://holylandphotos.org/browse.asp?s=1,2,6,19,359,363&img=TWMRISAM05
4. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/jerwater.html
5. http://www.goisrael.com/Tourism_Eng/Tourist%20Information/Jewish%20Themes/Jewish_Sites/Pages/The%20Siloam%20Tunnel%20jew.aspx
6. Uknown. "Hezekiah's Tunnel." http://www.bibleplaces.com/heztunnel.htm (February 28, 2015).