Tracking the Pool of Siloam

Pool of Siloam The Pool of Siloam is known in Christianity as the site where Jesus cured a blind person (John 9). The pool also played a major role earlier as it collected the waters of Jerusalem. In 701 BCE, Jerusalem was put under siege by the Assyrians, yet the Pool of Siloam guaranteed its water supply. Eventually, the city was delivered, and the Assyrians failed to conquer it. To this day, a 533 meter long tunnel feeds the Pool of Siloam with water from the Gihon Spring. Until 2004, the Pool of Siloam was believed to be a small pool at the end of the Hezekiah’s tunnel. In the Byzantine period, a church was also built over it. But in 2004, flooding in the area led to the discovery of the real Pool of Siloam from 2,000 years ago.

In early 2020, I met Cindy Brannon, head of “Your Holy Land Tours.” We filmed at the Gihon spring, and then the Pool of Siloam:

We also walked up parts of the Herodian Drainage Channel. About 2,000 years ago, above that drainage channel, a wide street connected the Pool of Siloam with the Temple Mount. This enabled a mass of Jewish pilgrims to purify at the Pool of Siloam and then ascend, in purity, to the Temple Mount to preform an animal sacrifice ceremony.

A few years earlier, I also presented the site to Eran Frenkel in his production series Jerusalem Experience.

I recently found on Youtube an amateur recording of me sitting at the Pool of Siloam and explaining a few ancient coins, including the Tyrian Shekel. Take a look –

Touring the Pool of Siloam

The Pool of Siloam is part of the natioonal park in the City of David. It can be reached by walking through Hezekiah’s Tunnel, or by direct entry. From the pool, it is possible to hike up the Herodian Drainage Channel up the Southern Wall Archaeological Park, the biggest archaeological park in Jerusalem.