SILO'AM (Heb. Shiloah, Shelah). A pool situated at the southern end of the eastern hill of Jerusalem, mentioned in Nehemiah iii. 15 and John ix. 7. Isaiah (viii. 6) speaks of the "waters of Shiloah that go softly." The water in this pool is supplied by the Virgin's Spring and is brought to the pool at the en trance to the Tyropceon valley by a tunnel over 1700 feet in length. The tunnel is rather wind ing, and about 25 feet from the Siloan end an important inscription was found in the wall in 1880. As translated by Driver, it reads: "(Be hold) the piercing through, and this was the manner of the piercing through. Whilst yet (the miners were lifting up) the pick each towards his fellow, and whilst yet there were three cubits to be (cut through, there was heard) the voice of each calling to his fellow, for there was a fissure in the rock on the right hand. . . . And on the day of the piercing through the miners smote each so as to meet his fellow, pick against pick; and there flowed the water from the source to the pool 1200 cubits; and 100 cubits was the height of the rock over the head of the miners." Hence the cutting was
evidently done simultaneously from both ends. In default of any date, there has been much con troversy as to the age of the inscription, The form of the letters lends probability to the view that the tunnel was constructed in the days of Uezekiah. The aim in conducting the waters through the tunnel into a pool of the Tyro pmon valley was to make it more accessible to the inhabitants of the lower part of Jeru salem. Consult: Tobler, Die Siloahquale and der Velbcry (Saint Gall, 1852) ; Soein, Die Siloahin schrift (Freiburg, 1899) ; Driver, Yotes to the Hebrew Text of Samuel (Oxford, 1890).