The site
A large pool at the southern end of the City of David, lined on its excavated sides with stone steps arranged in flights of five with landings between them. Water reached it from the Gihon spring through Hezekiah’s Tunnel.
Discovery
The steps were found in June 2004 during repairs to a sewage pipe. Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron excavated for the Israel Antiquities Authority and exposed the steps along the pool’s northern side and part of its eastern side.
Date
Coins of Alexander Jannaeus, who ruled from 103 to 76 BC, were sealed in the plaster of the steps, so the pool was built in the first century BC. Coins from the revolt of AD 66–70 show it remained in use until the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.
The Gospel
In John 9 Jesus heals a man blind from birth by anointing his eyes with mud and sending him to the pool:
“Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means “Sent”). So he went away, washed, and came back seeing.
Luke also names Siloam, in a saying about a fatal accident:
“Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the men who dwell in Jerusalem?”
Two pools
Until 2004 the Pool of Siloam was identified with a smaller pool at the outlet of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, built in the fifth century AD together with a church, traditionally attributed to the empress Eudocia. The newly found pool lies a short distance downhill. It is the larger pool of the late Second Temple period, the time of Jesus.
What it establishes
That a large public pool called Siloam was in use in Jerusalem in Jesus’ lifetime, as John’s Gospel assumes, and that John’s narrative reflects real knowledge of the city before AD 70.
Open questions
Whether the pool served chiefly for ritual immersion or as a reservoir is debated. The site gives a real setting to John 9; it cannot itself record a healing.
Where it is now
In place in the City of David, Jerusalem, where the excavated steps can be visited.
