Religious Site
Pool of Siloam
POOL of sy-LOH-um · Modern City of David / Silwan, Jerusalem, Israel · Also called Siloam · 31.7706° N, 35.2350° E
The Pool of Siloam, fed by the Gihon Spring, is where in John 9 Jesus sends a man born blind to wash and receive his sight.
Archaeology
The Second Temple-period pool was found by accident in the autumn of 2004 during repairs to a damaged sewer line. E. Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority was supervising the work when a tractor struck large cut stones; he stopped the digging, and called in R. Reich, who was already excavating at the Gihon Spring nearby. The two of them then excavated the pool jointly, uncovering a large stepped stone basin dated by coins to the 1st century BC-1st century AD — squarely in Jesus's lifetime. The smaller pool long shown to pilgrims is a 5th-century Byzantine construction roughly 70 yards away, so that site was misidentified as "the" biblical pool for centuries before the 2004 find. Excavation of the Second Temple pool is still ongoing. Water reached it down Hezekiah's Tunnel, and the Pilgrimage Road climbs from it toward the Temple Mount.
On a modern map
Further reading
Reflect
The blind man was healed only after walking to Siloam still blind — what step are you asked to take before you can see the result?
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