Archeology / Israeli researchers disproved the claim that the dam that supplied water to besieged Jerusalem was built in the Hellenistic period
Merit Selvin and updates from the website editor
Shipping female. It is impossible that it was carved after 600 BC. Photo: The Hebrew University
https://www.hayadan.org.il/shiloach.html
The BBC website opens the report on the discovery with the following sentence: "It seems that this is the first time that a structure described in the Bible has been scientifically dated and the experts say that the dating will be useful for updating the historical knowledge about Jerusalem.
Who carved the shipping female? Was it King Hezekiah, who ensured a regular supply of water to Jerusalem during the Assyrian siege of the city in 700 BC? Or, as research from recent years has determined, was the female carved 500 years later, in the Hellenistic period? In an article published in the journal "Nature", researchers from the Hebrew University state, based on a radiometric test, that the cutting of the female took place in the days of Hezekiah.
The City of David received its water supply from the Gihon spring. This is the only large spring in the area, and its location is hypothesized to have determined the location of the city. The Gihon originates in the Kidron stream channel, outside the city walls, so it was difficult to defend it. Already in the Middle Bronze Age (around 1800 BC) they tried to find a way that would allow the residents of Jerusalem to receive a regular supply of water. More than a thousand years later, Hezekiah, King of Judah, initiated an ambitious project: he built a dam that diverted the waters of the Gihon from their source to Jerusalem. As described in the Bible: "He gave up the words of Hezekiah and all his prowess and who made the blessing and the trench and brought the water to the city..." (XNUMX Kings, chapter XNUMX, verse XNUMX).
In the 19th century, an inscription was found near the Shiloh pool, describing the meeting between the two groups of carvers who dug the female from both ends and met in the middle of the road. The shipping address is currently in the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul. An examination based on comparing the style of the letters and the language of the inscription to other texts confirmed the explanation that it was written during the reign of Hezekiah.
However, an article published in the journal "Biblical Archeologist" in 1996 cast doubt on this belief. Based on an examination of the characteristics of the inscription, the researchers claimed that the female was carved in the Hellenistic period, 500 years after Hezekiah. According to them, the biblical text apparently referred to another, earlier water plant that supplied water from the Gihon to Jerusalem through a system of tunnels and a shaft.
The study published today is the first to directly date the female cut. The researchers - Dr. Amos Frumkin from the Department of Geography at the Hebrew University, Dr. Aryeh Shimron from the University's Geological Institute and Dr. Jeff Rosenbaum from the University of Redding - used radiometric dating, based on measuring the decay of radioactive isotopes. "Radiometric dating is used as a kind of clock to determine age," says Fromkin, "and in the research we used two such 'clocks' that are independent of each other.
"The first test was of the isotope carbon-14, with which we checked the age of plant parts that the female carvers mixed with plaster that they applied to the bottom of the female to prevent seepage. That's how we found when the plants died." The second object that the researchers dated was stalactites that formed inside the female after she was cut, by measuring the decay rate of the isotope uranium 234 in the stalactites.
Both tests revealed that the female must have been carved between 800 and 600 BC. In this time interval is the period of Hezekiah. "The scientific evidence we have definitely associates the female Shiloh with Hezekiah's time," says Fromkin. "Now it is possible to build the biblical story in its entirety on a solid scientific basis."
The history buff
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For information on the Nature website
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