SILOE. - Name designating a spring, today 'Ajn Siṭṭī Marjam, east of Jerusalem, as well as the channel beneath the hill of Ophel through which its course passes and the pool that it forms at its outlet. Of the waters of S. (mē haš-Šilōah) Isaiah 8:6 speaks, and of the pool of S. (bērēkhath haš-Šelah) Nehemiah 3:15. Through the Greek Σιλώχη the name of S. is preserved in the modern Arab village of Silwān, southeast of Jerusalem.
The importance of the channel is particular owing to the fact that in it, in the year 1880, there was discovered by chance, by a boy bathing in the adjacent pool, an ancient Hebrew inscription, the longest that survives. This inscription commemorates the excavation of the channel and can be attributed to the era of King Hezekiah (ca. 700 B.C.), on the basis of the biblical accounts of his construction of an aqueduct to bring water to Jerusalem (II Kings 20:20; II Chronicles 32:30).
According to the most recent studies, the most probable translation of the inscription is the following: "... the boring. And this is the story of the boring: while... the pickaxe, one toward the other, and while there were still three cubits to be excavated, a voice was heard of a man calling the other, for there was a fissure [?] in the rock on the right and on... And on the day of the boring the excavators struck one against the other, pickaxe against pickaxe, and the water gushed from the spring to the pool for 1200 cubits. And 100 cubits was the height of the rock above the heads of the excavators."
Bibliography2 works
Sabatino Moscati