Major Conder says that the general impression resulting from an examination of the conduit is that it was the work of a people whose knowledge of engineering was rudimentary. It is well known that in mining it is very difficult to induce the excavator to keep in a truly straight line, the tendency being to diverge very rapidly to one side. It is possible that this is the real reason of the crooked run of the canal; but another reason may have been the comparative hardness of the strata met in mining at a uniform level through a hill, with beds having a considerable dip. It will, however, be observed, that, after passing the shaft, the direction of the tunnel changes to a line more truly directed on the Virgin’s Fountain. The excavators from the Siloam end became aware, probably by the impossibility of seeing a light at the head of the mine, when standing at the mouth of the tunnel, that they were not going straight, and the only means they had of correcting the error consisted in making a shaft up to the surface to see where they had got to. After ascertaining this they went straight for about 140 feet, and then diverged gradually to the left; but their general direction, nevertheless, agrees roughly with that of the rock contour, which may be due to following a particular seam of rock.
SHAFTS DISCOVERED AT THE VIRGIN’S FOUNTAIN.
(By favour of the Palestine Exploration Fund.)
It is recognised by Colonel Warren that the tunnel running southward to the Pool of Siloam was not the first tunnel excavated in connection with the Virgin’s Fountain. A channel had previously been made from the Virgin’s Fountain due west, for a distance of 67 feet, into the heart of the hill, and there communicated by a shaft and corridors with the surface. When the longer tunnel came to be made the engineers wisely availed themselves of the channel already existing, and began their new excavation at a distance of 50 feet from the Virgin’s Fount. The priority of the channel running due west to the shaft appears to be undoubted; and it is clear that whatever mistakes of direction might be made by unscientific engineers when they had got some distance into the hill, they never would begin by working due west from the Virgin’s Fount when their object was to make a channel south-south-west to Siloam Pool.
At the bottom of the shaft, which is 67 feet due west, Warren found the rock scooped out into a basin 3 feet deep, for the water to lie in, and at the top of the shaft an iron ring to which the rope of the bucket could be tied. The shaft was 40 feet in height, and then the space began to open out westward into a great cavern, there being a sloping ascent at an angle of 45°, covered with loose stones of about a foot cube. Warren says it was ticklish work ascending, for the stones all seemed longing to be off, and one starting would have sent the mass rolling, himself with it, on top of the serjeant, all to form a mash at the bottom of the shaft. After ascending about 30 feet they got on to a landing. The cave now opened out to south-west and north-west. Following it in the latter direction they arrived at a passage 40 feet long, at the far end of which was a rough wall. Creeping through a hole in this they ascended a steep staircase for 50 feet, passed another wall, and found themselves in a vaulted chamber. The exit at last was on the Hill of Ophel, a few feet from the ridge, and almost certainly, some writers maintain, within the ancient walls. The object of the cuttings was to get a supply of water from within; and perhaps the piles of loose stones which were found in the long passage were intended to be thrown down the shaft if an enemy should attempt to ascend it. In the passage were found three glass lamps of curious construction, placed at intervals as if to light the way; and in the vaulted chamber a little pile of charcoal as if for cooking, one of these lamps, a cooking dish glazed inside, for heating food, and a jar for water. Evidently the place had been used as a refuge.
A similar arrangement for closing the entrance to a spring, and using a secret passage from the hill above, has lately been discovered at El Jib (ancient Gibeon),[24] and only a few years ago at ’Amman (Rabbath Ammon). In connection with the latter, Conder quotes Polybius to the effect that when Antiochus the Great besieged the forces of Ptolemy Philopater, at Amman, in 218 B.C., the garrison held out until a prisoner revealed a secret communication with a water supply outside the walls.
Difficulties of the Work.—It is impossible to read the detailed accounts of Warren’s work at Jerusalem without feeling an admiration for the courage and patience of the explorers, and without being sometimes amused at the ludicrous predicaments into which they occasionally got. They have been jammed in aqueducts, wedged in chasms, and walled up behind falling heaps of debris. They have had to go down ladders too short for reascending, to squeeze down apertures that have taken the skin off the shoulders, and have been half drowned in cisterns at the bottom. In the Tyropœon the soil is so soaked with sewage that it poisons the flesh wherever it touches a scratch. In the Kedron Valley the soil is so loose that it rushes into the galleries, almost flowing like a fluid, and drives the men out. In the Siloam tunnel they more than once ran the risk of being drowned. In the Ophel shaft a loose stone, weighing eight cwt., threatened momentarily to fall upon their heads. Once when the Arab labourers had gone down a shaft, where the ancient bed of the Tyropœon runs out, 90 feet from the south-west angle, they had descended 79 feet when they came upon a stone slab. They began breaking it up with a hammer, when presently the pieces fell in, the hammer disappeared, and the men, in terror lest they should fall into unknown depths, rushed to the surface, sought out the serjeant, and assured him that they had found the bottomless pit! The awful depth proved to be just 6 feet more to the solid rock!