Notes on the Rock-Cut ‘Space’ near the Gihon Spring

Abstract

This article rejects David Ussishkin’s interpretation of the Rock-cut ‘Pool’ in the City of David, Jerusalem, as an abandoned quarry. This feature, better described as a space than a pool or quarry is, actually, a separate system from the northeastern corner, which in the past was referred to as the Round Chamber. Contra to my initial understanding of these two features, I now suggest that they each belong to a different period. The Round Chamber, ca. 4.5 m deeper than the bottom of the Rock-cut Space, has a narrow shaft that rose to the surface of the water; it is the remnant of a Middle Bronze water system. The Rock-cut Space dates to the Iron II.

Keywords:

• City of David
• Jerusalem
• Middle Bronze
• Iron II
• Quarrying
• Water- system
• Gihon Spring

Notes

1 The name given in previous studies to this feature—the ‘Rock-cut Pool’—is somewhat misleading, since it is neither a pool nor reservoir intended to collect water. The depression in its lower part was not filled from above, but rather from its eastern side by the waters of the Gihon, which were led in through Channel II and Tunnel III. Hence it can be seen as a sort of well; the water level was never higher than ca. 1.40 m. In previous publications we put the name in quotation marks (e.g., Reich and Shukron 2006: 17; Reich et al. 2009: 65), but editors of later publications, occasionally, deleted these markings. Here we use the term Rock-cut Space (RcS).

2 MB II pottery was found in several locations: On a small patch of floor abutting the western edge of Wall 109 of the Fortified corridor; in the large fill of debris and rubble which filled in the space of the fortified corridor; upon the southern wall of the Spring Tower, and more. For the last item, see Reich and Shukron 2021 (forthcoming).

3 But before the cutting of the Siloam Tunnel at the end of the 8th century BCE, which made redundant all the earlier water systems near the Gihon Spring.