Video on the City of David

The Israel Antiquites Department has released a nice 9-minute video featuring archaeologists Ronnie Reich and Eli Shukron showing some of the highlights of the City of David excavation. The film features the following places:

• The water system and Warren’s Shaft
• The Canaanite pool channel
• Gihon Spring
• Hezekiah’s Tunnel
• The Pool of Siloam
• The Herodian Street
• The drainage channel

The video runs a little slow on my computer, but if you give it a little time to load it is certainly worth the wait. The link is here.

The photo below shows part of two towers that served as a fortification for the protection of Gihon Spring as early as the Canaanite time.

Foundation of the fortification towers at Gihon Spring. Photo by Ferrell Jenkins.

The information sign at the site says,

It was here that a rock-cut pool and the remains of the bases of two towers were located. These towers, built of large stones, constituted part of the fortifications protecting the pool and the spring as early as the Middle Bronze Age (18-15 centuries BCE). The spring water flowed through the channel to a large pool, from which scores of people could draw water simultaneously. The surplus water flowed through a channel to another pool in the south of the city.

This work has been carried out by Reich and Shukron.

HT: Joseph I. Lauer