Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

DURING 19 CENTURY: PALESTINE 613
Another monument, that in point of time is not so veryfar
removed from this monument, is
the Siloam inscription.
This was found in 1880 by some boys (while bathing) in
the conduit which connects St. Mary's Well with the Pool
of Siloam, not far from its outlet into the latter. The German
Palestine Society immediately had it more closely examined.
In order to make the inscription, which lay partly
in water, entirely accessible, the water in the conduit had to
be lowered by cleaning the bottom. Then Shick and Guthe
made several copies and squeezes of the inscription. Guthe
also succeeded in preparing a plaster cast of it. On account
of the peculiar conditions, these were all
very difficult operations,
and in consequence of the foul air in the conduit
Dr. Shick was taken ill.
It is due to the labors of these men that the text of the
Siloam inscription has in the main been ascertained, though
later it met with a fate similar to that of the Mesha stone.
A certain unscrupulous person, with an eye to business,
undertook to steal the inscription, by breaking it out of the
rock ; and, as may be imagined, it was seriously damaged.
Fortunately the Ottoman government succeeded in capturing
the thief and his plunder, and the fragments of the inscription
* are now in Constantinople.
The inscription mentions no king, but appears to be
merely a private production, so to speak ; in other words,
not an order of the sovereign, but the impulse of the workmen
led to its being cut. Its contents refer to the digging
of the conduit, the completion of which it evidently celebrates.
It describes how at the piercing of the conduit the
sharp picks of the diggers, who had begun at the opposite
ends and worked towards each other, suddenly met ; how
when three cubits still remained to be pierced, the workmen
1
Together with a cleverly made forgery, though no exact copy of the same
inscription, which is now also exhibited at the Imperial Ottoman Museum
in
Constantinople. — The Editor.
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