Siloam Inscription - Translation

Translation

Unreadable at first due to the deposits, Professor Archibald Sayce was the first to make a tentative reading, and later the text was cleaned with an acid solution making the reading more authoritative. The inscription contains 6 lines, of which the first is damaged. The words are separated by dots. Only the word zada on the third line is of doubtful translation - perhaps a crack or a weak part.

The passage reads:

... the tunnel ... and this is the story of the tunnel while ...

the axes were against each other and while three cubits were left to cut? ... the voice of a man ...

called to his counterpart, (for) there was in the rock, on the right ... and on the day of the

tunnel (being finished) the stonecutters struck each man towards his counterpart, ax against ax and flowed

water from the source to the pool for 1200 cubits. and 100?

cubits was the height over the head of the stonecutters ...

ZADA could mean echo (SADA in Arabic صدى)

The inscription hence records the construction of the tunnel; according to the text the work began at both ends simultaneously and proceeded until the stonecutters met in the middle. However, this idealised account does not quite reflect the reality of the tunnel; where the two sides meet is an abrupt right angled join, and the centres do not line up. It has been theorized that Hezekiah’s engineers depended on acoustic sounding (echo ZADA or SADA صدى in arabic) to guide the tunnelers and this is supported by the explicit use of this technique as described in the Siloam Inscription. The frequently ignored final sentence of this inscription provides further evidence: “And the height of the rock above the heads of the laborers was 100 cubits.” This indicates that the engineers were well aware of the distance to the surface above the tunnel at various points in its progression.

While traditionally identified as a commemorative inscription, one archaeologist has suggested that it may be a votive offering inscription.