Hezekiah's Pool

Hezekiah's Pool (1862)

Coordinates: 31°46′37.83″N 35°13′44.79″E / 31.7771750°N 35.2291083°E / 31.7771750; 35.2291083 Hezekiah's Pool (Hebrew: בריכת חזקיהו‎‎, Brikhat Hizkiyahu) located in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, was once a reservoir forming part of the city's ancient water system. As of 2010 the pool is dry and surrounded by buildings on all sides. Flavius Josephus referred to the pool as Amygdalon, meaning ‘almond tree’ in Greek, but it is very likely that he derived the name phonetically from the Hebrew word migdal, meaning "tower", thus it is believed that the original name was Pool of the Tower or Towers.

The pool is supposed to be the one referred to in 2 Kings 18:17, and there is a belief that this is the upper pool where King Hezekiah met messengers from the king of Assyria. At a later time it was fed from the Mamilla Pool, one of the three reservoirs constructed by Herod the Great during the 1st century BCE.[1][2] by an underground conduit which still partially exists.[3]

The pool is also known as the Pool of Pillars, or the Pool of the Patriarch’s Bath (in Arabic: Birkat Hammam el-Batrak بركة حمّام البطرك).

The pool is 240 feet (73 m) by 140 feet (43 m) in size, with an estimated capacity of nearly 3,000,000 US gallons (11,000,000 l; 2,500,000 imp gal). The bottom of the pool is cemented and leveled natural rock.[3]

References

  1. ↑ Gil Zohar (May 24, 2007). "Long-awaited luxury". The Jerusalem Post.
  2. ↑ Schwiki, Itzik (February 8, 2005). "The Total Experience from Dismantling and Rebuilding Teaches that This is a Highly Dubious Way of Preservation" (in Hebrew). 02net. Retrieved 2007-07-20.
  3. 1 2 The Land of Israel; A Text-Book on the Physical and Historical Geography of the Holy Land Embodying the Results of Recent Research, Robert Laird Stewart, 2008. Page 178
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