The date of the siloam tunnel reconsidered

The Siloam Tunnel and the inscription incised on its rock wall have, since the inscription's discovery in 1880, been considered the work of King Hezekiah, and have served as a chronological anchor for the late Iron Age in Judah. The authors' recent excavations in the City of David near the Gihon Spring and the northern end of the tunnel have yielded new archaeological data that bear on the date of the construction of the tunnel and the incising of the inscription. Their evaluation of these data suggests that the completion of the tunnel should be set back several decades to at least the early part of the 8th century BCE, which would mean that the tunnel predates Hezekiah's reign.