page_title: City of David
section_title: Iron Age IIIb (8th century – 586 BCE)
hierarchical_section_title: City of David / Finds by period / Iron Age IIIb (8th century – 586 BCE)
caption_attribution_description: English: Hezekiah's tunnel
context_page_description: The City of David, called in Arabic: وادي حلوه‎, Wadi Hilweh, a neighborhood of Silwan, is a Palestinian Arab village intertwined with an Israeli settlement, and the archaeological site which is speculated to constitute the original settlement core of Bronze and Iron Age Jerusalem.
  The City of David is highly controversial in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; it is located in the area of the West Bank that was annexed to Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War and 1980 Jerusalem Law. The international community regards Israeli settlements illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
  Archaeologically it is best known for its Canaanite infrastructure dated to the Middle Bronze Age, and its newer structures from the Iron Age, built by Judean kings.
  Organised as an Israeli national park, its management was taken over in 1997 by the Ir David Foundation.
context_section_description: This is the period that corresponds to the biblical Kings Hezekiah through Josiah and the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar II.
  King Hezekiah secured the city's water supply against siege by digging the Siloam Tunnel through bedrock and covering over all signs of the Gihon Spring and the fortifications that had surrounded it in earlier periods. He built the Pool of Siloam as a water reservoir. Hezekiah then surrounded the new reservoir and the city's burgeoning western suburbs with a new city wall.
  Bullae with the names of Yehucal son of Shelemiah and Gedaliah son of Pashhur, two officials mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah, have been found.
caption: Sign near the southern end of the Siloam tunnel, where the Siloam inscription was found.
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