page_title: City of David
section_title: Archaeological sites
hierarchical_section_title: City of David / Archaeological sites
caption_attribution_description: Hezekiah's Tunnel נקבת השילוח
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: The remains at the site include several water tunnels, one of which was built by King Hezekiah and still carries water, several pools including the Pool of Siloam known from the Old and New Testaments, and in its vicinity scholars expect to find, or claim to have found, the remains of the Acra, a fortress built by Antiochus Epiphanes to subdue those Jerusalemites who were opposed to Hellenisation. City of David archaeologist Eilat Mazar believes that a so-called Large Stone Structure she has discovered at the upper area of the site and tentatively dated to the tenth to ninth century BC, may be the palace of King David. Not far from that excavation area a number of bullae (seal impressions) were unearthed, bearing the names of Yehucal son of Shelemiah and Gedaliah son of Pashhur, two officials mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.
  The Gihon Spring, which lies on the eastern slope of the southeastern hill of Jerusalem aka the City of David, and is generally considered the very reason why the city first emerged at this specific location.
  The ancient water systems connected to the Gihon Spring include natural, masonry-built, and rock-cut structures, such as
  The Spring Tower
  Warren's Shaft, a natural shaft, once thought to have been a water supply system
  The Siloam Channel, a Canaanite (Bronze Age) water system that preceded the Siloam Tunnel
  The Siloam Tunnel, an Iron Age water supply system where the Siloam inscription was found
  The Siloam Pool - two connected pools, an upper one from the Byzantine period at the exit of the Siloam Tunnel, and the recently discovered, lower pool dating to  the Hasmonean part of the Second Temple Period.
  Other built structures, spread over excavated sections known as Area A, B, C, ... include
  The Large Stone Structure
  The Stepped Stone Structure
  City walls and towers, houses, a columbarium, rock-cut vaulted tunnels once interpreted as royal Judahite tombs, a rock-cut pool where the Theodotus Inscription was discovered (see here), etc.
  A monumental stepped street probably used by Second Temple-period pilgrims and built over a large
  drainage system.
  An adjacent and related excavation site is known as the
  Givati Parking Lot dig
caption: Inside the Siloam tunnel
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