NEW CONFIRMATION of the dating of Hezekiah's Tunnel and the Siloam Inscription which, surprisingly, is covered by the press only (so far) in the Arab Times:

Bible's tunnel vision gets scientific backing

PARIS, (AFP) - Modern science has thrown its weight behind Biblical historians, backing their account of an Old Testament king who drove a tunnel under Jerusalem to ensure water supplies for his besieged subjects. The underwater aqueduct is known as the Siloam Tunnel or "Hezekiah's Tunnel" in honour of the embattled Hebrew king reputed to have ordered its construction in order to bring water from Gihon Spring, outside the city, to Siloam Pool in Jerusalem's ancient heart. Historians have long contended that this event is described in two Old Testament texts, 2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:3,4. These recount how Hezekiah (727-698 BC) had to grapple with denying water to the besieging Assyrian king Sennacherib, yet also provide water for the besieged:

. . . "It was Hezekiah who stopped up the spring of water of Upper Gihon, leading it downward west of the City of David." The historical record, however, was only indirect, and no evidence has ever been found that directly links the tunnel to Hezekiah.

Now, however, science has provided powerful backing, thanks to forensic evidence found buried in the tunnel's walls and the latest tools in chemical analysis. Israeli scientists took samples from a layer of ancient lime plaster that the tunnellers used to line the aqueduct to prevent the precious water from draining back into the Earth. They found the plaster -- since covered with other protective smotherings over the years -- included tiny pieces of bone, rare charcoal and ash to bind it, as well as chips of wood and "extraordinarily well-preserved" plant fragments.

Radiocarbon-dating at a laboratory at Oxford University put the age of the wood sample at between 822-796 BC, and that of two plant samples at 790-760 BC and 690-540 BC respectively. That gave a ballpark date of 700 BC which also tallied with a radioisotope estimate of an ancient stalactite found in the tunnel's ceiling."Our dating agrees well... with the date commonly assigned to King Hezekiah," the authors say. "The three independent lines of evidence -- radiometric dating, palaeography and the historical record -- all converge on about 700 BC, rendering the Siloam Tunnel the best-dated Iron-Age biblical structure so far."

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This is a summary of a study by Israeli and British scholars which is scheduled to appear tomorrow in the journal Nature.