=9. Hezekiah.=--Apart from his reform (2 Kings 18:1-6) and the invasions of Sennacherib (2 Kings 18:9, ff.), the event of especial interest mentioned in connection with Hezekiah is that “he made the pool and the conduit and brought the water into the city” (2 Kings 20:20). Scholars are agreed that this refers to the rock-cut aqueduct in which the Siloam inscription was found.[247] This was for the time of its construction a notable engineering achievement, though recent exploration of the tunnel shows that the workers frequently went astray and cut in directions that they did not intend. Indeed, it is probable that the great bends in the tunnel were made on account of such mistakes and not as Clermont-Ganneau formerly thought in order to avoid the tombs of the kings. Up to the present, search for these tombs has been vain. They must have been somewhere on the eastern hill, but there is no reason to believe that they were at the great depth at which this tunnel was cut through the rock. If the supposition made above as to the walls of Uzziah is correct, it was Hezekiah who built the first wall across the mouth of the Tyropœon valley so as to enclose within the city his new pool. This wall was found by Bliss. It formed the dam of the pool. It was strongly buttressed and had been rebuilt from time to time. Bliss detected five periods in its history.[248] =10. From Hezekiah to the Exile.=--After Hezekiah, the general features of Jerusalem remained the same down to the time of the Babylonian Exile in 586 B. C. We hear of a Fish Gate, probably where it was at a later time, at the north of the city in the wall built by Uzziah. Zephaniah mentions in connection with it “the second quarter” of the city (Zeph. 1:10), which was probably the part of the town between the north wall of Uzziah and the older north wall of Solomon on the western hill. The prophetess Huldah lived there in the time of Josiah (2 Kings 22:14). Zephaniah also mentions a part of the city called _Maktesh_ or the Mortar (Zeph. 1:11). This was a part of Jerusalem occupied by Phœnician traders and craftsmen. It was probably in the hollow between the two hills, _i. e._, in the Tyropœon valley. In the reign of Manasseh we hear of the sacrifice of children. For this purpose a pit was excavated on the floor of the valley of Hinnom, to the south of the city, and arrangements were made to burn the victims. This was called Topheth (Jer. 7:31). Later it was defiled (2 Kings 23:10), and to perpetuate the defilement refuse from the city seems to have been burned there. The valley of Hinnom is in Hebrew _gai hinnom_. Later generations conceived that the heavenly Jerusalem had also its valley of Hinnom for the consumption of its refuse, hence _gai hinnom_ is used in the New Testament in the form Gehenna as a name of hell. (See Matt. 5:29; 10:28.)