Hezekiah stopped the "upper watercourse of Gihon," and brought it down straight to the W. of the city of David (2 Chronicles 32:30). Robinson identifies Gihon with the pool Birket-es-Mamilla at the head of the valley of Hinnom S.W. of Jerusalem. He thinks the lately discovered subterranean conduit in the city to be a branch from Hezekiah's watercourse. Williams places Gihon N. of Jerusalem, near the tombs of the kings, and thinks that the watercourse flowed S. to the temple, and thence into the pool of Siloam, the lower pool.
        The proximity of "the upper pool" to "the fuller's field" (2 Kings 18:17) favors this; as "the fuller's monument" was N.E. of the city (Josephus). The pools of Solomon beyond Bethlehem for irrigating his garden (Ecclesiastes 2:6) were probably connected with the supply of water for Jerusalem, which Talmudic tradition assigns to him. Pontius Pilate applied the sacred treasure of the corban to an aqueduct of 200 or 300 stadia, which is about the measure of the existing one. Probably he repaired Solomon's original watercourse. The water is still conveyed from the fountains which supply the pools two miles S. of Bethlehem. It crosses the Hinnom valley on a nine-arched bridge above the pool Birket-es-Sultan, and at last is conducted to the Haram; repaired by Sultan Mahomet Ibn Kalaun of Egypt about A.D. 1300.