The original Pool of Siloam was constructed circa 701 B.C. It was the setting of the famous story of a blind man who was given sight by Jesus. Jesus put mud on the man’s eyes, and then told him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. (See the Gospel of John, chp. 9)
The Pool of Siloam was built by good King Hezekiah when he realized the Assyrian monarch Sennacherib was planning to lay siege on the city. (2nd Chronicles 32:2-4; cf 2nd Kings 20:20)
So the Pool of Siloam began as part of a military strategy to protect the city’s supply of water. This effort was as much offensive as it was defensive. By channeling the water inward from its vulnerable position outside the city wall, they also made it more difficult for their enemies to get to a fresh water supply.
Jesus used an incident at Siloam to teach about the need of repentance. (See Luke 13:1-5)
A Los Angeles Times story from August 9, 2005 announced with brevity:
Biblical Pool of Siloam is Uncovered in Jerusalem. City workers, scurrying to repair a sewage pipe near the south end of the Kidron Valley before the onset of winter, unexpectedly uncovered the remains of what archaeologists immediately knew to be the biblical Pool of Siloam. This spring-fed reservoir served as a popular gathering place for Jewish worshippers in Jesus’ day who made their annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover, and it served as a backdrop for the story of Jesus’ healing of the man born blind. The trapezoidal-shaped pool, only partially unearthed at the present time in an ongoing excavation, measures 225 feet wide on one side, much larger than most had imagined, with three tiers of five steps each, providing easy access into the water. Coins found at the site, some buried in the plaster of the pool and discovered only with the aid of metal detectors, confirm a New Testament date for the ancient stone structure. Following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70, the pool fell into disuse, and layers of mud slowly overwhelmed the site until the pool’s location faded from memory, awaiting its surprise discovery last year.
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