After the capture of Jerusalem by the Arabs a village sprang up in the valley below the pool. In 1047 Nasir-i-Khusrau found an endowed hospital, with salaried ph,vsicians, and man.v build- ings, erected for charitable purposes, near the spring. Karly in the 12th cent, there was a small monasterv at Siloam, but about 1300 the buildings were in ruins, and the irrigated gardens, wliich had been bequeathed by one of the Khalifs to the poor of Jerusalem, had disappeared. By the middle of the 17th cent, the pools were filled with rubbisli, and the tradition, which had lingered into the 16th cent., that a church dedicated to the SaTvator Uiuminator had once stood above the mouth of the tunnel, was lost. The village of Siloam, Kefr Sihrdn, on the left bank of the Kidron Valley, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, is of comparatively recent growth. Christian anchorites, and afterwards .Moslems, are alluded to as living in the caves ; but (^uaresniius, in the 17th cent., is the first to distinctly mention the village by its present name (Guy ie Strange, PaL under the Moslems ; Tobler, Die SiluahqtteUe und der Oetberg ; P.P. Text Society translations).
The ' tower in Siloam ' (Lk 13*), of which nothing further is known, may have been one of the tower* in the city wall near the pool.
LrrSRATURR. — The principal authorities for the site and the description of the pool have been cited in the article. For the inscription and its nearing on the history of the Ileb. alphabet, see esp. Driver, Text o.f Sajniu^I, p. 14ff". (with fa/'jiinilf. tran- scription, and translation) ; Weir, Short Iligt. of the lleh. Text of OT, 9ff. ; Euting in Ges.-Kautzsch's Heb. Oram.; Socio (plate 8 in ZDPV iv., and, in an amended form. Die Siloahin' schrift, Freiburg, 1899) ; Lidzbarski, Handb. d. nordsein. Epi- graphik, 1S98 : cf. Oheyne In PB, ' Isaiah,' 143.
C. W. WIL.SON.
SILYAND8.— See Silas.
SILVER (np| [Aram. 10?], ipyvpos, ipyipiov) comet next to gold in the list of precious metals. Iti
SILVEB
SIMEON
5i;
Talue arises parti j' from its comparative rarity, and partly from its properties of resistance to corro- .aion, brilliant wliitL- lustre, malleability, ductility, and tlie like, ^Yhic'h make it a specially suitable material for artistic workmanship. The kuow- led''e and use of silver in classical and Bible lands go Lack to prehistoric times. This metal appears in Homer as put to a great variety of purposes. Vessels and ornaments maile of it were found by Schlicmann at MyceinB. Silver la equally in evi- dence among the remains of the ancient Egyp- tians, Assyrians, and Hittites. It is repeatedly mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna tablets.
Silver is rarely found in the native state, and has almost always to be extracted from some form of ore. The principal Asiatic source of it in ancient times was in the mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan. Homer (II. ii. 857) refers to the special excellence of the silver brought from AlybS in Pontus. The mines of these regions have been wrought by the Turkish Government in modern times. In Europe the silver mines of Laurium in Attica were of considerable import- ance, and proved a rich source of wealth to Athens. There were also mines in Thrace and Epirus. But the most abundant 8up|ilies of silver were obtained from Spain. The workings there were at lirst in the hands of the Carthaginians, and it was when the Iiomans obtained posse.ssion of them that silver first became plentiful in Italy, though it had previously been used in art by the Etruscans, who may have derived their supply of the metal from Gaul or from the Phoenicians.
Silver waa obUiined from its compounds by smelting along with other metallic ores, of which that of lead was essential to the process. At a high temperature the lead combined with the im- purities in the silver to form a heavj' 'slag,' which separated by its weight from the molten silver, lejiving the latter pure.
The relative values of gold and silver varied in ancient times. As long as the supply was restricted to Asiatic sources, silver was scarcer than it after- wards became. There are indications of a struggle for supremacy between the two metals at lirst, and even of a preference for silver to gold in some places. In Egypt silver is always mentioned before gold in the inscriptions, and silver objects are rarer than golden ones in the tombs. Kroni a fragment of Agatharcides it appears that in ancient Arabia silver was reckoned 10 times more valuable than gold. The laws of Menes in Egypt fixed the value of gold as 2J times that of silver. Herodotus (iii. 05) makes cold equal in value to 13 times its weight of silver. The Egyptian (ts-e/n (Gr. ^XexT/jof [or -os], Lat. elc'trum) was a highly prized alloy of gold and silver.
Silver was an early form of currency, and at first was reckoned by weight (see MONEY, vol. iii. p. 418 (T.), coiii.-ige bein^ miknown among the Hebrews before the Exile. Hence in OT 155 is frequently tr. ipyvptov by LXX, and 'money' in EV. It is al.so oicasionally rendered ' price, and once (Is 7^) 'silverlings.' Similarlj' in Apocr. and NT ifryupiov is often tr. 'money.' 'Piece of silver' stands in one passage (Lk 15^) for SpaxM--fi.
The mention of silver in Scripture as a medium of exchange goes back to the time of Abraham (Gn 23"- '"). .Silver is an item constantly enumer- ated in accounts of wealth, spoil, and tribute. The wealth of Solomon is indicated by his making silver as plentiful as stone in Jerusalem (1 K 10", Sir 47"), and that of the restored Jerusalem is described in the promise, ' for iron I will bring silver' (Is CO"). So Tyre (Zee 9») and the wicked man (Job 27") are s-aid to ' heap up silver as dust." Idols were made of silver or plated with it. It WIS the material of various parts of the Taber-