How an ancient Jewish inscription became a flashpoint between Turkey and Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed on Monday that his government sought to acquire an ancient inscription from Turkey in the 1990s in a bid to support Jerusalem’s Jewish history, but was unsuccessful due to concerns about then-Istanbul mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s reaction.

Speaking at the City of David, a biblical tourism site operated by the Elad settler organisation in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem, Netanyahu recounted how he hosted then-Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz in 1998 and asked him to return the Siloam Inscription, which was discovered in 1880 and taken to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum by the Ottomans.

Turkey and Israel enjoyed close security and diplomatic ties in the 1990s.

Netanyahu said the Siloam Inscription, which recorded the tunnel and pool dug underneath Jerusalem for water storage some 2,700 years ago under king Hezekiah of Judah, was the most important Jewish archaeological discovery after the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Netanyahu said he proposed to Yilmaz that he could give any Ottoman artefact from the Israeli museum in return for the inscription. When the Turkish prime minister refused, he proposed to give out all Ottoman artefacts or name a price.

“And he said, 'Prime Minister Netanyahu, there is no price'. And I said, 'why?' He said, 'Well, there is a growing Islamist constituency headed by the then mayor of Istanbul',” Netanyahu quoted Yilmaz saying.

“'You know his name. And there would be outrage from this section of the Turkish people that we would give Israel a tablet that would show that Jerusalem was a Jewish city 2,700 years ago'.”

Netanyahu was hosting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the event, where they inaugurated the controversial archaeological tourism site, "Pilgrimage Road", a tunnel excavated under Palestinian homes next to Jerusalem's Old City.

The prime minister then directly addressed Turkish President Erdogan: “While we're here, this is our city, Mr Erdogan. It's not your city. It's our city. It will always be our city. It will not be divided again,” he said, referencing Erdogan’s call for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict that would make East Jerusalem the State of Palestine’s capital.

The comments spurred an online debate as Turkish users expressed anger towards Netanyahu’s remarks.

It also revealed other Israeli attempts to acquire the inscription from Turkey.

In 2007, then-Jerusalem mayor Uri Lupolianski called on Turkish Ambassador Namik Tan to send the inscription to Israel.

Turkey at the time refused this request on the grounds that Osman Hamdi Bey, the founder of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, brought the tablet to Istanbul during a period when Jerusalem was Ottoman territory, and therefore the artifact legally belongs to Turkey.

The same year, Israeli President Shimon Peres also asked then-Turkish President Abdullah Gul to temporarily loan the artefact to Israel for a year. Gul suggested Ankara could send it for a term shorter than a year, though the loan never went ahead.

The Israeli government, however, continued to pursue the issue in 2022, when Turkey and Israel reconciled ties after years of disputes.

During a visit to Turkey that year, Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s team raised the matter with Turkish counterparts.

A Turkish official told Middle East Eye that Herzog didn’t personally discuss the demand in a meeting with Erdogan, but lower-level Israeli officials made the request.

Yahya Coskun, then-deputy director general of Turkish museums, confirmed that Israeli officials directly asked him about the inscription.

“I showed them the registration document of the Siloam Inscription at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. The registration date is 1883. I asked them on what grounds they could request an inscription that had come from Jerusalem, then Ottoman territory, to the Ottoman capital and had been registered in our museum before the State of Israel was even established,” he said.

“That inscription is still with us. It will be preserved in our museum forever.”

Turkish historian Erhan Afyoncu said that the artefact is one of three significant inscriptions in Turkey related to Jewish history.

He said that the inscription, written in the Phoenician alphabet, was discovered inside the Siloam Tunnel, also known as Hezekiah’s tunnel.

“Water from the Gihon spring, located outside the city in the Kidron Valley, had been directed to the Pool of Siloam, constructed within the city, via a channel approximately 500 metres long,” he said.

“The six-line inscription is claimed to describe this canal, which was built in the 8th century BC. Although the text has been associated with the water channel constructed during the reign of King Hezekiah, as described in the Old Testament in the context of the Assyrian siege, there are differing views about its exact dating.”

Afyoncu added that the inscription was partially broken as it was removed from the site and was sent to the Imperial Museum in Istanbul for protection from theft.

The inscription had been on display but was moved to storage after the section housing it closed for renovation.

An expert familiar with the matter told MEE that the artefact is unlikely to return to exhibition any time soon, as authorities are concerned that the Israeli government might attempt to seize it through unlawful means.