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.
