Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Turkey will never hand over to Israel this ancient ‘stone’ from the biblical era, which was discovered in a tunnel under Jerusalem during the Ottoman era.
According to a report by the French news agency ‘AFP’ published in the Dawn newspaper, he was referring to the so-called ‘Shiloh or Silwan Tablet’, which is a Hebrew tablet and is about 2,700 years old, which is currently in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.
The issue sparked a new diplomatic row on Monday, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his 1998 attempt to return the artefact was rejected because doing so would anger Islamist circles led by then-Istanbul mayor Erdogan.
Speaking on Friday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Netanyahu of inciting hatred against Turkey because it had not returned the Silwan Tomb, which is the heritage of our ancestors. “Jerusalem is the honour, dignity and greatness of all humanity and all Muslims,” Erdogan said, “yet he is brazenly behind this tomb. We will not give you the tomb, not even a single pebble of Jerusalem.”
The tomb was discovered in the late 19th century inside the Shiloh Tunnel, an ancient aqueduct beneath Jerusalem. The limestone tablet, which mentions the construction of the tunnel, was found in 1880 when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire, and was taken to Constantinople (now Istanbul), where it remains preserved to this day.
For Israel, the tablet is a key piece of historical evidence, showing the Jewish presence in Jerusalem, which it has been trying to obtain for years.Speaking on Monday at the inauguration of a newly excavated ancient road in Silwan, a densely populated Palestinian neighbourhood of occupied and annexed East Jerusalem, Netanyahu called the tablet one of Israel’s most important archaeological discoveries after the Dead Sea Scrolls. Recalling a conversation with then-Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz in 1998, Netanyahu said he had offered to give him a large number of Ottoman antiquities.
