Jerusalem's mayor has asked the Turkish government to return a famous 2700-year-old tablet uncovered in an ancient subterranean passage in the city, Jerusalem officials said Friday.
Known as the Siloam inscription, the tablet was found in a tunnel hewed to channel water from a spring outside Jerusalem's walls into the city around 700 B.C. - a project mentioned in the Old Testament's Book of Chronicles. It was discovered in 1880 and taken by the Holy Land's Ottoman rulers to Istanbul, where it is now in the collection of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum...
In the Bible's account, the Siloam water tunnel was constructed by King Hezekiah to solve one of ancient Jerusalem's most pressing problems - its most important water source, the Siloam spring, was outside the city walls and vulnerable to the kingdom's Assyrian enemies.
The tunnel, around 500 yards (meters) long, was hollowed out of the bedrock by two teams of diggers starting from each end, according to the tablet, which was installed to celebrate the moment the two teams met underground, pickax to pickax.
When there were only three cubits more to cut through, the men were heard calling from one side to the other, the Hebrew inscription recounts.
And Haaretz just had to add:
The tunnel and spring are located in what is today the East Jerusalem Arab neighborhood of Silwan, controlled by Israel since 1967.
Source.
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