In 1880 a 16-year-old pupil of Conrad Schick, head of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews' institute for vocational training, found the inscription when exploring the tunnel.

Schick explained in his initial publication Phoenician Inscription in the Pool of Siloam:[6] ... one of my pupils, when climbing down the southern side of [the aqueduct], stumbled over the broken bits of rock and fell into the water.

He was interested in archaeology, and the year before we came to Jerusalem he discovered the Siloam Inscription... His imagination was fired by learning about the subterranean tunnel in the Ophal Hill that had been excavated by King Hezekiah to bring water inside the threatened city ...

During 1891, both the real and a forged copy were given to Ibrahim Hakki Pasha; the Mutasarrif put the inscription on display in the Jerusalem Serāj, where it was viewed by large crowds.

[15] This prompted an open letter from other Israeli academics criticizing the announcement of finds to the media without proper publication and peer review in a professional journal, or even providing the photographs to other researchers.

Only the word zadah on the third line is of doubtful translation, and the Hebrew letter zayn thought here to be interchanged with tzadi, meaning "its side".

The passage reads: The inscription hence records the construction of the tunnel; according to the text the work began at both ends simultaneously and proceeded until the stonecutters met in the middle.

It has been theorized that Hezekiah's engineers depended on acoustic sounding to guide the tunnelers and this is supported by the explicit use of this technique as described in the Siloam Inscription.

[22] Scholars have commented that the inscription has little, if any, significance to Turkey, and as evidence point to the fact that it was not on display in a public gallery in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.

[27] In March 2022, following the visit of President of Israel Isaac Herzog in Ankara, Israeli media reported that Turkey agreed to return the Siloam Inscription to Jerusalem.