“David” Found at Dan

by Henry Robinson
via Sentry Magazine, Vol. 20 No. 2, June 1994

Tel Dan Stele

The March/April 1994 edition of the Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol. 20, No.2) reported the following:

“It’s not often that an archaeological find makes the front page of the New York Times (to say nothing of Time magazine. But that is what happened last summer to a discovery at Tel Dan, a beautiful mound in northern Galilee, at the foot of Mt. Hermon beside one of the headwaters of the Jordan River.

“There Abraham Biran and his team of archaeologists found a remarkable inscription from the ninth century B.C.E. that refers both to the “House of David” and to the “King of Israel.” This is the first time that the name David has been found in any ancient inscription outside the Bible. That the inscription refers not simply to a “David” but to the House of David, the dynasty of the great Israelite king, is even more remarkable...”

The inscription was found on a piece of basalt that appeared to have been part of a large monumental inscription. The letters were found to be “clearly engraved and easy to read. The script is in Old Hebrew letters, sometimes called paleo-Hebrew, the kind of letters used before the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. When the Jews returned from the Babylonian exile, they brought back the square Aramaic script still used today. Dots separate the words, as was then customary...where “House of David” appears, however, the two Hebrew words bytdwd are not separated by a dot, but written together, like HouseofDavid. The dynastic name of the kingdom of Judah, whose founder was King David, was apparently regarded as one word.”

The archaeologists concluded that the basalt piece containing the inscription was “a victory stela erected in Dan by an Aramean, a devotee of Hadad. who is boasting of his military victory over Israel and perhaps also Judah.”