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Home > Magazines > BAR > March/April 1994

“David” Found at Dan

Inscription crowns 27 years of exciting discoveries

By Avraham Biran

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.1 There Avraham Biran and his team of archaeologists2 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 […]

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Footnotes

1.

The shortened form of Yahweh used in names in the southern kingdom, Judah, was –yahu.

2.

For the gates and tomb, see John C. H. Laughlin, “The Remarkable Discoveries at Tel Dan,” BAR 07:05; for the scepter head, see Avraham Biran, “Prize Find: Tel Dan Scepter Head,” BAR 15:01. Also see Hershel Shanks, “BAR Interview: Avraham Biran—Twenty Years of Digging at Tel Dan,” BAR 13:04.

3.

See Joan G. Scheuer, “Volunteer’s Report: Searching for the Phoenicians in Sardinia,” BAR 16:01; and Edward Lipinski, “Epigraphy in Crisis—Dating Ancient Semitic Inscriptions,” BAR 16:04.

Endnotes

1.

See the following BAR articles: Avraham Biran, “Prize Find: Tel Dan Scepter Head,” BAR 15:01; Hershel Shanks, “BAR Interview: Avraham Biran—Twenty Years of Digging at Tel Dan,” BAR 13:04; John C. H. Laughlin, “The Remarkable Discoveries at Tel Dan,” BAR 07:05.

2.

From the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

3.

Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan,” Israel Exploration Journal 43 (1993), pp. 81–98.

4.

See Palestine Exploration Quarterly 100 (1968), pp. 42–44.

5.

For a discussion, see Biran and Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan,” Israel Exploration Journal 43 (1993), pp. 95–98.