Has David Been Found in Egypt?

Home > Magazines > BAR > January/February 1999

A leading Egyptologist has recently suggested that the name of the Biblical king David may appear in a tenth-century B.C.E. Egyptian inscription. If correct, this mention of David dates a hundred years earlier than the mention of the “House of David” in the now-famous stele from Tel Dan and fewer than 50 years after the great king’s death! According to Egyptologist Kenneth A. Kitchen of the University of Liverpool, in England, “David” is the probable reading of one name in a hieroglyphic list carved on the exterior south wall of the great Temple of Amun in Karnak, Upper Egypt.1 […]

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Endnotes

“A Possible Mention of David in the Late Tenth Century BCE, and Deity *Dod as Dead as the Dodo?” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 76 (1997), p. 29.

See “‘David’ Found at Dan,” BAR 20:02; “More Fragments from ‘David’ Stela Found at Dan,” BAR 20:05.

Few scholars take seriously the suggestion by Philip Davies (“‘House of David’ Built on Sand,” BAR 20:04) and the so-called Copenhagen school (see letters of Thomas L. Thompson and Niels Peter Lemche, BAR 21:02) that dwd in the Dan stele should be read “Dod,” referring to a hitherto unknown deity. See Anson Rainey, “The ‘House of David’ and the House of the Deconstructionists,” BAR 20:06, and his letter in BAR, Queries & Comments,BAR 20:06. In the colorful language of Kenneth A. Kitchen in the article cited in endnote 1:

“Surely the time has now come to celebrate *Dod’s funeral—permanently! There is not one scintilla of respectable, explicit evidence for his/her/its existence anywhere in the biblical and ancient Near Eastern world. No ancient king ever calls himself ‘beloved of Dod’; no temple of Dod has ever been found, and clearly identified as such by first-hand inscriptions. We have no hymns to Dod, no offering-lists for Dod, no published rituals in any ancient language for Dod, no statues of Dod, no altars, vessels, nor any other ritual piece or votive object dedicated to Dod as a clear deity. Why? Because he/she/it never existed in antiquity … *Dod is a dud deity, as dead as the Dodo—so let’s dump him/her/it in well-deserved oblivion, now and henceforth!” (pp. 41–42).

André Lemaire, “‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,” BAR 20:03, and Lemaire’s reply to a reader’s letter, Queries & Comments, BAR 20:06.

W.W. Müller, in Neue Epheremis für die semitischer Epigraphik 1 (1972), pp. 59–74, esp. pp. 62–64, illus. 21–25 (dwt, David, in illus. 24, 25).

See Volkmar Fritz, “Where Is David’s Ziklag?” BAR 19:03.