Archaeological Views: Letting David Go
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Fifteen years ago, Avraham Biran discovered the now-famous House of David inscription at the cardinal northern archaeological site of Tel Dan, where David Ilan and I have resumed excavations. It was not like Biran needed the extra exposure. He had put Dan on the map almost 20 years earlier with the discovery of the massive Middle Bronze gateway, the oldest intact archway in the world, the gate complex of the Israelite city, and the late Iron Age remains of the temple built by Jeroboam I, where the king had placed a golden calf and established the northern kingdom of Israel.
It was customary to refer to states by the dynasties of their rulers, so the “House of David” referred to Judah, just at the Assyrians and Moabites referred to the northern kingdom of Israel as the “House of Omri.” The Tel Dan stela, then, marked not only the first extra-Biblical reference to Judah, but also the earliest attestation of the kingdom’s dynastic founder, David.
It is difficult to overstate just how much this discovery galvanized the scholarly community as well as Biblical enthusiasts. The House of David inscription appeared in print about two years before the so-called “low chronology” threatened to lower the date of the monumental architecture from the tenth century, i.e., the period of David and Solomon, to the ninth century, when Omri built his famous dynastic house. For a few years, a group of insistent European scholars had already proposed to challenge if not the basic historicity of the Davidic stories, then at least the hyperbole with which the Hebrew Bible ostensibly described the reigns of the tenth-century kings. Proposals to read House of David as “House of the Uncle” or some local toponym were common, but few were persuasive. I was equally unpersuaded—the House of David, i.e., Judah, is unequivocally there in this Aramaic text—but I was not unsympathetic with the desire to subject such an important discovery to intense scrutiny.
The stela by itself tells us little about the historical King David, except for the fact that some 130 years after he died the state of Judah retained his name as a component of its identity. What if we excavated our own nation only to discover equally enticing evidence? Were a United States fragmentary document to refer to George Washington as the founding father (which many do) or the ceiling of the Capitol rotunda to depict him as a demi-god (which it does), how much would we know about this historical George Washington except that he was a pivotal, foundational figure in both American history and lore? It is what we do not know that drives our curiosity, the unending quest for the elusive mysteries behind the cryptic references. We have Judah on that stela, but do we really have David in the literal sense?
I find myself in an awkward position. I was trained as an archaeologist by mentors at the Israel Antiquities Authority before entering Johns Hopkins University to become an epigrapher and Biblicist. I now co-direct the excavations at Tel Dan. So I am genuinely interested in the archaeological periods of the site (Neolithic to medieval) as an excavator, as well as in the inscription as an Aramaist. This year, I intend to revisit and thoroughly excavate Area A, where Biran discovered the House of David inscription. There is a lot of pressure to locate missing pieces of the inscription, even though that is not our primary objective. Outside the city gate, Biran discovered a series of extramural buildings, which he referred to as the huzzot, the “outer buildings.” Along with my colleagues, we believe we have here an inn or caravanserai of some kind, which (the temple adding a pilgrimage component to the town) could add immensely to our understanding of how ancient Israelite town planning really worked. In another area, we are lowering a seventh-century plaza down to the Iron I period to expose a large portion of an Iron I village. In still another area, we are further exploring a massive medieval complex with a 2-meter-thick wall running at least 13 meters long. We believe this structure sits right on top of the Iron II city. But all public and scholarly eyes will fixate on Area A. Will we find more fragments of the David inscription? What will the fragments say? Who cares?
Okay, I said it. As a scholar who just completed a massive book on the origins of the Israelite state—and I can tell you that I believe there was a David and 078Solomon notwithstanding the chronology—I can honestly tell BAR readers that the inscription and those like it, while beautiful to find, don’t matter quite as much as the new, innovative questions we pose to the data we already have on hand. Take Eilat Mazar’s excavations in the City of David, for example, where she claims to have discovered David’s palace. Did she? No one knows, precisely because the loci with the relevant pottery are contaminated, which means the structure is impossible to date. We do know that the Stepped-Stone Structure in Area G (one of the largest structures in Iron Age Israel) dates somewhere between the eleventh and tenth centuries, so something is clearly happening in Jerusalem around this time, but we don’t know what exactly.
The reason I ask whether it matters has much to do with the descriptions of David’s reign in the Hebrew Bible. If the search for David is a search for the historical counterpart of the Biblical character, then these inscriptions and edifices could mean a great deal to a number of BAR readers. I encourage them to continue this quest for fulfillment. For me, I rest comfortably in the bosom of low expectations, meaning I read the Bible carefully enough to know that the books of Samuel do not describe David as a great builder on the order of his son Solomon. The Hebrew verb “build” (banah) occurs 12 times in 1-2 Samuel, whereas the verb occurs 53 times in 1 Kings 1–11, for 13 percent of the total occurrences in the Hebrew Bible! That’s a big difference between David and Solomon. When it comes to David, the Hebrew Bible clearly isn’t telling us to go looking for a master builder. I’m content to let the chips fall where they may. If David appears at Dan or anywhere else, I will celebrate like most other archaeologists. But until that day comes, I have scientific work to do; meanwhile I’ll have to let David go.
Fifteen years ago, Avraham Biran discovered the now-famous House of David inscription at the cardinal northern archaeological site of Tel Dan, where David Ilan and I have resumed excavations. It was not like Biran needed the extra exposure. He had put Dan on the map almost 20 years earlier with the discovery of the massive Middle Bronze gateway, the oldest intact archway in the world, the gate complex of the Israelite city, and the late Iron Age remains of the temple built by Jeroboam I, where the king had placed a golden calf and established the northern kingdom of […]
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