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Tel Dan stele

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The Tel Dan Stele

The Tel Dan Stele is a black basalt stele erected by an Aramaean king in northernmost Israel containing an Aramaic inscription to commemorate his victory over the ancient Hebrews. Although the name of the author of the stele does not seem to appear on the available fragments, it is most likely a king of neighboring Damascus. Language, time, and location make it plausible that the author was Hazael or his son, Bar Hadad II/III, who were kings of Damascus and enemies of the kingdom of Israel. The stele was discovered at Tel Dan, previously named Tell el-Qadi, a mound where a city once stood at the northern tip of Israel . Fragment A was discovered in 1993, and fragments B1 and B2, which fit together, were discovered in 1994. In the broken part of the stone below the smooth writing surface, there is a possible "internal" fit between fragment A and the assembled fragments B1/B2, but it is uncertain and disputed. If the fit is correct, then the pieces were originally side by side. The inscription has been dated to the 9th or 8th centuries BCE. The 8th-century limit is determined by a destruction layer caused by a well-documented Assyrian conquest in 733/732 BCE. Because that destruction layer was above the layer in which the stele fragments were found, it is clear that it took place after the stele had been erected, then broken into pieces which were later used in a construction project at Tel Dan, presumably by Hebrew builders. It is difficult to discern how long before that Assyrian conquest these earlier events took place.

Only portions of the inscription remain, but it has generated much excitement among those interested in Biblical archaeology. Attention is concentrated on the letters 'ביתדוד' which is identical to the Hebrew for "house of David." If the reading is correct, it is the first time that the name "David" has been recognized at any archaeological site. Like the Mesha stele, the Tel Dan Stele seems typical of a memorial intended as a sort of military propaganda, which boasts of Hazael's or his son's victories. (Some epigraphers think that the phrase "house of David" also appears in a partly broken line in the Mesha stele.)

The stele's account

A line by line translation by André Lemaire is as follows (with text that cannot be read due to being missing from the stele, or too damaged by erosion, represented by ""):

1'. ....... and cut
2'. my father went up ighting at/against Ab
3'. And my father lay down; he went to his . And the king of I
4'. rael penetrated into my father's land Hadad made me—myself—king.
5'. And Hadad went in front of me I departed from ...........
6'. of my kings. And I killed two ful kin, who harnessed two thou
7'. riots and two thousand horsemen. ram son of
8'. king of Israel, and I killed yahu son of g
9'. of the House of David. And I set
10'. their land ...
11'. other ...
12'. led over Is
13'. siege upon

Possible Biblical parallels

The writings may coincide with certain events recorded in the Old Testament:

  • 2 Kings 8:7-15 tells how, before Hazael became king of Aram, his predecessor was ill and finally died in his bed:
7. And Elisha came to Damascus; and Benhadad the king of Syria was sick; and it was told him, saying, The man of God is come hither.
8.And the king said unto Hazael, Take a present in thine hand, and go, meet the man of God, and enquire of the LORD by him, saying, Shall I recover of this disease?
9. So Hazael went to meet him, and took a present with him, even of every good thing of Damascus, forty camels' burden, and came and stood before him, and said, Thy son Benhadad king of Syria hath sent me to thee, saying, Shall I recover of this disease?
10. And Elisha said unto him, Go, say unto him, Thou mayest certainly recover: howbeit the LORD hath shewed me that he shall surely die.
11. And he settled his countenance stedfastly, until he was ashamed: and the man of God wept.
12. And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And he answered, Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel: their strong holds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women with child.
13. And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered, The LORD hath shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria.
14. So he departed from Elisha, and came to his master; who said to him, What said Elisha to thee? And he answered, He told me that thou shouldest surely recover.
15. And it came to pass on the morrow, that he took a thick cloth, and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that he died: and Hazael reigned in his stead.
28. And he went with Joram the son of Ahab to the war against Hazael king of Syria in Ramothgilead; and the Syrians wounded Joram.
15. But king Joram was returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him, when he fought with Hazael king of Syria.) And Jehu said, If it be your minds, then let none go forth nor escape out of the city to go to tell it in Jezreel.
16. So Jehu rode in a chariot, and went to Jezreel; for Joram lay there. And Ahaziah king of Judah was come down to see Joram.

Dispute over the phrase "House of David"

Due to the mention of both "Israel" and the "House of David", the Tel Dan Stele is often quoted as supporting evidence for the Bible. However, critics have suggested other readings of ביתדוד, usually based on the fact that the written form "DWD" can be rendered both as David and as Dod (Hebrew for "beloved") or related forms.

In ancient Hebrew, to separate words, a word divider represented by a dot would be placed between the letters. For example, the phrase "House of David" would be written as בית•דוד. However, in the Tel Dan Stele we find the phrase ביתדוד, which does not have a word divider. Anson Rainey, defending the reading of "House of David", writes that "a word divider between two components in such a construction is often omitted, especially if the combination is a well-established proper name." Gary Rendsburg provides additional evidence for Rainey's point and points out that the phrase Bit + X is the Aramaean, Assyrian, and Babylonian way of referring to an Aramaean state. (Note: in this pattern, Bit is equivalent to BYT, "house of", and X is usually the name of the person who was regarded as the founder of a dynasty.) Rendsburg adds, "One might even venture that the Assyrian designation Bit-Humri "house of Omri" for the kingdom of Israel reached Assyrian scribes through Aramaean mediation." (Omri was a king of Israel who reigned 844-873 B.C. and founded a dynasty that ruled it through the reigns of four kings. During their reigns, Israel came into military conflict with Assyria. Assyrian records mention King Ahab, Omri's son, as "Ahab the Israelite" who fought against Assyria.)

George Athas proposes that the three extant fragments of the inscription have been placed in a wrong configuration (for the popular configuration, see the figure above). He argues that Fragment A (the largest) should be placed well above Fragments B1 and B2 (which fit together). He also suggests that ביתדוד is actually a reference to Jerusalem, arguing that it is the Aramaic equivalent of "City of David". He also provides evidence for the authenticity of the fragments (called into question by some, such as Russell Gmirkin), and downdates the inscription, proposing that the author is not Hazael, as is popularly touted, but rather his son Bar Hadad.

A minority view is that DWD is the Hebrew rendering of Thoth (pronounced, according to the Ancient Greeks, as Toot - as in Tutmose), thus the expression might refer to a temple of Thoth. The Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen points out that there is no known temple of Thoth in the area. Others believe that ביתדוד refers to an unknown geographic location.

It has been argued by Thomas L Thompson that, even if it could be shown that the terms "of the house of David" and "of the house of Omri" were used to describe the kings of Judah and Israel at that time, we should not conclude that they saw David and Omri as recent ancestors who had founded dynasties in the modern sense, other interpretations of the term "house of" in this context are possible.

Further reading

In chronological order:

  • Biran, Avraham and Joseph Naveh (1993). "An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan." Israel Exploration Journal 43, pp. 81-98.
  • Biran, Avraham and Joseph Naveh (1995). "The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment." Israel Exploration Journal 45, pp. 1-18.
  • Rainey, Anson F. (1994). "The 'House of David' and the House of the Deconstructionists." Biblical Archaeological Review, 20/6, p. 47.
  • Rendsburg, Gary A. (1995) "On the Writing ביתדוד in the Aramaic Inscription from Tel Dan." Israel Exploration Journal 45, pp. 22-25.
  • Thompson, Thomas L (1999) Bible and History: How Writers Create a Past, ISBN 0465006221
  • Schniedewind, William M. (with Bruce Zuckerman) (2001). "A Possible Reconstruction of the Name of Hazael's Father in the Tel Dan Inscription." Israel Exploration Journal 51, pp. 88-91.
  • Gmirkin, Russell (2002). "Tools, Slippage, and the Tel Dan Inscription." Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 16 (2).
  • Athas, George (2003). The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappaisal and a New Interpretation. JSOTSupp 360; CIS 12; Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press. ISBN 0-567-04043-7.
  • Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. (2004). Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E. SBL Academia Biblica series, no. 12. Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature. Pp. 110-132 and 277. ISBN 1-58983-062-8.

See also

  • David, the section on "Historicity of David"
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