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 does not seem to appear on the available fragments, it is most likely a king of neighboring Aram 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.

The period of Aramean Supremacy and military conquest as depicted in the Tel Dan Stele against the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel was dated to ca. 841 - 798 BCE in correspondence the beginning of the reign of Jehu, King of Israel (841-814 BCE), until the end of the reign of Jehoahaz, King of Israel (814/813-798 BCE). This also corresponds to the end of the reigns of both Achazyahu (Ahaziah), King of Judah of the House of David (843 - 842 BCE) and the reign of Yoram (Joram), King of Israel (851 - 842 BCE). This chronology was based on the posthumously published work of Yohanan Aharoni (Tel Aviv University) and Michael Avi-Yonah, in collaboration with Anson F. Rainey and Ze'ev Safrai. [Yohanan Aharoni, Michael Avi-Yonah, Anson F. Rainey, Ze'ev Safrai, The Macmillan Bible Atlas, 3rd Edition, Macmillan Publishing: New York, 1993, p. 100.] This dating of Aramean military supremacy over the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel was published in 1993 before the discovery of the Tel Dan Stele, thus, not reflecting any bias as to the dating of either the stele nor the Aramean conquest in the Southern Levant. [Yohanan Aharoni, Michael Avi-Yonah, Anson F. Rainey, Ze'ev Safrai, The Macmillan Bible Atlas, 3rd Edition, Macmillan Publishing: New York, 1993, p. 100.]

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", although another reading would be as a place name such as Bethdod (the BYT syllable meaning 'house' as in Bethlehem and the last syllable DWD meaning possible 'beloved', 'kettle', or 'uncle' being found in Ashdod [ Davies, P.R. 1994. “‘House of David’ Built on Sand: The Sins of the Biblical Maximizers.” Biblical Archaeology Review 20/4. ] . 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 missing from the stele, or too damaged by erosion to be legible, represented by " [.....] "):

# [.....................] ....... [...................................] and cut [.........................]
# [.........] my father went up [....................f] ighting at/against Ab [....]
# And my father lay down; he went to his [fathers] . And the king of I [s-]
# rael penetrated into my father's land [. And] Hadad made me—myself—king.
# And Hadad went in front of me [, and] I departed from ........... [.................]
# of my kings. And I killed two [power] ful kin [gs] , who harnessed two thou [sand cha-]
# riots and two thousand horsemen. [I killed Jo] ram son of [Ahab]
# king of Israel, and I killed [Achaz] yahu son of [Joram kin] g
# of the House of David. And I set [.......................................................]
# their land ... [.......................................................................................]
# other ... [......................................................................... and Jehu ru-]
# led over Is [rael...................................................................................]
# siege upon [............................................................]

Possible Biblical parallels

The writings may coincide with certain events recorded in the Old Testament,though the poor state of preservation of the fragments has engendered muchcontention on this issue [Stuart A Irvine, The Last Battle Of Hadadezer, Journal of Biblical Literature. Atlanta: Summer 2005. Vol. 124, Iss. 2; pg. 341] :
*2 Kings 8:7-15 tells how, before Hazael became king of Aram, his predecessor was ill and finally died in his bed:

⁷And 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. ⁸And 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? ⁹So 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? ¹⁰And Elisha said unto him, Go, say unto him, Thou mayest certainly recover: howbeit the LORD hath shewed me that he shall surely die. ¹¹And he settled his countenance stedfastly, until he was ashamed: and the man of God wept.

¹²And 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. ¹³And 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. ¹⁴So 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. ¹⁵And 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.

*2 Kings 8:28 and 2 Kings 9:15-16 record that, after being injured in fighting in Ramoth Gilead, Joram of Israel 'was laid up' in Jezreel:

²⁸And he went with Joram the son of Ahab to the war against Hazael king of Syria in Ramothgilead; and the Syrians wounded Joram.

¹⁵But 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. ¹⁶So Jehu rode in a chariot, and went to Jezreel; for Joram lay there. And Ahaziah king of Judah was come down to see Joram.

*2 Kings 9:17-28 records the deaths of Joram of Israel (son of Ahab) and Ahaziah of Judah (son of Joram of Judah):

¹⁷And there stood a watchman on the tower in Jezreel, and he spied the company of Jehu as he came, and said, I see a company. And Joram said, Take an horseman, and send to meet them, and let him say, Is it peace? ¹⁸So there went one on horseback to meet him, and said, Thus saith the king, Is it peace? And Jehu said, What hast thou to do with peace? Turn thee behind me. And the watchman told, saying, The messenger came to them, but he cometh not again. ¹⁹Then he sent out a second on horseback, which came to them, and said, Thus saith the king, Is it peace? And Jehu answered, What hast thou to do with peace? Turn thee behind me. ²⁰And the watchman told, saying, He came even unto them, and cometh not again: and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously. ²¹And Joram said, Make ready. And his chariot was made ready. And Joram king of Israel and Ahaziah king of Judah went out, each in his chariot, and they went out against Jehu, and met him in the portion of Naboth the Jezreelite.

²²And it came to pass, when Joram saw Jehu, that he said, Is it peace, Jehu? And he answered, What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many? ²³And Joram turned his hands, and fled, and said to Ahaziah, There is treachery, O Ahaziah. ²⁴And Jehu drew a bow with his full strength, and smote Jehoram between his arms, and the arrow went out at his heart, and he sunk down in his chariot. ²⁵Then said Jehu to Bidkar his captain, Take up, and cast him in the portion of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite: for remember how that, when I and thou rode together after Ahab his father, the LORD laid this burden upon him; ²⁶Surely I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth, and the blood of his sons, saith the LORD; and I will requite thee in this plat, saith the LORD. Now therefore take and cast him into the plat of ground, according to the word of the LORD.

²⁷But when Ahaziah the king of Judah saw this, he fled by the way of the garden house. And Jehu followed after him, and said, Smite him also in the chariot. And they did so at the going up to Gur, which is by Ibleam. And he fled to Megiddo, and died there. ²⁸And his servants carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem, and buried him in his sepulchre with his fathers in the city of David.

Dispute over the phrase "House of David"

Because it mentions both "Israel" and the "House of David", the Tel Dan Stele is often quoted as supporting evidence for the Bible account. However, this reading has been criticized. Although the overwhelming majority of archaeologists and epigraphers hold to the readings "Israel" and "House of David", ['On the "positivist" side of the controversy, regarding the authenticity of the inscription, we now have published opinions by most of the world's leading epigraphers (none of whom is a "biblicist" in Thompson's sense): the inscription means exactly what it says. On the "negativist" side, we have the opinions of Thompson, Lemche, and Cryer of the Copenhagen School. The reader may choose.' Dever, William, 2004, 'What Did The Biblical Authors Know, And When Did They Know It?', pages 128-129] a small number of Biblical scholars object to this reading on literary grounds.

The 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 Aramaic 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 BC 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.)

On this subject, Philip Davies writes:

But let’s leave this wishful thinking and return to the critical six letters, BYTDWD, to see what they really might mean. Admittedly there are two verbal elements here, of which the first is beth, house. But the probability is that the second element completes a place-name, such as Beth Lehem (House of Bread) or Bethlehem (one word), as it is commonly written in Latin letters. It seems intrinsically more likely that a place-name composed with beth would be written as one word, rather than a phrase meaning “House of David,” referring to the dynasty of David. Such a place name could be Beth-dod (the w serving as rudimentary vowel, a so-called mater lectionis; the same last three letters are consistently used to spell the last syllable of the Philistine city of Ashdod) or Bethdaud (with a slightly different vowel pronunciation). All these place-names are quite reasonable suggestions...There are other possibilities...For example, in a contemporaneous inscription, the famous Mesha stele or Moabite stone,c the phrase ’R’L DWDH (‏אראל דודה‎) appears. The second word remains somewhat of a puzzle. Some scholars, though a minority, translate it “David” and regard it as the name of the founder of the ruling dynasty of Judah...But the final heh makes this meaning unlikely. The noun dawidum is also found in a cuneiform text from Mari (18th century B.C.E.), offering another possible clue, though the meaning of this term remains unclear. In the Bible DWD can mean “beloved” or “uncle,” and in one place (1 Samuel 2:14), it means “kettle.” So a number of ways of understanding DWD present themselves, most of them more plausible than translating “David.” [ Davies, P.R. 1994. “‘House of David’ Built on Sand: The Sins of the Biblical Maximizers.” Biblical Archaeology Review 20/4. ]

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.

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.

Professional archaeologists object to these reinterpretations, often noting that they are suggested by Biblical scholars who have no formal qualifications in the relevant fields. In favour of the reading 'House of David', archaeologist Kenneth Kitchen writes in response to the contrary views of Thomas L. Thompson:

'(i) The name "David" may be unusual, but is not unparalleled. Long centuries before, it was borne by a West Semitic chief carpenter in about 1730 B.C. on an Egyptian stela formerly in the collection at Rio de Janeiro. (ii) "Dwd" is neither the name (which Thompson admits) nor an epithet of a deity. Others are beloved of deities (for which references are legion!), but male deities are not beloved of others, human or divine (only goddesses are beloved of their divine husbands in Egypt). (iii) Mesha's stela is ninth, not eighth, century. (iv) On Mesha's stela "dwd(h)" is not a divine epithet of YHWH or anyone else.'

'(v) Contrary to TLT, "House of "X" "does" mean a dynastic founder, all over the Near East, in the first half of the first millennium B.C.; it was an Aramean usage that passed into Assyrian nomenclature, and examples are common. (vi) Again, the expression, in part of its usage, "is" like the British "House of Stuart", etc. Such usages were not peculiar to Aram, Assyria, and Judah either: in Egypt, the official title given to the Twelfth Dynasty (Turin Canon) was "Kings of the House (lit. 'Residence') of Ithet-Tawy" = 'the Dynasty of Ithet-Tawy". And the Thirteenth Dynasty was duly entitled "Kings who came after the [House of] King Sehetepibre" (founder of the Twelfth Dynasty). (vii) The charge of forgery is a baseless slur against the Dan expedition, without a particle of foundation in fact.' [ Kenneth Kitchen, 2003, 'On The Reliability Of The Old Testament', pages 452-453]

Also in favour of the reading 'House of David', archaeologist William Dever writes:

'On the "positivist" side of the controversy, regarding the authenticity of the inscription, we now have published opinions by most of the world's leading epigraphers (none of whom is a "biblicist" in Thompson's sense): the inscription means exactly what it says. On the "negativist" side, we have the opinions of Thompson, Lemche, and Cryer of the Copenhagen School. The reader may choose.' [ William Dever, 2004, 'What Did The Biblical Authors Know, And When Did They Know It?', pages 128-129]

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.

ee also

*David, the section on "Historicity of David"
*Mesha Stele
*Jewish history

References

Further reading

In chronological order:
*cite journal |last=Biran |first=Avraham |authorlink= |coauthors=Naveh, Joseph |year=1993 |month= |title=An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan |journal=Israel Exploration Journal |volume=43 |issue= |pages=81–98 |id= |url= |accessdate= |quote=
*cite journal |last=Biran |first=Avraham |authorlink= |coauthors=Naveh, Joseph |year=1995 |month= |title=The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment |journal=Israel Exploration Journal |volume=45 |issue= |pages=1–18 |id= |url= |accessdate= |quote=
*cite journal |last=Rainey |first=Anson F. |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=1994 |month= |title=The 'House of David' and the House of the Deconstructionists |journal=Biblical Archaeological Review |volume=20 |issue=6 |pages=47 |id= |url= |accessdate= |quote=
*cite journal |last=Rendsburg |first=Gary A. |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=1995 |month= |title=On the Writing _he. ביתדוד in the Aramaic Inscription from Tel Dan |journal=Israel Exploration Journal |volume=45 |issue= |pages=22–25 |id= |url= |accessdate= |quote=
*cite book |title=Bible and History: How Writers Create a Past |last=Thompson |first=Thomas L. |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=1999 |publisher= |location= |isbn=0465006221 |pages= |url=
*cite journal |last=Schniedewind |first=William M. |authorlink= |coauthors=Zuckerman, Bruce |year=2001 |month= |title=A Possible Reconstruction of the Name of Hazael's Father in the Tel Dan Inscription |journal=Israel Exploration Journal |volume=51 |issue= |pages=88–91 |id= |url= |accessdate= |quote=
*cite journal |last=Gmirkin |first=Russell |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=2002 |month= |title=Tools, Slippage, and the Tel Dan Inscription |journal=Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament |volume=16 |issue=2 |pages= |id= |url= |accessdate= |quote=
*cite book |title=The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappaisal and a New Interpretation |last=Athas |first=George |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=2003 |series=JSOTSupp 360; CIS 12 |publisher=Sheffield Academic Press |location=Sheffield, England |isbn=0567040437 |pages= |url=
*cite book |title=Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E. |last=Mykytiuk |first=Lawrence J. |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=2004 |series=SBL Academia Biblica series |volume=12 |publisher=Society of Biblical Literature |location=Atlanta, GA |isbn=1589830628 |pages=110–132, 277 |url=