Tel Dan Stele

Inscription from the Tel Dan Stele

The Tel Dan Stele was a black basalt stele erected by an Aramaean (Syrian) king in northernmost Israel, containing an Aramaic inscription to commemorate his victory over the ancient Hebrews. Fragments of the stele were discovered at Tel Dan in 1993 and 1994.

Although the name of the author does not appear on the existing fragments, it is most likely a king of neighboring Aram Damascus, probably Hazael. In the Bible, Hazael came to the throne after being appointed by the Israelite prophet Elisha to overthrow his predecessor, Ben Hadad II. Elisha predicted that Hazael would conquer part of the Israel and kill many of its inhabitants. The author of the Tel Dan inscription claims credit for killing King Joram of Israel and King Ahaziah of Israel, which the Bible attributes to the action of the usurper Jehu, also at the behest of the prophet Elisha.

The inscription has been dated to the ninth or eighth centuries B.C.E. It has generated great interest because of its apparent reference to the "House of David," constituting the earliest known confirmation outside of the Bible of the Davidic dynasty.

Background

Archaeological dig at Tel Dan

The stele was discovered at Tel Dan, previously named Tell el-Qadi, an archaeological site in Israel in the upper Galilee next to the Golan Heights. The site is quite securely identified with the biblical city of Dan, where an important Israelite shrine once stood, which was much criticized by the biblical writers as being an unauthorized place of sacrifice and the site of one of the infamous "golden calves" of the northern kingdom.

Fragment A was discovered accidentally in 1993 in a stone wall near a related archaeological dig at Tel Dan. Fragments B1 and B2, which fit together, were discovered in 1994. There is a possible 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 eighth-century limit as the most recent date for the stele is determined by a destruction layer caused by a well-documented Assyrian conquest in 733/732 B.C.E. This layer was determined to lie above the layer in which the stele fragments were originally taken before their being dug up for use in the later wall. The stele was apparently broken into pieces at some point and later used in a construction project at Tel Dan, presumably by Hebrew builders.

The period of Aramean (Syrian) supremacy and military conquest against the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, as depicted in the Tel Dan Stele is dated to ca. 841-798 B.C.E., corresponding to the beginning of the reign of Jehu, King of Israel (841-814 B.C.E.), until the end of the reign of his sucessor, Jehoahaz (814/813-798 B.C.E.). This also corresponds to the end of the reigns of both Achazyahu (Ahaziah), King of Judah of the House of David (843 - 842 B.C.E.) and the reign of Joram of Israel (851 - 842 B.C.E.).

Only portions of the inscription remain, but it has generated much excitement among those interested in biblical archaeology. Attention has concentrated on the Semitic letters ביתדוד, which are identical to the Hebrew for "house of David." If the reading is correct, it is the first time that the name "David" has been clearly 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 victories.

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 "[.....]"):

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

Biblical parallels

The Tel Dan inscription may coincide with certain events recorded in the Old Testament, though the poor state of preservation of the fragments has engendered much contention on this issue. The most direct parallel between the Tel Dan writings and the Bible presumes that the author is indeed Hazael. In this case "my father" refers to Ben Hadad II, whom the Bible speaks of as being ill prior to Hazael's accession to the throne. While the Bible attributes the killing of Joram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah to the military commander and future king of Israel Jehu, the Tel Dan inscription gives the credit to its own author. One way of interpreting this discrepancy is that Hazael may have seen originally Jehu as his agent. Alternatively, Hazael may simply have claimed credit for Jehu's deeds.

In the Bible, 2 Kings 8:7-15 tells how the Israelite prophet Elisha appointed Hazael to become king of Syria in order to punish Israel for her sins. While war raged between Syria on one side and the combined forces of Israel and Judah on the other, present Syrian king, Ben-Hadad, lay ill in Damascus. He sent Hazael with a generous gift to Elisha:

Hazael went to meet Elisha, taking with him as a gift forty camel-loads of all the finest wares of Damascus. He went in and stood before him, and said, "Your son Ben-Hadad king of Aram has sent me to ask, 'Will I recover from this illness?'" Elisha answered, "Go and say to him, 'You will certainly recover'; but the Lord has revealed to me that he will in fact die."

Elisha then prophesied that Hazael himself would become king and wreak havoc against Israel, predicting that "You will set fire to their fortified places, kill their young men with the sword, dash their little children to the ground, and rip open their pregnant women." Hazael returned to Ben-Hadad and reported: "He told me that you would certainly recover." The next day, however, he murdered Hazael by suffocating him and succeeded him as king.

File:Jehu-slays-joram.jpg

Jehu slays Joram of Israel at Jezreel

Elisha soon appointed the Israelite commander Jehu to usurp the throne of Israel. Jehu immediately complied, killing both Joram of Israel and his ally, Ahaziah of Judah, in the process (2 Kings 8:28 and 2 Kings 9:15-28).

Jehu was hailed by the biblical writers as a champion of God who destroyed the Temple of Baal in the Israelite capital of Samaria and did away with the descendants of King Ahab—including Joram, his mother Jezebel, and 60 of his kinsmen. However, the Tel Dan Stele appears to put events in a very different light, with Hazael himself claiming credit for the deaths of Joram and Ahaziah. In any case, the biblical account admits that Jehu's army was defeated by Hazael "throughout all of the territories of Israel." This makes the capture of Tel Dan—the site of a major Israelite shrine—by Hazael highly plausible. The weakened Jehu, meanwhile, seems to have turned to Assyria for support against Damascus, as the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III depicts him as humbly offering tribute to the Assyrian king.

The "House of David"

Perhaps ironically, far less interest has been raised about the above-mentioned Syrian view of the deaths of Joram and Ahaziah that in the apparent mention in the Tel Dan Stele of the "House of David." The majority of archaeologists and epigraphers hold to the readings of both "Israel" and "House of David." However some 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. It is also argued that "of the house of David" does not prove the existence of an actual Davidic dynasty, only that the kings of Judah were known as belonging to such a "house."

In favor 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...: 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.'

See also

• David
• Jehu
• Mesha Stele
• Hazael

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

In chronological order:

• Biran, Avraham and Naveh, Joseph (1993). An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan. Israel Exploration Journal 43: 81–98.
• Biran, Avraham and Naveh, Joseph (1995). The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment. Israel Exploration Journal 45: 1–18.
• Rainey, Anson F. (1994). The 'House of David' and the House of the Deconstructionists. Biblical Archaeological Review 20 (6): 47.
• Rendsburg, Gary A. (1995). On the Writing ביתדוד in the Aramaic Inscription from Tel Dan. Israel Exploration Journal 45: 22–25.
• Thompson, Thomas L. (1999). Bible and History: How Writers Create a Past. ISBN 0465006221. 
• Schniedewind, William M. and Zuckerman, Bruce (2001). A Possible Reconstruction of the Name of Hazael's Father in the Tel Dan Inscription. Israel Exploration Journal 51: 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 0567040437. 
• Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. (2004). Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E., SBL Academia Biblica series. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 110–132, 277. ISBN 1589830628. 

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