BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

The Interrupted Search for King David’s Palace

Northern Tower sheds light on King David’s palace administration

eilat-mazar

Eilat Mazar

In 2007, prominent Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar was excavating a monumental public building in Jerusalem’s City of David—a structure she believes might be King David’s palace—when one of the ancient stone towers at the site became in danger of collapsing. Believing it necessary to excavate the tower as soon as possible, Mazar halted work on the monumental building to focus attention on the tower. As detailed in “The Interrupted Search for King David’s Palace” by Hershel Shanks in the July/August 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, what Mazar discovered at the tower was well worth the effort.

Mazar, who is affiliated with the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, began excavations in 2005 in the northern end of the City of David, a 12-acre spur that extends south of the Temple Mount. She had set her sights on this area after examining the results of the excavations British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon conducted there in the 1960s. Of particular interest to Mazar was a massive Iron Age public structure Kenyon uncovered and had believed was part of a new casemate wall built by King Solomon in the 10th century B.C.E.

“Perhaps this casemate wall … was part of David’s palace,” Mazar wrote in her groundbreaking article “Did I Find King David’s Palace?” in the January/February 2006 issue of BAR.

city-of-david-rendering

The 12-acre spur south of the Temple Mount known as the City of David includes the Large Stone Structure (green)—what may be King David’s palace—the Stepped Stone Structure (blue), the Northern Tower (red) and the Southern Tower (orange).

Mazar’s excavations revealed the structure—which she called the Large Stone Structure—to be an enormous building comprised of giant walls between 6 and 8 feet wide that was once decorated with elegant proto-Aeolic capitals. The building seemed to have been supported by the so-called Stepped Stone Structure, a massive stone edifice of walls and terraces covering the northeastern slope of the City of David.

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northern-tower

The Northern Tower of the Stepped Stone Structure is outlined in red. Photo: Courtesy Eilat Mazar.

Mazar’s investigation of the Large Stone Structure was interrupted in 2007 when one of the two stone towers that flanked the top of the Stepped Stone Structure was “in danger of imminent collapse.” She thus shifted excavation work to this vulnerable tower, called the Northern Tower.1

Soil from the excavation of the Northern Tower was wet-sifted by the Temple Mount Sifting Project. Wet-sifting is a technique refined by the project in which excavation dirt is initially dry-sifted over a sieve, and then water is hosed over the contents to remove the dirt and more clearly detect artifacts. The finds recovered from the Northern Tower proved to be worth the effort, for they are shedding light on the administrative personnel of the monumental Iron Age building in the City of David—what may be King David’s palace.

The prize find from the Northern Tower excavations is a cache of more than 100 clay bullae—lumps of clay used to seal administrative and financial documents in antiquity. Mazar believed that these bullae fell down the slope from the Large Stone Structure—which she believes is King David’s palace. One bulla bears a name (ḥym‘ẓ) that occurs three times in the Bible (1 Samuel 14:50; 2 Samuel 15:27–36; 1 Kings 4:15), but has never before been found archaeologically until now. A seal that was used to stamp another bulla belonged to a woman. The bullae, according to Mazar, suggest that “there was a large archive in the palace” and that the capital of Judah was managed by a sophisticated governmental bureaucracy.

northern-tower-bulla

Inscribed clay bullae recovered from the excavation of the Northern Tower—such as this one bearing the name ḥym‘ẓ—reflect a complex bureaucracy in the capital of Judah, according to excavator Eilat Mazar. Photo: Courtesy Eilat Mazar.

Learn more about the finds recovered from the excavation of the Northern Tower—and more about Eilat Mazar’s search for King David’s palace—by reading the full article “The Interrupted Search for King David’s Palace” by Hershel Shanks in the July/August 2016 issue of BAR.

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BAS Library Members: Read the full article “The Interrupted Search for King David’s Palace” by Hershel Shanks in the July/August 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Notes:

1. Eilat Mazar details the excavation of the Northern Tower in The Summit of the City of David Excavations 2005–2008, Final Reports, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Shoham, Academic Research and Publication, 2015).


 

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Did I Find King David’s Palace? by Eilat Mazar

King David’s Palace and the Millo

Jeremiah, Prophet of the Bible, Brought Back to Life
Clay bullae from the City of David provide new evidence for Biblical figures

The Tel Dan Inscription: The First Historical Evidence of King David from the Bible


 

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10 Responses

  1. Toni says:

    What does the prefix “Proto” mean ex. Proto-Aeolic and proto-Hebrew? thanks in advance

  2. Tom says:

    Ryan,

    There simply isn’t a scholar alive today who believes as you do. There is not one iota of evidence that the Aleppo Codex preserves the script that Moses utilized when writing the Pentateuch. This is a false belief that crept into the Talmud which was transcribed by a Jew living many hundreds of years after the Babylonian exile. All pre-exilic Israelite and Judahite script is proto-Hebrew.

  3. DavidC says:

    Is MR the only one here reading the Bible? The Bible is where Mazar got the idea to look in this location in the first place, right? (Something like ‘David looked DOWN from his palace’) You cannot leave King David out of this equation.

  4. Arthur Chrysler says:

    The Proto-Aeolic capital was supplied by the Phoenician builders when King Hiram of Tyre assisted Israel’s new king in constructing his house. That is how “David” enters the conversation.

  5. judithw24 says:

    It is the City of David at this point, to her because this is where her heart is. Nothing is for sure yet. Giving her incentive is important. She has done well as I see.

  6. judithw24 says:

    Saddam Hussain was a Moabite Ryan. Am I correct. I did a study. If I am wrong, please, can you correct me.

  7. Jessie says:

    This is an interesting article! Thank you for posting! Everyone else’s comments are argumentative, otherwise you would have been excavating and writing this lol sour grapes!!!

  8. Josh says:

    It’s actually probably Ancient Hebrew hey it’s probably authentic sorry.

  9. Jack Manning says:

    If one seeks to substantiate a predetermined conclusion, one can interpret anything as substantiation of that conclusion. If one seeks the truth, one might find it, even is it does not agree with the predetermined conclusion, The language is Ashdodyth, the capital is Protp-Aeolic and the stone formations are similar to many other Canaanite structures. How does “David” enter the conversation?

  10. Ryan says:

    The inscriptions on these “bullae” are not Hebrew, they are the Ashdodyth language, which was widely used by the Canaanite/Moabite peoples. The common teaching of “the languages” is false. The originator of this “pagan language” claiming that it is Hebrew in origin was Sir William Petrie who found a Canaanite inscription giving praise to the Canaanite [Hamite] goddess Hathor [the Egyptian goddess of Turquoise] in 1905, and moronic scholars have “leaped on this pagan idea” believing it to be so,” which it is NOT! It is the language of Ashdod that some of the Yshralites adopted while in Captivity to Babylon. The Leviticus Fragment [dated to 3,000Bce — found among the Dead Sea Scrolls — while chard — is written in the Hebrew language of Yshral — ישראל — and NOT in the Canaanite script — see the Mesha Stele, written in the language of Ashdodyth] is proof that the Scriptural Hebrew script [as found in the Aleppo Codex] IS the language of Moshe [Moses] and Abraham. Paleo is NOT a “Hebrew script,” it is a Canaanite [Hamitic] script. There is ONLY ONE fragment found among the DSS which uses both Ashdodyth and Hebrew, which is the “Commentary on the book of Habakkuk.” It uses BOTH languages, and was written 100 years after NechemYah rebuked Yshral [you call them Israel] for adopting both languages, and cursed them, and demanded that they return back to the language of Yahweh [Hebrew]. The DSS is PROOF that they had in fact returned [see NechemYah/Nehemiah 13] back to their ancestral language.

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10 Responses

  1. Toni says:

    What does the prefix “Proto” mean ex. Proto-Aeolic and proto-Hebrew? thanks in advance

  2. Tom says:

    Ryan,

    There simply isn’t a scholar alive today who believes as you do. There is not one iota of evidence that the Aleppo Codex preserves the script that Moses utilized when writing the Pentateuch. This is a false belief that crept into the Talmud which was transcribed by a Jew living many hundreds of years after the Babylonian exile. All pre-exilic Israelite and Judahite script is proto-Hebrew.

  3. DavidC says:

    Is MR the only one here reading the Bible? The Bible is where Mazar got the idea to look in this location in the first place, right? (Something like ‘David looked DOWN from his palace’) You cannot leave King David out of this equation.

  4. Arthur Chrysler says:

    The Proto-Aeolic capital was supplied by the Phoenician builders when King Hiram of Tyre assisted Israel’s new king in constructing his house. That is how “David” enters the conversation.

  5. judithw24 says:

    It is the City of David at this point, to her because this is where her heart is. Nothing is for sure yet. Giving her incentive is important. She has done well as I see.

  6. judithw24 says:

    Saddam Hussain was a Moabite Ryan. Am I correct. I did a study. If I am wrong, please, can you correct me.

  7. Jessie says:

    This is an interesting article! Thank you for posting! Everyone else’s comments are argumentative, otherwise you would have been excavating and writing this lol sour grapes!!!

  8. Josh says:

    It’s actually probably Ancient Hebrew hey it’s probably authentic sorry.

  9. Jack Manning says:

    If one seeks to substantiate a predetermined conclusion, one can interpret anything as substantiation of that conclusion. If one seeks the truth, one might find it, even is it does not agree with the predetermined conclusion, The language is Ashdodyth, the capital is Protp-Aeolic and the stone formations are similar to many other Canaanite structures. How does “David” enter the conversation?

  10. Ryan says:

    The inscriptions on these “bullae” are not Hebrew, they are the Ashdodyth language, which was widely used by the Canaanite/Moabite peoples. The common teaching of “the languages” is false. The originator of this “pagan language” claiming that it is Hebrew in origin was Sir William Petrie who found a Canaanite inscription giving praise to the Canaanite [Hamite] goddess Hathor [the Egyptian goddess of Turquoise] in 1905, and moronic scholars have “leaped on this pagan idea” believing it to be so,” which it is NOT! It is the language of Ashdod that some of the Yshralites adopted while in Captivity to Babylon. The Leviticus Fragment [dated to 3,000Bce — found among the Dead Sea Scrolls — while chard — is written in the Hebrew language of Yshral — ישראל — and NOT in the Canaanite script — see the Mesha Stele, written in the language of Ashdodyth] is proof that the Scriptural Hebrew script [as found in the Aleppo Codex] IS the language of Moshe [Moses] and Abraham. Paleo is NOT a “Hebrew script,” it is a Canaanite [Hamitic] script. There is ONLY ONE fragment found among the DSS which uses both Ashdodyth and Hebrew, which is the “Commentary on the book of Habakkuk.” It uses BOTH languages, and was written 100 years after NechemYah rebuked Yshral [you call them Israel] for adopting both languages, and cursed them, and demanded that they return back to the language of Yahweh [Hebrew]. The DSS is PROOF that they had in fact returned [see NechemYah/Nehemiah 13] back to their ancestral language.

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