The Tel Dan Stele (“House of David” Inscription)

The fragments were found at Dan during the excavations directed by Avraham Biran: the largest in July 1993, two smaller joining pieces in June 1994. Two of the pieces had been reused as building stone, one in a wall and one in a pavement, so the stele was broken up in antiquity. Parts of thirteen lines survive, none of them complete.

The speaker says that the king of Israel had earlier entered his father’s land, that the god Hadad made him king, and that he killed many kings with their chariots and horsemen. Lines 7–9 name two of them. Of the first name only the ending “-ram son of” remains, followed after a gap by “king of Israel”; of the second only “-yahu son of”, followed after a gap by “of the House of David”. The editors restored the names as Joram son of Ahab and Ahaziah son of Jehoram, the two kings who, according to Kings, died in Jehu’s revolt. That restoration is widely accepted but is not written on the stone. The speaker’s own name is also lost. He is usually identified as Hazael of Damascus, who fought Israel in those years.

The reading “House of David” for the letters bytdwd is accepted by most scholars as the dynastic name of Judah, in the way Assyrian texts call Israel the house of Omri. A few have read the word differently, for example as a name for the city of Jerusalem. The text also disagrees with Kings on who killed the two kings; see the House of David Inscription from Tel Dan.