Photographs and transcriptions of a stone fragment bearing the first known reference outside the Bible to the House of David, a ruling dynasty presumably founded by King David in the 10th century B.C., have been published in Israel.
Discovery of the inscription in the ruins of Tel Dan, in northern Israel, was reported last summer by Dr. Avraham Biran, an archeologist at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem. Scholars said this could be an important contribution to understanding the ninth century B.C., a dark age in biblical history, and also is strong independent evidence for the existence and influence of the House of David.
But pictures were not released because the discoverers were still analyzing the writing. Dr. Biran and Dr. Joseph Naveh, a specialist in ancient Semitic languages at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, have now provided a full, illustrated report in The Israel Exploration Journal.
