"House of David" Restored in Moabite Inscription
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This fragment from the Tel Dan stela has been hailed because it contains the name "David," supposedly for the first time in ancient Semitic epigraphy. But this claim is not true–or at least not quite true. I believe these same words–the "House of David"–appear(ed) on the famous Moabite inscription known as the Mesha stela, also from the ninth century B.C.E. While for most scholars the reference to the "House of David" on the Tel Dan fragment was quite unexpected, I must confess I was not surprised at all. I have been working on the Mesha stela for the past seven years, and I am now preparing a detailed edition of the text. Nearly two years before the discovery of the Tel Dan fragment, I concluded that the Mesha stela contains a reference to the "House of David." Now the Tel Dan fragment tends to support this conclusion.

Discovered in 1868, the Mesha stela has been studied for a long time. Since 1875, it has been displayed in the Louvre (now called the Grand Louvre and completely refurbished and beautified). I realize the burden is on me to establish the appearance of the "House of David" on the Mesha stela, because, despite the extensive commentary this inscription has received for more than a century, until now no one has suggested that it contains a reference to the "House of David."

Even today, the Mesha stela remains the longest monumental inscription discovered anywhere in Palestine–east or west of the Jordan. In many ways the Mesha stela is similar to the stela from which the Tel Dan fragment came. Both stelae are made of black basalt. Both are (or were) approximately three feet high and two feet wide. Both are written in an almost identical Semitic script–close to the script used by the contemporaneous Israelites. Both date to the ninth century B.C.E. Both were erected by enemies of Israel to commemorate their victory. Even the languages are connected–both are Northwest Semitic, Moabite in the case of the Mesha stela (it is often called the Moabite stela or Moabite stone) and Early Aramaic in the case of the Tel Dan stela. Both also contain specific references to the "King of Israel" ( melech yisrael ). And, as I shall show, both also contain a specific reference to the "House of David."

The reason this reference to the "House of David" has never been noted before may well be due to the fact that the Mesha stela has never had a proper editio princeps . That is what I am preparing, 125 years after the discovery of the Mesha stela. The reason it has never had this kind of publication is due to a series of misfortunes that have befallen it since its discovery.

The first westerner to see the Mesha stela was a medical missionary named F. A. Klein, who lived in Jerusalem but who travelled widely on both sides of the Jordan, relieving pain and winning converts. In 1868, on one of Klein's trips east of the Jordan, in ancient Moab, his Bedouin hosts showed him an inscribed stone among the ruins of Dhiban, Biblical Dibon. Lying face up, the monumental tablet, rounded at the top and with a flat base and a raised frame on the top and sides, contained 34 lines of script. Klein agreed to buy the stone for a hundred napoleons (about $400 at that time). However, the deal soon became enmeshed in the rivalries among Prussia (North Germany), France and England in the territories of the Ottoman Empire of the 19th century.²

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