Local Fear Results in Loss of History

For biblical scholars and archaeologists, the Mesha Stele is one of the most important pieces of textual evidence for the existence of David. The stele, set up by the king of Moab (a neighboring people to Israel) in the 9th century BCE, was discovered in Dhiban, Jordan in 1868. What excites scholars and archaeologists is line 31 on the stele, which reads: “and the house of David dwelled in Horonen.” While a very exciting and rare find of the name “David” in an ancient text, the interpretation of line 31 is exactly that—an interpretation. The line taken to mean “house of David” is written “bt[*]wd,” with one character damaged; for it to truly read as “house of David,” the line should say “btdwd” (“beit David” – house of David). It should have been easy to determine whether the stele was truly referring to descendents of someone named David, but unfortunately—as you probably guessed, considering the title of my blog—something went wrong.

When archaeologists first found the stele, they were of course quite enthusiastic about the discovery. The stele was in excellent condition, and ancient writings are rare and difficult to find because most writing was done on perishable materials. Naturally, the archaeologists were unhindered in expressing their interest in the stele; how could they contain themselves after such an exciting discovery? The locals, on the other hand, were not as pleased. Archaeology did not have the best reputation in the 1800s, and for good reason. Many of the excavations that were conducted were only carried out to satisfy greed for the personal gain of the archaeologists. Because of this, locals in areas where archaeological sites are common were wary of anything that archaeologists found interesting, because it might lead to more people coming and burgling the site under the pretense of an excavation.

The locals at Dhiban saw how interested the archaeologists were in the stele and assumed the worst—the stele must have gold inside and when the archaeologists get to it, they’ll steal it. And so the locals did the most rational thing they could think of to prevent the archaeologists from stealing any treasure.

They blew up the stele.

"P1120870 Louvre stèle de Mésha AO5066 rwk" by Unknown - Mbzt 2012. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Commons
“P1120870 Louvre stèle de Mésha AO5066 rwk” by Unknown – Mbzt 2012. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Commons

Fortunately, the stele broke mostly into large pieces on which long sections of text were still legible. Unfortunately, many smaller pieces were broken off and some of the text was chipped, causing other sections of text to be lost forever. One of these sections of text was line 31. The explosion chipped off the one character that would have completed the name of the house mentioned. Was the character the “d” that would have made “bt[*]wd” into “btdwd”? Or did the original inscription read “btdwdh” – “house of Daodoh,” a local ruling family? We may never know, but if the inscription did in fact read “house of David,” that would make the Mesha Stele the earliest evidence of the existence of the Judean kingdom and its Davidic dynasty.

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