BIBLICAL STUDIES CARNIVAL XXXV has been published by Duane Smith over at Abnormal Interests.

GUNDISHAPUR - the oldest university in the world?

I doubt it, but so says Press TV, Tehran. Ancient Iranian history is not my specialty, but I can see the article isn't entirely accurate on other grounds: Shapour I reigned in the 200s CE, not BC(E). But the story of the University is kind of cool, especially the curriculum in Greek, Syriac, and Pahlavi:

Gundishapur, world's oldest university
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:13:08 GMT
By Tamara Ebrahimpour, Press TV, Tehran

The ancient Iranian city of Gundishapur, located in the country's southern province of Khuzestan, was founded in 271 BCE by the Sassanid king, Shapour I.

The ninth king of the Sassanid Empire, Shapour II, chose the city as his capital and built the world's oldest known medical center, which also included a university and a library with an estimated 400,000 books.

Gundishapur hospital became the most important medical center during the 6th and 7th centuries and attracted many distinguished scientists from Greece, Egypt, India, and Rome.

[...]

I would think that Plato's Academy and perhaps the Library of Alexandria would be earlier contenders for the world's first university.

THE FIRE GOSPEL by Michel Faber is reviewed by Ian Sansom in the Guardian. Excerpt:

This startling, short book by the mercurial Michel Faber is basically The Da Vinci Code with gags - and bile. What he did for the Victorian novel in The Crimson Petal and the White (2003) - rethinking and recasting it - Faber now does for the bestselling books du jour.

Theo Griepenkerl, a pathetic, overweight academic from the Toronto Institute of Classical Studies, is visiting a looted museum in Iraq. A bomb goes off and Theo discovers, hidden inside a bas-relief sculpture, nine papyrus scrolls written in Aramaic. Theo just happens to be one of the world's leading scholars of Aramaic. It seems like a miracle: "The coincidence of finding an Aramaic memoir - to have it literally falling at his feet - at a highly dramatic moment in his life, was too astounding to ignore."

Background here.

UNHOLY BUSINESS by Nina Burleigh, is reviewed by Jonathan Lopez in Citizen.com Excerpt:

For all its good points, "Unholy Business" is not a deep book. You won't learn much about archaeology or ancient cultures by reading it. And Burleigh's lack of any specialized background in her subject is at times problematic. Notably, she seems unable to describe or analyze the formal qualities of the artifacts at the center of the story. Indeed, it is very difficult to visualize them without referring to the section of photographs in the middle of the book.

Likewise, her writing style is nothing if not exuberant: The pages turn and the narrative zips along, but there are many passages where the prose goes for baroque in a way that is difficult to admire. A sunset is "a primal kaleidoscope in the heavens." The antiquities trade is "a death match between reason and superstition, monitored by laughing commerce."

Still, "Unholy Business" spins a good yarn. It offers a window onto a world about which few of us know very much, and although it isn't likely to become the definitive book on the James ossuary or the larger subject of forged antiquities, it's an entertaining and worthwhile read.

Background here.

"PIZZAZZ" IN THE TALMUD? Alas, Philologos thinks not:

As for the Talmud, I would imagine that the passage Mr. Fletcher has in mind is a well-known story occurring in slightly different versions in the tractates of Shabbat and Ketubot. In both, a gentile scolds a rabbi for acting impetuously and says to him: “You Jews are a hasty people! You once put your mouth before your ears and you are still as impulsive today.” The Aramaic for “hasty people” is ama peziza, and the gentile is referring to the response of the Children of Israel to the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, about which, in Exodus, 24:7, we read: “And he [Moses] took the book of the covenant to read to the people, and they said, ‘All that the Lord hath said we will do and listen to’.” A people that promises first to do and then to listen to what it is that it is supposed to do is indeed impetuous.

It seems safe to say that, even had Diana Vreeland been a Talmud scholar on the side, peziza would not have led her to pizzazz. Being hasty or impulsive is not quite the same as having (to quote one dictionary’s definition of pizzazz) “an attractive and exciting vitality….combined with style and glamour.” Many things can be said of the Israelites at Sinai, but not that they were stylish or glamorous.

Philologos suggests that pizzazz may be one of the "non-onomatopoeic words that are formed on the analogy of onomatopoeic ones."

THE MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE in Jerusalem has gotten the go-ahead from the Israeli Supreme Court:

Israeli court clears way for Jerusalem museum

By STEVE WEIZMAN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 29, 2008; 3:37 PM

JERUSALEM -- Plans for a Jerusalem museum dedicated to tolerance and coexistence got the final go-ahead Wednesday from Israel's Supreme Court, which rejected an appeal by Muslims who complained the site covers part of an ancient Muslim cemetery.

The judges ruled they would not block construction since no objections had been lodged in 1960 when the city put a parking lot over a small section of the graveyard.

The Museum of Tolerance is intended to bring the city's warring tribes together. But the planning alone sparked a fight with political, religious and historical dimensions between Muslims and Jews.

[...]

Background here.

ENDLESS ATTENTION to the Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription in the press. I'm busy right now, but I'll note the Daily Mail piece that contains the inflated headline of the week:

'Proof' David slew Goliath found as Israeli archaeologists unearth 'oldest ever Hebrew text'

By Matthew Kalman
Last updated at 7:40 AM on 31st October 2008

Astounding new evidence has been unearthed in Israel that could confirm the biblical story of King David.

Until now, almost nothing has been found that would prove the biblical account of a shepherd boy from the 10th century BC who slew the giant Goliath and went on to become the King of Israel who founded Jerusalem.

But today Hebrew University archaeology professor Yosef Garfinkel announced the discovery of a tiny, but potentially invaluable, piece of pottery at the site of the ruins of an ancient fortified city south-west of Jerusalem dated to the time of King David.

[...]

Or earlier. The article is not particularly helpful, but it does contain a photo of the inscription, unfortunately with someone's hand obscuring most of it. Yitzhak Sapir has collected links to more photos here, none of which are of much use for reading the text.

THE FORGERY TRIAL prosecution seems to be in trouble:

Ossuary hoax case may collapse

Matthew Kalman, [San Francisco] Chronicle Foreign Service

Thursday, October 30, 2008

(10-30) 04:00 PDT Jerusalem - --

The high-profile trial of two Israeli antiquities experts accused of faking a burial box containing the remains of Jesus' brother and other priceless artifacts faced a humiliating collapse Wednesday after a Jerusalem judge advised the prosecution to consider dropping the proceedings after more than three years in court.

"After all the evidence we have heard, including the testimony of the prime defendant, is the picture still the same as the one you had when he was charged?" District Court Judge Aharon Farkash pointedly asked public prosecutor, Adi Damti. "Not every case ends in the way you think it will when it starts. Maybe we can save ourselves the rest."

[...]

Shuka Dorfman, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, had described the charges against Golan as "the tip of the iceberg. These forgeries have worldwide repercussions," he said after the indictments were filed. "They were an attempt to change the history of the Jewish and Christian people."

But under cross-examination by defense attorneys, many experts recanted some of their findings. Judge Farkash's comments, which were excluded from trial transcripts but said in open court, came after more than 80 witnesses and 10,000 pages of testimony including evidence and cross-examination of Golan and leading archaeologists and scientists from around the world.

No definitive proof

"Have you really proved beyond a reasonable doubt that these artifacts are fakes as charged in the indictment? The experts disagreed among themselves. Where is the definitive proof needed to show that the accused faked the ossuary?" Judge Farkash asked prosecutor Damti. "You need to ask yourselves those questions very seriously, and if necessary consult with your superiors in the public prosecutor's office."

[...]

Read it all. Whatever happens will have repercussions in the field for years to come.

Recent background here and here.

MORE ON THE KHIRBET QEIYAFA INSCRIPTION:

Find of Ancient City Could Alter Notions of Biblical David

By ETHAN BRONNER (NYT)
Published: October 29, 2008

KHIRBET QEIYAFA, Israel — Overlooking the verdant Valley of Elah, where the Bible says David toppled Goliath, archaeologists are unearthing a 3,000-year-old fortified city that could reshape views of the period when David ruled over the Israelites. Five lines on pottery uncovered here appear to be the oldest Hebrew text ever found and are likely to have a major impact on knowledge about the history of literacy and alphabet development.

[...]

What he has found so far has impressed many. Two burned olive pits found at the site have been tested for carbon-14 at Oxford University and were found to date from between 1050 and 970 B.C., exactly when most chronologies place David as king. Two more pits are still to be tested.

A specialist in ancient Semitic languages at Hebrew University, Haggai Misgav, says the writing, on pottery using charcoal and animal fat for ink, is in so-called proto-Canaanite script and appears to be a letter or document in Hebrew, suggesting that literacy may have been more widespread than is generally assumed. That could play a role in the larger dispute over the Bible, since if more writing turns up it suggests a means by which events could have been recorded and passed down several centuries before the Bible was likely to have been written.

[...]

Still, how this new site relates to King David and the Israelites is far from clear. Mr. Garfinkel suggests that the Hebrew writing and location — a fortified settlement a two-day walk from Jerusalem — add weight to the idea that his capital was sufficiently important to require such a forward position, especially because it was between the huge Philistine city of Gath and Jerusalem.
Skip to next paragraph
The New York Times

The city at Khirbet Qeiyafa is some 3,000 years old.

“The fortification required 200,000 tons of stone and probably 10 years to build,” he said as he walked around the site one recent morning. “There were 500 people inside. This was the main road to Jerusalem, the key strategic site to protect the kingdom of Jerusalem. If they built a fortification here, it was a real kingdom, pointing to urban cities and a centralized authority in Judah in the 10th century B.C.”

[...]

Inevitably, the discoveries have immediately been clouded by the debate over Bible verification. Whatever relevance the discoveries may have to that, both the site and the inscription are quite important for shedding light on a period that is still very imperfectly understood.

An article from GMANews has a little discussion of the inscription:

The shard is now kept in a university safe while philologists translate it, a task expected to take months. But several words have already been tentatively identified, including ones meaning "judge," ''slave" and "king."

The Israelites were not the only ones using proto-Canaanite characters, and other scholars suggest it is difficult — perhaps impossible — to conclude the text is Hebrew and not a related tongue spoken in the area at the time. Garfinkel bases his identification on a three-letter verb from the inscription meaning "to do," a word he said existed only in Hebrew.

"That leads us to believe that this is Hebrew, and that this is the oldest Hebrew inscription that has been found," he said.

Other prominent Biblical archaeologists warned against jumping to conclusions.

Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said the inscription was "very important," as it is the longest proto-Canaanite text ever found. But he suggested that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far.

"It's proto-Canaanite," he said. "The differentiation between the scripts, and between the languages themselves in that period, remains unclear."

This is the first time I've seen any information on the contents. Watch this space.

Background here.

MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE "PERUGIA GENIZA" are now available in an online exhibition:

The Fragments of Hebrew Manuscripts discovered in the binding of books
in the Biblioteca del Dottorato of the University of Perugia


With the recent discovery of Hebrew parchments removed from mediaeval codices and reused to cover printed books, Perugia is added to the list of centres where the phenomenon described as the "Italian Genizah" is documented, by analogy with a true Genizah, or store room where Jews since time immemorial placed sacred texts in order to avoid desecration. Today thanks to the discoveries made by Dr Gianfranco Cialini, we may now speak of the "Perugia Genizah".
It is already more than twenty-five years since the late Giuseppe Baruch Sermoneta in 1981 launched the Hebrew Fragments in Italy Project or the Italian "Genizah" Project. By a happy intuition he anticipated the systematic survey of re-used Hebrew manuscripts which was later coordinated with other projects concerned with non-Hebrew manuscripts discovered in Italy. The survey of the disiecta membra of Hebrew codices is not yet complete, but has so far brought to light around 10,000 fragments of Hebrew manuscript books, for the most part whole pages or double pages as well as smaller fragments.
Discovering these remains means giving new life, so to speak, to manuscripts that had been "dead" for four or five centuries. It involves entering into the history of the Hebrew manuscript book, following its journeys, and examining the methods and forms of its conservation, as well as its ritual destruction by the Jews in what may be described at its "death" and "burial" in a Genizah, or its destruction in the fires lit by the Church in the sad history of 2000 years of persecution - or in this case in its recycling.

[...]

Via the SOTS list.

A similar project, involving Hebrew manuscript fragments recovered from book bindings in the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria in Modena, Italy, is noted here. It is not clear to me whether the projects are connected.

APOCRYPHA WATCH -- a Judith-fest in Kansas City:

Virginia Blanton teaches an Anglo-Saxon version of the story, in which Judith is a Christian, to her English students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Blanton notes that Judith appears in paintings variously from a “robust maid horrified by what she must do” to “a shameless slut.”

Linda E. Mitchell, professor of history and women’s and gender studies at UMKC, notes that Judith was “an iconic figure of independence and dissent” in the Renaissance, so the paintings were “political statements as much as aesthetic ones.”

The Friends of Chamber Music brings a dramatic staging of a Croatian version of the story with musical idioms from medieval Dalmatia on Nov. 8 at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, 415 W. 13th St.

Amity Bryson, chairwoman of the music department and director of women’s studies at Avila University, says the composer, Katarina Livljaniæ, draws materials from the earlier musical period “dominated by male composers,” but the feminine experience “adds a unique perspective” to this 21st-century composition.

These three scholars have lots to say about Judith’s morality and gender roles. They will speak at 6:30 p.m. in Founders’ Hall before the 8 p.m. performance in the sanctuary. For more information visit www.chambermusic.org.

And more on this Croation version here.

A LATE ANTIQUE STUDIES POSITION IN BUDAPEST:

Assistant Professor of Late Antique Studies

Central European University (CEU) invites applications for a full-time faculty position in Late Antique Stud-ies in the Department of Medieval Studies beginning September 2009 or as soon as possible thereafter, at the rank of Assistant Professor. Candidates who can demonstrate a focus in research and/or teaching on the east-ern Mediterranean in late antiquity will be preferred. Appointment will be made for an initial period of four years, and is renewable.

About CEU
CEU is an English-speaking, research-intensive postgraduate university located in Budapest, Hungary, char-tered in the U.S. and accredited both in the U.S. and in Hungary. Its primary mission is to contribute to the development of open societies in the post-Communist and the developing countries by promoting academic excellence, critical thought and cutting-edge research. The university enrolls each year around 1,000 students from over eighty countries. The academic staff consists of around a hundred faculty from over thirty coun-tries.

About the Department of Medieval Studies
The Department of Medieval Studies, founded in 1992, is part of CEU’s School of Historical and Interdisci-plinary Studies. It cooperates closely with CEU’s Department of History and currently offers one-year and two-year MA programs, the latter jointly with the Department of History, and an independent PhD program in Interdisciplinary Medieval, Byzantine and Late Antique Studies. The annual intake of students amounts to some twenty to twenty-five students in the MA programs and between six to eight in the doctoral program, usually representing the whole thematic range of interdisciplinary Medieval Studies as cultivated by the De-partment. The Department has a permanent faculty of eighteen including postholders in the related fields of Late Antique Studies (Latin), Eastern Christian Studies, Late Antique and Medieval Philosophy and Theol-ogy, Islamic Studies, and Byzantine Studies. It puts great emphasis on team-teaching, joint seminars and close thesis-supervision.

Job description
The successful candidate will carry out high-quality research in the field of Late Antique Studies, including the development of grant proposals and the implementation of projects. Research time is in principle 35 % of the full-time position.

S/he is expected

to provide broad and specialized classes for both the MA and PhD programs on late antique history and culture. These classes should include a survey class on late antique history, with a focus on the eastern half of the Roman Empire, from c.285 to c.700;
to help develop and administer, and to contribute to the teaching of the envisaged specialisation in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies (LABS);
to participate in the activities of CEU’s Center for Hellenic Traditions (CHT), founded in 2004, of which the future postholder will be a Fellow. The CHT promotes Hellenic, Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at CEU, in the region and beyond.
Additional responsibilities will include the provision of supervision to MA and PhD students with a research interest in late antiquity and participation in the MA and PhD Seminars regularly convened at the Department. A full-time teaching load at CEU currently consists of twelve credits per academic year, one credit being twelve times fifty minutes of teaching.

Requirements
Applicants must have the PhD by the beginning of the appointment in September 2009 and show promise of a distinguished career as a scholar and teacher. The successful candidate will have an active research agenda in late antique history and culture and the ability to teach as specified above.

Knowledge of both Greek and Latin is essential. Knowledge of additional source languages, such as Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian or Georgian, will be an advantage, as will be the ability to contribute to CEU’s existing specialisation in Religious Studies (RSP) and substantial international connections in the field of Late Antique Studies. Fluency in English is a requirement.

Send letter of application including an outline of future research, curriculum vitae, a writing sample of ap-proximately 50 pages, and names and addresses of three referees to to the Rector and President of Central European University, c/o Ms Judit Pallos, Late Antique Studies Search Committee, Human Resources Office, Central European University, Nador u. 9, H–1051 Budapest, fax +36 (1) 235-6135, e-mail: advert@ceu.hu. If the writing sample is a section of a larger book manuscript or dissertation, please include an abstract and table of contents or a statement of how the writing sample fits in with the larger project. Po-tential applicants who wish to enquire informally about the position are encouraged to contact the Head of the Department of Medieval Studies, Professor Gyorgy Gereby (gerebygy@ceu.hu). For full consideration applications must be received by December 1, 2008.

CEU is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive community.

From Istvan Perczel on the Hugoye list.

KING SOLOMON'S MINES? Well maybe. But not diamond mines, alas. And not in Africa.

Jordan copper mines from biblical times could be King Solomon’s

Mark Henderson, Science Editor (The London Times)

An ancient copper works in Jordan may have been the location of the fabled King Solomon’s mines, new archaeological investigations suggest.

The dig at Khirbat al-Nahas, once a thriving copper production centre in the Faynan district, about 30 miles (50km) south of the Dead Sea, has found evidence that it dates back to the 10th century BC, making it at least two centuries older than was thought. The new date means that the mine was almost certainly active during the time of the biblical Jewish kings David and Solomon.

[...]

Any connection with Solomon or even the Kingdom of Israel, is entirely inferential and not based on any evidence from the excavation apart from the date:

Date seeds and sticks of tamarisk and other woods used for charcoal for smelting have produced dates in the 9th and 10th centuries BC, which are consistent with the likely dates of the reigns of David and Solomon, his son. Details of the research are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

What remains less certain for now is whether the Khirbat al-Nahas mine was actually controlled by the kingdom of Israel at this time. It lies in a region associated with the biblical kingdom of Edom, which was an enemy of ancient Israel.

Even if the mine was not controlled by the Jewish kings, the fresh date is important to biblical scholarship. It indicates firmly that the kingdom of Edom was sufficiently organised to have been a rival to Israel, a point that has been disputed by some historians.

Dr Levy said: “Now, with data from the first large-scale stratified and systematic excavation of a site in the southern Levant to focus specifically on the role of metallurgy in Edom, we have evidence that complex societies were indeed active in the 10th and 9th centuries BC and that brings us back to the debate about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible narratives related to this period.”

UPDATE: This is generating a lot of press. For some commentary and a little reining in of the excitement see the article "Return of the Kings?" in Science News. Excerpt:

Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University disagrees. “I see no connection between Nahas and the biblical material on Solomon,” he says.

Scholars have long argued about whether Edom was organized as a kingdom early enough to have threatened the Israelites. During the 1930s, archaeologist Nelson Glueck surveyed southern Jordan and said that he had discovered King Solomon’s mines in the northern part of biblical Edom. His claim, and the Bible’s assertion that the kingdom of David and Solomon existed 3,000 years ago, came under attack in the 1980s. British excavations of Edom’s highlands in the 1970s and 1980s suggested that Iron Age copper production did not begin there until around 2,700 years ago, fueling skepticism.

Finkelstein and others now hold that much of the Old Testament was passed on orally until put in writing between the eighth and fifth centuries B.C., with earlier events being either invented or distorted for political purposes by the document’s writers.

Since 2001, many researchers have acknowledged that nomadic groups inhabited the Khirbat en-Nahas area and probably made copper around 3,000 years ago, remarks archaeologist Piotr Bienkowski of the University of Manchester, England. “I still see no evidence for settlement or buildings there prior to the very end of the 10th century B.C. or beginning of the ninth century B.C.,” he says.

Both Bienkowski and Finkelstein assert that the site was reused seasonally many times, leaving behind a complex mix of industrial debris and other material that is difficult to separate into distinct layers that form a timeline.

It sounds like an important and interesting discovery and it seems a pity that the tired issue of Bible verification is overshadowing it.

PSCO MEETING AT SBL! Annette Reed e-mails on the PSCO list:

Dear friends and colleagues,

For those of you planning to attend the (all too quickly impending) SBL Annual Meeting in Boston this year -- a quick note to let you know that we are indeed holding a special session of PSCO!

The session is scheduled for 7:00 pm on Friday, November 21st in the Fairfax room of the Hilton Back Bay Hotel. All are welcome to attend!

See below on our theme for this year. More details coming soon on the speakers and topic for the SBL session (and the schedule for the rest of year too)! In addition, if anyone is interested in meeting for a quick dinner beforehand, please email me and let me know, so we can begin arranging this as well! [Annette can be reached at reedanne-at-sas-dot-upenn-dot-edu -- JRD]

Best wishes -- and more soon!

Annette

==================

"Food, Self, and Community:
Tradition and Transformation in Jewish and Christian Eating"

Co-Chairs: Moriah Hazani and Virginia Wayland (University of Pennsylvania)

Food is often a significant focus for the maintenance of group identities, cohesion of communities, and expression of cultural ideals and assumptions. Choices such as what one does (and does not) eat and with whom one shares meals can thus tell us much about individual and groups - as do choices to abstain from eating practices common in a society at large. Practices such as feasting, fasting, and food-related charity are frequently central to the expression of piety, community, and identity. Ritual meals, moreover, can serve as a nexus for the memorialization of the cherished past and the preservation of traditions about it. In addition, eating practices can function as a powerful tool for social differentiation, establishing and enacting the boundaries between various groups within an otherwise shared culture.

This year's PSCO will explore our evidence for early Jewish and Christian eating practices in their shifting Hellenistic and Roman cultural contexts. In keeping with the focus on "Change" in this year's Penn Humanities Forum, our discussions will center on the dynamic interplay between tradition and transformation. We will ask, on the one hand, how the encounter with "pagan" religions and philosophies may have shaped early Jewish and Christian interpretations of biblical dietary laws, attitudes towards animal sacrifice and meat-eating, and practices related to feasting and fasting. On the other hand, we will consider how the eating practices of Jews and Christians alike were transformed in the wake of the destruction of the Second Temple and the cessation of Jewish (and later "pagan") animal sacrifice. As such, we hope that our discussions throughout the 2008-2009 academic year will also resonate in interesting ways with the Department of Classical Studies' interdisciplinary conference on "Meat: Killing, Consuming and Commodifying Animals" in May 2009.

MORE DEAD SEA SCROLLS IMAGING in Boston:

Dr. Gregory Bearman, retired Principal Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and current president of Snapshot Spectra in Pasadena, CA, travelled to the Israel Museum in August with one of CRi's Nuance(TM) multispectral imaging systems to take near-infrared pictures of the scrolls. The spectral data will be the key to a new conservation program to monitor the scrolls for changes. While some changes can be detected visually, the spectral data will quantify them and provide early warning before they are visible to the human eye.

CRi has developed sophisticated biomedical imaging systems that use wavelength-based information to reveal unseen details in specimens. These systems are used to assist with research in disease diagnosis and therapy development. Now, the system has been used to uncover original writing hidden on the discolored parchment and papyrus of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

"Today, with the recent development of advanced biomedical imaging technology, we have access to much more sophisticated imaging algorithms and easier-to-use digital instruments such as CRi's Nuance system," points out Bearman. "CRi's core technology and integrated imaging solutions are among the best in the business."

Indeed, now that there are digital images of the Dead Sea Scrolls available in conventional color and as multispectral image data, Bearman's goal is to make the entire collection available to everyone via the Internet over the next one-to-two years.

Via the Agade list etc.

I'm extremely busy this week and blogging will not be a high priority.

AN OBITUARY FOR AVRAHAM BIRAN in the Los Angeles Times:

Avraham Biran, Israeli archaeologist who found House of David inscription, dies at 98
Times Staff Reports
October 26, 2008

Avraham Brian, an Israeli archaeologist whose three-decade dig at the ancient city of Dan in northern Israel yielded historical treasures including a fragment of a stone monument that provided the first known reference outside the Bible to the royal House of David, died Sept. 16 in Jerusalem, the Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem announced. He was 98.

[...]

Background here.