When David conquered the Jebusite city around 1000 b.c. he took up residence in the stronghold—the Jebusite fortress at the north end of the city. According to 2 Samuel 5:9, he then began to build up the area around Millo and inward. The New International Version says David “built up the area around it, from the supporting terraces inward.” So David set out to enlarge the city limits—first concentrating on a royal palace. The Bible says King David’s palace was partially built by workers sent to him by the Phoenician king of Tyre as a gesture of friendship (verse 11). “And David went on, and grew great, and the Lord God of hosts was with him” (verse 10).Past PaleoJudaica posts on her large stone structure in the City of David include this, this, and this. This is an interesting story and she is right to be pleased that she found a large tenth-century building where she thought there would be one. At the same time, this is a long way from our being able to assign the building to King David. We would need first to have full published reports of all the tenth century material excavated in the building, then to place the data fully into the context of what we know about the tenth century from elsewhere. And even then, quite likely the evidence would be inconclusive. Unless, that is, we actually find epigraphic data that ties the palace directly to David. A seal of a court official that mentions him or a lapidary royal inscription on one of the walls of the building would do nicely. But I'm not holding my breath.
Near the end of David’s palace construction, the Philistines attacked. And since the new palace may not have been reinforced strongly enough to withstand the Philistine assault, verse 17 says David went down to the citadel to barricade himself within the city walls until the conflict ended. This, Dr. Mazar theorized more than 10 years ago, indicates that David’s new palace stood on higher ground than the Jebusite fortress.
She published her theory in Biblical Archaeology Review in January 1997. Under the title, “Excavate King David’s Palace,” on a two-page artist’s rendering of the ancient City of David, Mazar drew an arrow pointing at the north end of the city, underneath the caption “it’s there.” She wrote, “Careful examination of the biblical text combined with sometimes unnoticed results of modern archaeological excavations in Jerusalem enable us, I believe, to locate the site of King David’s palace. Even more exciting, it is in an area that is now available for excavation. If some regard as too speculative the hypothesis I shall put forth in this article, my reply is simply this: Let us put it to the test in the way archaeologists always try to test their theories—by excavation.”
A decade later, excavation did exactly that. In 2005, just under the surface in the northern-most region of the City of David, she found what she calls the Large Stone Structure and labeled it King David’s palace.
On another note, this is pretty cool:
Although she may be the poster child of biblical archaeology today, Dr. Eilat Mazar isn’t the first to hold the Bible in such high esteem.I met the late Professor Mazar at the Ashkelon excavation in the late 1980s and I remember a conversation or two with him which went on very similar lines.
“There is nothing new about reading the Bible to see how much of the reality can be tangible. It is a whole school that started with Robinson and later on in force with Albright, of which my grandfather considered himself to be a follower and a student,” she says.
“My grandfather” is the late professor Dr. Benjamin Mazar, a leading Israeli archaeologist in his own right. He is best known for his massive excavation at the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount, which spanned the late ’60s and the ’70s. He also served as president of the Hebrew University between the years of 1953 and 1961.
[...]
Meanwhile, Dr. Mazar worked in the City of David excavations under the direction of Dr. Yigal Shiloh. Each day after the excavations, as she worked with her grandfather, he would ask her, “What’s new at the excavation?”
“What’s new? We just discussed all the new things yesterday, so what can be so new?” she would reply.
“No, no, no; what’s new?” the professor would ask again.
“He was expecting new and fresh thinking every single day. He really pushed me. On the one hand it was quite distressing, but on the other hand it pushed me to constantly be thinking every time that I am excavating,” Mazar recounts.
