David

===Archaeological findings===

[[File:JRSLM 300116 Tel Dan Stele 01.jpg|thumb|left|The [[Tel Dan Stele]]]]
The [[Tel Dan Stele]], discovered in 1993, is an inscribed stone erected by [[Hazael]], a [[Aram-Damascus|king of Damascus]] in the late 9th/early 8th centuries BCE. It commemorates the king's victory over two enemy kings, and contains the phrase {{Lang|oar|𐤁𐤉𐤕𐤃𐤅𐤃}}, {{Lang|oar-Latn|bytdwd}}, which most scholars translate as "House of David".{{sfn|Pioske|2015|p=180}}{{sfn|Lemaire|1994}} Other scholars have challenged this reading,{{Sfn|Pioske|2015|loc=Chapter 4: David's Jerusalem: The Early 10th Century BCE Part I: An Agrarian Community |p=180 | ps =: '…the reading of ''bytdwd'' as "House of David" has been challenged by those unconvinced of the inscription's allusion to an eponymous David or the kingdom of Judah.'}} but it is likely that this is a reference to a dynasty of the [[Kingdom of Judah]] which traced its ancestry to a founder named David.{{sfn|Pioske|2015|p=180}}

Two [[epigrapher]]s, [[André Lemaire]] and [[Émile Puech]], hypothesised in 1994 that the [[Mesha Stele]] from [[Moab]], dating from the 9th century, also contain the words "House of David" at the end of Line 31, although this was considered as less certain than the mention in the Tel Dan inscription.{{sfn|Pioske|2015|p=210, fn. 18}} In May 2019, [[Israel Finkelstein]], [[Nadav Na'aman]], and [[Thomas Römer]] concluded from the new images that the ruler's name contained three consonants and started with a [[bet (letter)|''bet'']], which excludes the reading "House of David" and, in conjunction with the monarch's city of residence "Horonaim" in Moab, makes it likely that the one mentioned is King [[Balak]], a name also known from the [[Hebrew Bible]].{{sfn|Finkelstein|Na'aman|Römer|2019}}<ref name=AAAS/> Later that year, Michael Langlois used high-resolution photographs of both the inscription itself, and the 19th-century original [[Squeeze paper|squeeze]] of the then still intact stele to reaffirm Lemaire's view that line 31 contains the phrase "House of David".<ref name= AAAS>{{cite web |title= New reading of the Mesha Stele inscription has major consequences for biblical history | via = American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) |date= 2 May 2019 | publisher = American Friends of Tel Aviv University | type = news release |url= https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-05/afot-nro050219.php |access-date=22 October 2020}}</ref>{{sfn|Langlois|2019}} Replying to Langlois, Na'aman argued that the "House of David" reading is unacceptable because the resulting sentence structure is extremely rare in West Semitic royal inscriptions.{{sfn|Na'aman|2019|p=196}}

[[File:Karnak Tempel 19.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|The Triumphal Relief of [[Shoshenq I]] near the [[Bubastite Portal]] at [[Karnak]], depicting the god [[Amun-Re]] receiving a list of cities and villages conquered by the king in his Near Eastern military campaigns.]]

Besides the two steles, Bible scholar and Egyptologist [[Kenneth Kitchen]] suggests that David's name also appears in a relief of Pharaoh [[Shoshenq I|Shoshenq]], who is usually identified with [[Shishak]] in the Bible.<ref>{{bibleverse|1 Kings|14:25–27}}</ref><ref name= "Phar">{{cite book| url= https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mckenzie-david.html |title=King David: A Biography |chapter= One | last =McKenzie | first = Steven L. |year=2000 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-513273-4 |access-date=2018-06-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180119124308/http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mckenzie-david.html |archive-date= 2018-01-19|url-status=live}}</ref> The relief claims that Shoshenq raided places in [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]] in 925 BCE, and Kitchen interprets one place as "Heights of David", which was in Southern Judah and the [[Negev]] where the Bible says David took refuge from Saul. The relief is damaged and interpretation is uncertain.<ref name= "Phar"/>