Seal Thought To Have Existed For 2,600 Years Discovered In The City Of David

According to an announcement on Sunday, 31 March 2019, a 2, 600-year-old  seal from the Kingdom of Judah bearing the inscription “to Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King” was recently found in the City of David.

The seal was decripted by Dr. Anat Mendel-Geberovich of the University of Jerusalem and for the Study of Ancient Jerusalem.

In a statement, Mendel-Geberovich said, “Although it is not possible to ascertain with complete certainty that the Nathan-Melech who is mentioned in the Holy Bible was the owner of the stamp, it is impossible to disregard some of the details that connect  them together."

The statement explains that the name Nathan-Melech appears once in the  Hebrew Bible, in II Kings twenty three  verse eleven,
in which he is referred to as an official in the court of King Josiah.

The aglomeracion seal impression, along with other artifacts, were found inside a
 public building that was destroyed during the destruction of the First Temple and was revealed through the archaeological excavation of the Givati parking great deal in the City of David National Park in Jerusalem. The excavation was detected by archeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and Tel Aviv University (TAU).

Prof. Yuval Gadot of TAU and Dr.Yiftah Shalev of the IAA said in a press release,
"The two artifacts bear names written in ancient Hebrew script, which were uncovered in the various excavations that have been conducted in the City of David until today. These artifacts confirmed the highly developed system of administration in the Kingdom of Judah through adding considerable information to our knowledge of the economical status of Jerusalem and its administrative system during the First Temple period, as well as personal information about the king’s closest officials and administrators who lived and worked in the city.”

“The discovery of this public building, on the western slope of the City of David, provides a lot of details about the city’s structure during this period and the size of its administrative area,” they said.

“The destruction of this building in the fire, evidently through the Babylonian conquest of the city the in 586 BCE, strengthens our understanding of the intensity of the devastation in the city.”

Consequently, these artifacts will be presented in the Israel Exploration Journal, the archaeological journal published by the Israel Exploration Society.