ith Prime Minister Ehud Olmert nearing indictment, Iran’s daily threats to bury Israel and the lingering bitter aftertaste of the inexcusable “prisoner exchange,” Israel could be wallowing in doom-and-gloom this summer. Instead, there’s been a development so delightful and encouraging it completely wipes out the murk.

The fact that it’s a petite woman, a 40-something widowed mother of four, who turned the world upside-down doesn’t hurt either. I’ve never been a feminist, but this is one time I’m outrageously proud to share a chromosome count with someone who is as gutsy, persistent and smart as this woman.

A King’s Champion
Her name is Eilat Mazar and she’s an archeologist. For a dozen years, she stood almost alone against the entire community of archeologists, insisting that the fabled Palace of King David had actually existed in Biblical times, and that it was, in every sense, a royal palace. She even went so far as to identify the exact place where it had stood, just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, near Dung Gate.

Why is that revolutionary? It’s hardly new; the Bible mentions David’s palace several times.

“From Chronicles, [1 Chronicles 17:1] we know that the palace was made from the cedars of Lebanon, and from the Book of Samuel [2 Samuel 5:11] we know it was built by Hiram, King of Tyre, with his Phoenician carpenters and stone masons,” Mazar said.

What’s astonishing is to hear Mazar citing Biblical sources for her decision to excavate—that just doesn’t happen among today’s sophisticated crowd. Most archeologists regard the Bible as a book of legends, not to be taken seriously. For them, King David – if he existed at all – may, at most, have ruled a rural village. Did he live in a palace? Don’t be silly!

The archeologists had good company. The Arab world and their legions were delighted to agree. According to them, Jews never had any significant connection to Jerusalem at all. Jerusalem is a Muslim holy site, they insist, the place where the Prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven. Any earlier Jewish claim is pure fabrication.

The Bible as Her Guide
So along comes Eilat Mazar. Citing the Bible as her archeological sourcebook, she sought permission to start a dig near the Old City, looking for David’s legendary palace. You can imagine how well that was received.

“In Jerusalem, you can’t just dig wherever you want,” she said. “You need permission and funds, and I couldn’t get either one. No one else believed that digging where I wanted to dig was worthwhile—excavations in the 1960s ended when they unearthed what they believed was a fortress, and beneath that, bedrock. I knew they were wrong, so I didn’t give up. I spent ten years going like a beggar, pleading. But everywhere I turned, my fellow archeologists were discouraging potential donors—they didn’t believe my project had any chance of success.”

A breakthrough finally came in 2005 when New York financier Roger Hertog, vice chairman of Alliance Capital Management, wrote a check for $500,000, seed money in archeological terms, to get her started.

The Bible is the only important document from that time period, Mazar explains.

“Of course I relied on it. I also used every bit of technical evaluation and research that existed, but I excavated with the Bible in one hand and my trowel in the other.”

“Understand,” she says, “I didn’t just believe the palace was here. I knew it. How? From the Book of Samuel.”

“After David was anointed, the Philistines went searching for him,” she said. “Second Samuel 5:17 reads, ‘David heard of it and went down to the stronghold.’ That’s my first clue: If David was living in his palace and he went down to the fortress for better protection, then his palace must have been on a higher point. It had to have been on the north—outside the city walls, not inside.

“Our first big [discoveries were] huge boulders, massive stones. Earlier archeologists ignored them, believing they rested on bedrock. We didn’t accept that. We moved them, and underneath, we found the remains of a gigantic structure—walls 20 feet wide. Now we knew we were unto something.”

Digging, Detractors and Determination
Still, the naysayers persisted.

“That’s just part of the fortress,” they said. “That’s not the palace!”

Mazar kept digging and artifacts began to appear.

“A week after we found those walls, we began finding pottery, amazing pieces that were directly related to the palace. The pottery proved it couldn’t be the fortress—it dated from King David’s time. Now we’ve uncovered the foundations and we’ve learned a great deal about the skill with which the palace was constructed, the high quality of materials. From the richness of some of the artifacts – ivory and imported pottery – we’re virtually certain we’ve found the legendary palace of David.”

There’s nothing quite as sweet as an “I told you so” moment—except that in this case, the value of Mazar’s work goes far beyond personal satisfaction. Mazar’s motivation wasn’t either religious or political, but what’s happening is that she’s revealing facts on the ground – literally – that prove the Jewish claim to Jerusalem.

Today, with funding no longer an issue, dozens of young archeologists work in the deep pits, carefully brushing away 3000 years of accumulated dirt. As they unearth more and more items that once graced the palace of King David, they’re doing something else, too.
They’re proving that David’s City, Jerusalem, has always been the Jewish Holy City, neatly knocking the pins out from under the Muslim claim of no Jewish history in Jerusalem.

And not only that: “We proved that the Bible is true and accurate,” Mazar said, blithely stating a fact that before no other archeologist would ever have admitted.

Next column: What exactly Mazar found—and why it matters.