Today, you can find Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar at an archaeological dig in East Jerusalem, where several dozen workers quickly move up and down a single, steep set of steps leading into a 20-foot-deep excavation site. In the pit, each person focuses on a tiny area, working side by side in an area no larger than an average living room. Using tiny picks and soft brushes, the archaeologists carefully ease the accumulated soil away, layer by layer, collecting it in buckets which are later sifted, to make sure no artifacts are missed. Then a bucket brigade of workers hauls the buckets out, hand to hand, until they reach a cart at the top of the site which carries the debris away.

This is no ordinary excavation. “We’re almost certain that we’ve found the legendary palace of King David,” says Mazar, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, an academic and research institute in Jerusalem.

Besides being an extraordinary archaeological find, the palace is also solid proof of a significant Jewish presence and history in Jerusalem—a direct reply to the many claims to the contrary. The discovery may also influence political decisions about the future status of Jerusalem. “Today it’s become fashionable to say there was no David, no Solomon, no Temple, no prophets,” notes Mazar. “But suddenly the facts on the ground are speaking, and those outspoken voices are stammering.”

Mazar’s quest to find the palace began with a bureaucratic quagmire. “In Jerusalem, you can’t just dig wherever you want,” she says. “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 my fellow archaeologists discouraged potential donors. They didn’t believe my project had a chance of success.”

In addition, much of King David’s palace had been destroyed. “We know the palace was made from the cedars of Lebanon [I Chronicles 17:1] and that it was built by Hiram, king of Tyre, and his Phoenician carpenters and stone masons [II Samuel 5:11],” Mazar explains. “But when the Babylonians destroyed the city in 586 B.C.E., virtually everything except the stone foundations burned.” But Mazar persisted, and a breakthrough finally came when financier Roger Hertog wrote a check for a half-million dollars, allowing her to begin excavating. “Understand,” she says, “I didn’t just believe the palace was here. I knew it. How? From the Book of Samuel.”  The Tanakh is the only important document from that time period, Mazar notes. “Of course I relied on it. I also used every bit of technical evaluation and research that existed, but I excavated with the Tanakh in one hand. We proved that it is true and accurate.”

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