King Hezekiah's Seal Impression Found in the Ophel Excavations, Jerusalem

many of the stories of the bible are about the people of israel and judah and their kings the modern mind rarely reading these accounts easily assumes that the bible is merely a religious text that its purpose is to influence pious behavior not to establish historical fact but every now and again the dust of jerusalem stirs those who dig down to the past unearth one layer after another and as they do the events and people of the bible spring to life a new discovery has emerged from the soil of jerusalem and it resurrects the history of one of the most important kings in judah after him was none like him among all the kings of judah the bible says nor any that were before him you can find the name of this particular king in the books of kings chronicles and isaiah and also on this tiny clay seal impression known as a bulla it says belonging to hezekiah son of ahaz king of judah [Music] dr a lot mazar and her team discovered this extraordinary artifact during a recent phase of the hebrew university of jerusalem ofel excavations in archaeological excavations we conducted the offal area we found a most unique item that is the private seal impression of king khazakaya this is the first time that such an item is found ever in archaeological excavations it is is so tiny it's just one centimeter and it was found during the wet shifting it's a system that make it possible before such an item to be revealed otherwise it's so easily get lost and we can see very easily the name of king kazakhaya the symbol that he chose to put on his seal impression wins the sandisk with wings and symbol of life on both sides of the wings and of course this is a seal private sale of the king that most likely held by the king and by nobody else and we found it we found it in a royal quarter that means that we get as close as possible tangible as ever to king kazakai himself of course one of the most important figures in the bible king hazakaya known from assyrian documents of course he needs well known from the bible itself and now we get to touch him as close as we can get by the archaeological evidence that was found in the excavations themselves conducted for many years at the awful site archaeological digs on the ofel have occurred on and off since the middle of the 19th century but only in recent years have royal structures and royal artifacts been uncovered in jerusalem that closely correlate to the biblical descriptions found in the books of kings and chronicles [Music] i'm walking into the royal building that we revealed back in 1986 and prepared for the public after our excavations in 2009 you can see that this building is beautifully preserved it was built at the time of king solomon and used until the end of the first temple period meaning destroyed by by the babylonians at 586 bce we found a destruction layer and all these jars that you can see here including an ancient hebrew inscription on one of the jars which indicate that they were used by the official who is in charge of the bakery at the royal house from this building all the bullet and garbage they were throwing from the windows of the second floor and all these garbage we found it as the it was dumped from on to the other side of the building that's where we found many bulai among which are our bula [Music] so when the material come back from sifting we we make a list of all the names that we have in the boolean and one of the was this one we read in the initial reading and the there was a more letter that we didn't understood but we left it for later so after some years when we concluded the first volume of the publication of the awful excavation we start again and we saw that there is a dot between the letters of the name so it's not the name of it's the word melech and yehu and the meaning is yehuda and then we we come back to the letters that had missed and we understood that there was the name of his kia's father ahaz so in the seal that they pressed this bulla there was the letters so this is a royal bula [Music] fourteen generations after king david hezekiah ascended to the davidic throne in jerusalem the northern kingdom israel had just been conquered in the southern kingdom young king hezekiah started his reign by purging judah of pagan religious customs later on the bible says hezekiah rebelled against the king of assyria and served him not the assyrian king sennacherib came against judah and conquered many of its cities this is recounted in second kings 18 and isaiah 36 it's also recorded on the annals of sennacherib regarding sennacherib's invasion of judah one prism on display at the british museum says as for hezekiah the judahite who did not submit to my yoke 46 of his strong walled cities i besieged and took them hezekiah himself like a caged bird i shut up in jerusalem his royal city sennacherib considered the takeover of one judean city lakish to be so important that he had the conquest portrayed on large wall reliefs at his palace in nineveh today many of these well-preserved reliefs are also on display at the british museum after lakish sennacherib's plan was to lay siege against jerusalem anticipating the attack hezekiah famously cut a 1700 foot underground tunnel to deliver fresh spring water into the city today this conduit is one of jerusalem's most popular tourist attractions it's an engineering marvel that is referred to in both the books of kings and chronicles and it was carved through bedrock to protect against an assyrian siege that did not succeed history and archaeology correspond with the bible there is no destruction layer laid down by assyrian siege weapons there are no reliefs of a jerusalem conquest along the palace walls in nineveh the siege against jerusalem failed the assyrian army withdrew and its king sennacherib was later murdered by one of his sons hezekiah and his kingdom lived on rarely do science and the bible converge as dramatically and as tangibly as with the life and work of king hezekiah of judah dr elote mazar's most recent discovery is barely the size of your fingertip but it contains a message of enormous significance it bears the name of one of the greatest leaders in jerusalem's incomparable history belonging to hezekiah son of ahaz king of judah [Music] the full story and significance of the hezekiah bulla is published in the ofel excavations final report volume 1 published in december 2015 you