The DNA of King David: What Archaeologists Actually Found Beneath the City of David

For most of the 20th century, serious scholars argued King David may never have existed. Then a broken piece of black basalt came out of the ground in northern Israel — and everything changed.

In this episode, Professor Julian Ng traces the full arc of one of archaeology's most dramatic reversals: from a century of damning silence in the ancient record, to the moment David's dynasty appeared — carved not by his admirers, but by a foreign king boasting about defeating him. We examine the Tel Dan Stele in detail: what it actually proves, what it cannot tell us, and why that distinction matters more than most documentaries admit.