Royal seal of King Hezekiah found near southern part of the wall surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City

It seems that Muslims are not pleased with the exhumations archaeologists made of an ancient discovery which is the first of its kind according to researchers. Much to the dismay of the Arab settlers, it proves Israel’s existence long before Palestine was even a thought.

King Hezekiah ruled around 700 BCE and was described in the Bible as a daring monarch who was dedicated to eliminating idolatry in his kingdom.

2 Kings 18:5 (CPDV): 5 He hoped in the Lord, the God of Israel. And after him, there was no one similar to him, among all the kings of Judah, nor even among any of those who were before him.

A clay imprint or Royal seal of King Hezekiah from the biblical King Hezekiah

The archaeologists found a detailed clay seal, known as a bulla, which they consider to be the the royal seal of King Hezekiah. It was uncovered near the southern part of the wall surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City. It was mistakenly buried in a refuse dump around the time of the Israelite king. After five years of research, a team member was able to decipher the text.

“This is the first time that a seal impression of an Israelite or Judean king has ever come to light in a scientific archaeological excavation,”

 

The dots help separate the words: “Belonging to Hezekiah (son of) Ahaz king of Judah.”

“It’s always a question, what are the real facts behind the biblical stories,”

Mazar said.

“Here we have a chance to get as close as possible to the person himself, to the king himself.”

Not only is there the biblical significance, because the clay finding again proofs that an Israelite king ruled the area known as Israel today long before anyone mildly considered a Palestinian lived in the area.

The word “Palestine” is believed by many to be a name derived from the Egyptian and Hebrew term for “migrants” or “wanderers,” and comes from “Philistia”, the name given by Greek writers to the land of the Philistines, who in the 12th century bce occupied a small pocket of land on the southern coast, between modern Tel Aviv–Yafo and Gaza. The biblical tribe of the Philistines, who were barbaric nomads determined to conquer the Israelites. However, as the Bible describes, the Philistines’ giant fighter, Goliath, was defeated by a shepherd named David, who went on to become the king of Israel in the 10th century bce

A 1759 map entitled The Holy Land, or Palestine, showing not only the Ancient Kingdoms of Judah and Israel in which the 12 Tribes have been distinguished, but also their placement in different periods as indicated in the Holy Scriptures by Tobias Conrad Lotter, Geographer. Augsburg, Germany

The term Palestine has been associated variously and sometimes controversially with this small region, which some have asserted also includes Jordan. Both the geographic area designated by the name and the political status of it have changed over the course of some three millennia. The region (or at least a part of it) is also known as the Holy Land and is held sacred among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Since the 20th century it has been the object of conflicting claims of Jewish and Arab national movements, and the conflict has led to prolonged violence and, in several instances, open warfare. {Encyclopaedia Britannica}

The Palestinians should come to recognise that the land they also consider to be from Allah, the Most High God of gods, was designated by Him to His People, the Israelites.

This incredible seal precedes even the earliest mention of an official derivative of “Palestine,” in which the Greek historian Herodotus called the area “Palaistinē” in the 5th century bce., 200 years after King Hezekiah.

Only in the 2nd century CE was the name revived by the Romans in “Syria Palaestina,” designating the southern portion of the province of Syria, and made its way thence into Arabic, where it has been used to describe the region at least since the early Islamic era.

After Roman times the name had no official status until after World War I and the end of rule by the Ottoman Empire, when it was adopted for one of the regions mandated to Great Britain; in addition to an area roughly comprising present-day Israel and the West Bank, the mandate included the territory east of the Jordan River now constituting the Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan, which Britain placed under an administration separate from that of Palestine immediately after receiving the mandate for the territory. {Encyclopaedia Britannica}

In 636 the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim Arab forces of the Rashidun Caliphate fought near the Yarmouk River, along what today are the borders of Syria–Jordan and Syria–Palestine, east of the Sea of Galilee. At that time they also spoke already of a Levant for the Muslim Arab forces who managed to give the Muslims an incredible victory, which ended Byzantine rule in Syria.
The Battle of Yarmouk is regarded as one of the most decisive battles in military history and it marked the first great wave of Islamic conquests after the death of Muhammad, heralding the rapid advance of Islam into the then Christian Levant. {Walton 2003, p. 30; Nicolle 1994, p. 6}

Byzantine Armenia fell to the Muslims in 638–39, after which Heraclius created a buffer zone in central Anatolia by ordering all the forts east of Tarsus to be evacuated.

Following his crowning in Jerusalem Muawiyah I (Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān) became the political-religious head of Islam or Caliph of the Islamic empire.

During his 20-year governorship of Syria and during the war against ʿAlī, Muʿāwiyah had succeeded in recruiting and training a large Arab tribal army that was remarkably loyal to him. It was therefore natural that he should base his caliphate in Syria, with Damascus as the new capital of Islam. {Encyclopaedia Britannica}

It had become apparent during the reigns of the first caliphs that tribal tradition and the practices of Muhammad in Medina were inadequate resources for administering a vast empire. To solve this problem, Muʿāwiyah resorted to a solution that lay at hand in Syria—that is, the imitation of administrative procedures that had evolved during centuries of Roman and Byzantine rule there. Although the process by which the borrowing took place is not fully known, it is clear that Muʿāwiyah initiated certain practices that were apparently inspired by the previous tradition. Basically, he aimed at increased organization and centralization of the caliphal government in order to exert control over steadily expanding territories. This he achieved by the establishment of bureaus—dīwāns—in Damascus to conduct the affairs of government efficiently. Early Arabic sources credit two dīwāns in particular to Muʿāwiyah: the dīwān al-khatam, or chancellery, and the barīd, or postal service, both of which were obviously intended to improve communications within the empire. Prominent positions within the nascent bureaucracy were held by Christians, some of whom belonged to families that had served in Byzantine governments. The employment of Christians was part of a broader policy of religious tolerance that was necessitated by the presence of large Christian populations in the conquered provinces, especially in Syria itself. {Encyclopaedia Britannica}

With this discovery of the ancient seal of an Israelite king non religious people can come to see once more how everything which is written in the Bible can be confirmed by secular human findings. Several people do know that the Bible is not only the world’s most influential book, but a measure by which they can accurately identify history and truth. Perhaps if more people read it, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.

 

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