Large Stone Structure

In a 1997 article Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University argued from 2 Samuel 5:17, where David "went down to the stronghold," that his palace had stood at the top of the City of David, above the old Jebusite fortress. When she excavated there from 2005, she uncovered massive walls of a large public building, which she called the Large Stone Structure and dated by pottery to the 10th century, the time of David and Solomon. Together with the Stepped Stone Structure, the great terraced wall on the slope below that Kathleen Kenyon and Yigal Shiloh had partly exposed, she saw it as one royal complex, perhaps the house Hiram of Tyre built for David (2 Samuel 5:11). Nearby she found the bullae of Jehucal son of Shelemiah (2005) and Gedaliah son of Pashhur (2008), officials named in Jeremiah 38.

Israel Finkelstein and others date the walls to several periods, from the 9th century to Hellenistic times, and doubt that they form one building. The structure is central to the debate over whether Jerusalem was a real royal capital in David's time.