King David appears outside the Bible on just one broken stone
The House of David shaped Jewish hopes for a messiah and Christian claims about Jesus, yet evidence for David himself beyond scripture comes down to a single inscription. The Tel Dan Stele, from around 840 BCE, mentions a king of the House of David, and even that king's name survives only as its last syllable.
In the biblical account, David of the tribe of Judah was anointed by the prophet Samuel, ruled Judah alone from Hebron for seven and a half years, and then became king of all the tribes, traditionally around 1010 BCE. His son Solomon succeeded him. After Solomon died, most tribes broke away under Jeroboam to form the northern Kingdom of Israel, leaving only Judah and Benjamin loyal to Solomon's son Rehoboam. From then on the Davidic line ruled only the southern kingdom of Judah, until the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem around 587 BCE and destroyed Solomon's Temple.
Archaeology grows firmer later in the dynasty. The earliest king attested beyond doubt is Uzziah, in the 8th century BCE, named on seals belonging to his servants. After him nearly every king of Judah shows up somewhere: Hezekiah on royal seals and in the annals of the Assyrian king Sennacherib, Manasseh paying tribute to Esarhaddon, and Jeconiah in Babylonian ration lists for royal prisoners. The origins are murkier. Jerusalem seems to have been lightly developed in David's era, and some scholars, following Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, think David and Solomon rest on historical kernels but ruled something far smaller than the Bible's empire. Others point to tenth-century sites such as Khirbet Qeiyafa as signs of a more substantial state.
The line mattered long after the monarchy ended. Babylonian Jews were led by an exilarch, or Head of the Diaspora, chosen from men claiming descent from David in the male line and regarded as a king in waiting; tradition traces the office to Zerubbabel, a Persian-era governor. The Hasmonean kings who later ruled Judea were not counted as Davidic at all. Hillel the Elder, the famous sage, was held to belong to the family, and exilarchs continued to be appointed in Mesopotamia until the 11th century CE.
Belief keeps the line alive. Jewish tradition expects the Messiah to be a king descended from David through his father, while Christianity holds that the line reached Jesus, the Son of David, a claim Judaism does not accept.
Source: Davidic line
