On a more serious note...

here's an interesting article I found the other day:


The discovery of King David's palace
By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
August 8th, 2005

Famed Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar of Jerusalem's Hebrew University announced this month the possible discovery of King David's ancient palace in the Israeli capital, angering the Palestinian Arabs, who reject all Jewish historical claims to the city.
Using the Bible as a guide, Mazar identified a large public building dating to the 10th century BC amid excavations in what is now called the village of Silwan outside of Jerusalem's current Old City walls.
Accompanying the building were pottery shards from the time of David and his son, Solomon, and an official Israelite government seal belonging to a figure mentioned in the biblical book of Jeremiah.
The construction of David's palace with materials donated by King Hiram of Tyre is described in the second chapter of II Samuel.
Other scholars expressed skepticism that the building was the palace of the famous warrior-king, but acknowledged that Mazar's find was indeed rare and important, according to The New York Times.
Israeli academia generally follows the example of its international counterpart in dismissing the Word of God as nothing more than a collection of fairy tales and myths.
Some, however, shared Mazar's obvious excitement and faith in the biblical narrative.
“This is a very significant discovery, given that Jerusalem as the capital of the united kingdom is very much unknown," the Times quoted Gabriel Barkay, an archaeologist from Israel's Bar-Ilan University, as saying.
"This is one of the first greetings we have from the Jerusalem of David and Solomon, a period which has played a kind of hide-and-seek with archaeologists for the last century.”
Mazar's Hebrew University colleague and second cousin Professor Amihai Mazar called the discovery “something of a miracle.”
The most pronounced reaction, however, came from those who would like to end Jewish rule in Jerusalem and reclaim the city as an Islamic possession: the Palestinian Arabs.
The Israelis “try to link whatever they find to the biblical narration” in an effort to “to fit historical evidence into a biblical context,” accused Hani Nur el-Din, a “Palestinian” professor of archaeology at Al Quds University.
The Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities called the find “worthless and groundless,” asserting that such excavations were merely an attempt to justify what it called Jewish “colonialism” in Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Arabs reject any historical or biblical connection between the Jews and the Land of Israel.
During peace negotiations over the past decade, PLO leaders publicly denied any link between the Jews and Judaism's most holy site, the Temple Mount, despite overwhelming historical evidence that the retaining walls currently supporting the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock were in fact built by King Herod to support an expanded Jewish temple centuries before the advent of Islam.