While excavating the area underneath Jerusalem’s Givati parking lot, in the oldest portion of the city, archaeologists have found two ancient seals, both dating from the 8th century BCE. One, made of agate, bears the stamp of “Ikkar ben Matanyahu”; the second, made of clay, belonged to “Nathan-Melekh, servant of the king.” Amanda Borschel-Dan reports:

Nathan-Melekh is named in 2Kings as an official in the court of King Josiah. The burnt clay impression is the first archaeological evidence of the biblical name. . . . According to [the archaeologist Yiftaḥ] Shalev, while both discoveries are of immense scholarly value as inscriptions, their primary value is their archaeological context. . . .

According to the archaeologist Yuval Gadot of Tel Aviv University, in the 8th century this area of the City of David became the central administrative center of Jerusalem. A newly unearthed two-story public building, constructed with finely cut ashlar stones, illustrates the beginning of a westward move of the administration area in the large, sprawling city. [This structure], said Shalev, is further down the slope of the City of David than where some archaeologists had envisioned a First Temple-period city wall. Through this evidence of a large administrative center, scholars are beginning to understand that [around this time] Jerusalem saw the beginning of the western spread [of its borders] that continued in later eras, including the Persian and Hellenistic periods. . . .

The name Nathan-Melekh appears once in the Bible, in 2Kings 23:11. An official in the court of King Josiah, the biblical Nathan-Melech took part in the implementation of widespread religious reform. . . . While the biblical account uses a different title [translated as “officer”] from the impression on the ancient clay, the title “servant of the king” does often appear in the Bible to describe a high-ranking official close to the king.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.