André Lemaire

He is Director of Studies at the École pratique des hautes études, where he teaches Hebraic and Aramean philology and epigraphy.

In the 1980s, Lemaire authenticated a small, broken, carved piece of "ivory pomegranate" that dates to the 8th century and would have belonged to the cult objects of Solomon's Temple.

[1] This interpretation was challenged by Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, who stated that the inscription is subsequent to damage that had fragmented the piece.

Following this, a commission of experts from the Israel Museum examined the artifact and concluded that the inscription is a modern forgery, and that the item dates back to the 14th or the 13th century BCE, well before the time of Solomon.

[2] Based on contemporary digital imaging techniques of the Mesha Stele, Lemaire and colleague Jean-Phillipe Delorme argued in 2022 that five key letters found in line 31 of the inscription can accurately be read as btdwd, or “House of David,” offering archaeological evidence of the existence and history of the Kingdom of Judah, its political identity, and the extent of its political hegemony.