[1][2] The stele was discovered in 1993 in Tel-Dan by Gila Cook, a member of an archaeological team led by Avraham Biran.

The likely candidate for having erected the stele, according to the Hebrew Bible, is Hazael, king of Aram-Damascus, whose language would have been Old Aramaic.

[4]Fragment A of the stele was discovered in July 1993 by Gila Cook of Avraham Biran's team who was studying Tel Dan in northern Israel.

[5] The Tel Dan stele consists of several fragments making up part of a triumphal inscription in Old Aramaic, left most probably by Hazael of Aram-Damascus,[7] an important regional figure in the late 9th century BCE.

A minority of scholars has disputed the reference to David, due to the lack of a word divider between byt and dwd, and other translations have been proposed.

[10][11][12] The Tel Dan inscription generated considerable debate and a flurry of articles, debating its age, authorship, and authenticity;[13] however, the stele is generally accepted by scholars as genuine and a reference to the house of David.

In the second half of the 9th century BCE (the most widely accepted date for the stele), the kingdom of Aram-Damascus, under its ruler Hazael, was a major power in the Levant.

There is less agreement over the fit between A and the combined B1/B2: Biran and Naveh placed B1/B2 to the left of A (the photograph at the top of this article).

[24] However, some scholars (mainly associated with the Copenhagen school) – Niels Peter Lemche, Thomas L. Thompson, and F. H. Cryer – have proposed still later datings.

[27] While the original translators proposed that line 6 of the inscription refers to the slaying of "seventy kings", later epigraphers have offered alternative readings.

Nadav Na'aman proposed that the line should be read as Hazael slew "mighty kings".

[29][30] Matthew Suriano has defended the "seventy" reading, arguing that it is a symbolic trope in ancient near eastern military language, representing the defeat of all other claimants to power.

[31] Since 1993–1994, when the first fragment was discovered and published, the Tel Dan stele has been the object of great interest and debate among epigraphers and biblical scholars.

[32] Dissenting scholars note that word dividers are employed elsewhere throughout the inscription, and one would expect to find one between byt and dwd in bytdwd too if the intended reading was "House of David".

Lehmann and M. Reichel proposes interpreting the phrase as a reference to the name or epithet of a deity.

[40] Yosef Garfinkel has been vocally critical of alternate translations, characterizing them as "suggestions that now seem ridiculous: The Hebrew bytdwd should be read not as the House of David, but as a place named betdwd, in parallel to the well-known place-name Ashdod.

[42][further explanation needed] Garfinkel argues that, combined with archaeological evidence unearthed at Khirbet Qeiyafa, the inscription's reference to a "king of the house of David" constitutes primary evidence that David was a historical figure and the founder of a centralized Iron Age II dynasty.