Three thousand years ago, King David captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites. Archaeologists are currently excavating what is thought to have been his palace. The scale is rather small, though some cut stones form an impressive buttress down a steep incline into the valley below. The palace is sited in what has always been a rocky and unpromising landscape far inland from the Mediterranean and with a hinterland of desert and the Dead Sea. Everything found here and in other digs confirms the account in the Bible of the Jews’ emerging from tribal warfare to take their place on the local …