due to his piety. These kings are also listed in 2 Kings 14-16, together with narrative about their reigns. The kings in Matthew 1:9 The people mentioned in this section of the genealogy are all Kings of Judah. Family tree Archaeology In the mid-1990s a bulla, wide, was found with an inscription: "Belonging to Ahaz (son of) Yehotam, King of Judah." This so-call "King Ahaz's Seal" is regarded to be authentic. The Tiglath-Pileser III annals mentions tributes and payments he received from Ahaz, king of Judah and Menahem, king of Israel. There are extra-biblical sources that specify Hezekiah by name, along with his reign and influence, that "[h]istoriographically, his reign is noteworthy for the convergence of a variety of biblical sources and diverse extrabiblical evidence often bearing on the same events. Significant data concerning Hezekiah appear in the Deuteronomistic History, the Chronicler, Isaiah, Assyrian annals and reliefs, Israelite epigraphy, and, increasingly, stratigraphy". Hezekiah's story is one of the best to cross-reference with the rest of the Mid Eastern world's historical documents. In 2015 in a dig at the Ophel in Jerusalem, Eilat Mazar discovered a royal bulla of Hezekiah, that reads "Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz king of Judah", and dates to between 727 - 698 BC. This is the first seal impression of an Israelite or Judean king to come to light in a scientific archaeological excavation. The impression on this inscription was set in ancient Hebrew script. A lintel inscription, found over the doorway of a tomb, has been ascribed to his secretary, Shebnah (). LMLK stored jars along the border with Assyria "demonstrate careful preparations to counter Sennacherib's likely route of invasion" and show "a notable degree of royal control of towns and cities which would facilitate Hezekiah's destruction of rural sacrificial sites and his centralization of worship in Jerusalem". Evidence suggests they were used throughout his 29-year reign (Grena, 2004, p. 338). There are some Bullae from sealed documents that may have belonged to Hezekiah himself (Grena, 2004, p. 26, Figs. 9 and 10). There are also some that name his servants (ah-vah-deem in Hebrew, ayin-bet-dalet-yod-mem). Archaeological findings like the Hezekiah seal led scholars to surmise that the ancient Judahite kingdom had a highly developed administrative system. The reign of Hezekiah saw a notable increase in the power of the Judean state. At this time Judah was the strongest nation on the Assyrian-Egyptian frontier. There