JERUSALEM — The Israeli archaeologist Yuval Gadot is not a mushy guy. But in October, when he pulled a 2,600-year-old seal impression out of the ground in the Givati Parking Lot excavation in the City of David, he was “very emotional.”

Dr. Gadot says it took him and his fellow archaeologist, Dr. Yiftach Shalev of the Israel Antiquities Authority, only a few minutes to read the ancient Hebrew on the clay bulla, which dates to the middle of the seventh or beginning of the sixth century B.C., judging by the style of writing on it and the pottery found next to it. It reads: “l’Natan-Melech Eved haMelech,” or “to Natan-Melech, the king’s servant.” Natan-Melech is a name that appears only once in the Bible, in the Second Book of Kings.

“When you find something like this it’s very exciting,” he told me. “It gives flesh and bones to things that are very distant stories.”

Of course, it is impossible to say with certainty that the Natan-Melech of the Bible is the Natan-Melech of the clay. But “it is impossible to ignore some of the details that link them together,” including the style of writing and the dating of the pottery found next to it, which date to the First Temple period, when the biblical character would have lived, said Anat Mendel Geberovich of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Center for the Study of Ancient Jerusalem.