Hilkiah
Hilkiah was a Kohen at the time of King Josiah.
Biblical account
His name is mentioned in II Kings. He was the High Priest and is known for finding a lost copy of the Book of the Law at the Temple in Jerusalem at the time that King Josiah commanded that Solomon's Temple be refurbished according to 2 Kings 22:8. His preaching may have helped spur Josiah to return Judah to the worship of Yahweh, God of Israel.Hilkiah may have been the same Hilkiah who was the father of Jeremiah of Libnah. As such, he would have lived in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, and was the father of an influential family in the Kingdom of Judah. However, it is possible that Jeremiah was the son of a different man named Hilkiah because this is not mentioned in genealogies recorded in the Book of Chronicles.
Hilkiah is attested in extrabiblical sources by the clay bulla naming a Hilkiah as the father of an Azariah and by the seal reading "Hanan son of Hilkiah the priest."
The Book of the Law
According to an account in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, Hilkiah was High Priest at the Temple in Jerusalem during the reign of King Josiah of Judah and the discoverer of "the Book of the Law" in the Temple in the 18th year of Josiah's reign. Scholars almost universally agree that the book Hilkiah found was the Book of Deuteronomy.Extra-biblical sources
Hilkiah's name is mentioned on a seal ring and a bulla. The first object where his name is mentioned is a seal ring found in 1980. On the seal is a three-line inscription, in reverse letters, as is usual, so that the letters will read properly when impressed in a lump of clay. The script incised in the seal is what scholars call paleo-Hebrew, used by the Israelites before the Babylonian captivity, before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. The inscription reads: " to Hanan, son Hilkiah the priest". It begins with the Hebrew letter lamed, meaning "belonging to", indicating the seal's ownership. Then the name of the seal's owner, the name of his father and the function of the seal's owner.The second object is a bulla found in Jerusalem in 1982. A bulla was used to seal a document. The document's owner took a lump of soft clay; he affixed the clay to the string binding the document and then stamped it with his seal. This bulla was one of the fifty-one bullae discovered during excavations in the eastern slope of Jerusalem in a dated archaeological context. This collection of bullae was found in level 10, dated between Josiah's rule and the destruction of the city by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BC, and more precisely from the highest ground of the building. This level was destroyed by the final burning which baked the bullae and provided a better conservation. On one bulla is a two-line inscription, in paleo-Hebrew script as on the seal. The inscription reads: " to Azaryah, son Hilkiah". The inscription indicates the name of the seal's owner and the name of his father, but not his function.