Northern Kingdom of Israel

The Kingdom of Israel (), or the Kingdom of Samaria, was an Israelite kingdom in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. The kingdom controlled the areas of Samaria, Galilee and parts of Transjordan. Its capital, for the most part, was Samaria (modern Sebastia).

The Hebrew Bible ruled by King David and his son Solomon, the other being the Kingdom of Judah; most historians and archaeologists, however, do not believe in the existence of a United Kingdom as depicted in the Bible.The debate is described in Amihai Mazar, "Archaeology and the Biblical Narrative: The Case of the United Monarchy" (see bibliography), p.29 fn.2: "For conservative approaches defining the United Monarchy as a state “from Dan to Beer Sheba” including “conquered kingdoms” (Ammon, Moab, Edom) and “spheres of influence” in Geshur and Hamath cf. e.g. Ahlström (1993), 455–542; Meyers (1998); Lemaire (1999); Masters (2001); Stager (2003); Rainey (2006), 159–168; Kitchen (1997); Millard (1997; 2008). For a total denial of the historicity of the United Monarchy cf. e.g. Davies (1992), 67–68; others suggested a ‘chiefdom’ comprising a small region around Jerusalem, cf. Knauf (1997), 81–85; Niemann (1997), 252–299 and Finkelstein (1999). For a ‘middle of the road’ approach suggesting a United Monarchy of larger territorial scope though smaller than the biblical description cf.e.g. Miller (1997); Halpern (2001), 229–262; Liverani (2005), 92–101. The latter recently suggested a state comprising the territories of Judah and Ephraim during the time of David, that was subsequently enlarged to include areas of northern Samaria and influence areas in the Galilee and Transjordan. Na’aman (1992; 1996) once accepted the basic biography of David as authentic and later rejected the United Monarchy as a state, cf. id. (2007), 401–402". It can be said with certainty that the regions of Samaria and Galilee underwent a period of urbanization during the 10th century BCE, and that its towns were united as a kingdom ruled by the Omride dynasty in the 9th century BCE, whose political center was the city of Samaria, where a lavish palace existed. A separate Israelite kingdom, named Kingdom of Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, existed to its south.

The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720 BCE. The records of Sargon II of Assyria indicate that he deported 27,290 Israelites – around one fifth of the population of the Kingdom of Israel – to Mesopotamia; this deportation became the basis for the modern Jewish idea of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Some Israelites migrated to the southern kingdom of Judah, while those Israelites that remained in Samaria, concentrated mainly around Mount Gerizim, came to be known as Samaritans. Foreign groups were also settled by the Assyrians in the territories of the conquered kingdom.

History

The existence of an Israelite state in the north is documented in 9th century inscriptions. The earliest mention is from the Kurkh stela of c.853 BCE, when Shalmaneser III mentions "Ahab the Israelite", plus the denominative for "land", and his ten thousand troops. This kingdom will have included parts of the lowlands (the Shephelah), the Jezreel plain, lower Galilee and parts of the Transjordan. Ahab's forces were part of an anti-Assyrian coalition, implying that the kingdom was ruled by an urban elite, possessed a royal and state cult with large urban temples, and had scribes, mercenaries, and an administrative apparatus. In all this, it was similar to other recently-founded kingdoms of the time, such as Ammon and Moab.

In later Assyrian inscriptions, the kingdom is referred to as the "House of Omri". Shalmanesser III's "Black Obelisk" mentions Jehu, son of Omri; and King Adad-Nirari III of Assyria, who leaded an expedition into the Levant in 803, mentions "the Hatti-land and Amurru-land, the cities of Tyre and Sidon, Philistia, Edom, Aram, and the ''mat'' (land) of Hu-um-ri", or Omri. Another inscription from the same king introduces a third way of talking about the kingdom, as Samaria, in the phrase " Joash of Samaria". The use of Omri's name to refer to the kingdom still survived, and was used by Sargon II in the phrase "the whole house of Omri" in describing his conquest of the city of Samaria in 722 BCE. It is significant that the Assyrians never mention the Kingdom of Judah until the end of the 8th century, when it was an Assyrian vassal: possibly they never had contact with it, or possibly they regarded it as a vassal of Israel/Samaria or Aram, or possibly the southern kingdom did not exist during this period.

Samaria is one of the most universally accepted archaeological sites from the biblical period. At around 850 BCE, the Mesha Stele records the victory of the Kingdom of Moab (in today's Jordan), under, King Mesha, against the Kingdom of Israel, under king Omri and his son Ahab.

Archaeological finds, ancient Near Eastern texts, and the biblical record testify that in the time of the Omride dynasty, the Kingdom of Israel ruled in the mountainous Galilee, at Hazor in the upper Jordan Valley, in large parts of Transjordan between the Arnon and the Yarmouk Rivers, and in the coastal plain of the Sharon.

In the Bible

One tradition source for the history of the Kingdom of Israel has been the Jewish Bible