The Judges and the Kings of Israel and Judah

After the settlement in Canaan, the book of Judges describes a tribal society without central authority, in which charismatic leaders — Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson — rise up against outside threats: Canaanites, Midianites, Ammonites and above all the Philistines.

Excavations at sites such as Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer reveal a period of cultural transition, marked by the collapse of the Canaanite city-states and the retreat of Egyptian rule in the 12th century BCE. At the same time, hundreds of small villages appear in the hill country: the remains show a society in the making, settling down and organising itself around terraced farming and cisterns. On the coast, the Philistines, who came from the Aegean world, founded a pentapolis — Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza, Gath and Ekron — whose material culture, with its painted Mycenaean-style pottery, is well identified.

Shiloh, Israel's first sanctuary

Samarian hills, between Bethel and ShechemShiloh (Tel Shiloh): sanctuary of the Tent of MeetingIsrael's first great sanctuary according to the Bible: Joshua sets up the Tent of Meeting here, Hannah prays for a son, and Samuel grows up beside the priest Eli.View site →

According to the books of Joshua and Samuel, Shiloh housed the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant; it was there that the prophet Samuel grew up. Tel Shiloh, excavated by a Danish team in the 1920s and 1930s and later by Israel Finkelstein (1981–1984), yielded a substantial Iron Age I village with large storage buildings, destroyed by fire around the mid-11th century BCE. This destruction is often linked with the defeat at Ebenezer at the hands of the Philistines (1 Samuel 4) and with the memory of it preserved by the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:12).

The Bible presents Saul as Israel's first king, then David, who takes Jerusalem from the Jebusites and makes it his capital, and Solomon, builder of the First Temple and of a prosperous kingdom. The extent and wealth of this "United Monarchy" of the 10th century BCE are now at the heart of archaeological debate.

Jerusalem, the City of David

On the ridge running south of the Temple Mount, excavations in the City of David have uncovered the "Stepped Stone Structure", a massive retaining wall, and a large building that archaeologist Eilat Mazar identified in 2005 as David's palace. The dating of these palatial structures — 10th or 9th century, or even earlier for part of them — remains disputed, as does the actual importance of Jerusalem at that time.

Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer and the "Low Chronology"

Upper Galilee, near Rosh PinaTel Hazor: the Canaanite capital of Joshua 11"The head of all those kingdoms": the largest Canaanite city in the land, its destruction by fire and an archaeological debate that is still open.View site →

Jezreel Valley, GalileeTel Megiddo: a Canaanite city in the time of JoshuaA Canaanite city the Bible says was defeated but never dispossessed: four thousand years of history at the crossroads of Egypt and Mesopotamia.View site →

Shephelah, between Jerusalem and Tel AvivTel Gezer: The Canaanite City from Joshua to SolomonA powerful Canaanite city that the Book of Joshua says was never taken, named by the pharaohs of the Amarna age and by Merneptah, then rebuilt under Solomon.View site →

1 Kings 9:15 credits Solomon with building Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer. In the 1950s and 1960s Yigael Yadin identified at these sites six-chambered gates of almost identical plan, which he attributed to the builder king. In the 1990s Israel Finkelstein proposed a "Low Chronology" that lowers these constructions by about a century, to the time of the Omride kings of Israel; the debate, fuelled by radiocarbon dating, is not closed. The famous "Solomon's stables" at Megiddo are now dated to the 9th or 8th century, and some see them as storehouses instead.

Other sites feed the discussion, such as the fortress of Khirbet Qeiyafa overlooking the Elah Valley, the setting of the fight between David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17, where the Philistines camp near Azekah); it dates from the late 11th or early 10th century BCE, and its attribution to the kingdom of Judah, argued by its excavators, is contested by other scholars. As for the port of Ezion-geber, which Nelson Glueck identified with Tell el-Kheleifeh near Eilat and which was supposed to reveal the scale of Solomon's trade, its 10th-century dating was abandoned after the excavation records were re-examined.

After Solomon's death, around 930 BCE, the kingdom splits: Israel in the north, with Samaria as its capital from King Omri onwards, and Judah in the south, centred on Jerusalem and the Davidic dynasty. From this time on, outside sources multiply.

Inscriptions and annals

• c. 925 BCE — Pharaoh Shoshenq I, the Shishak of 1 Kings 14:25, carves on a wall of the temple of Karnak the list of the places he conquered in Canaan.
• 853 BCE — The Kurkh Monolith of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III names "Ahab the Israelite" among the coalition at the battle of Qarqar.
• 841 BCE — The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III (British Museum) shows Jehu, or his envoy, bowing before the king of Assyria.
• c. 840 BCE — The Mesha Stele of the king of Moab (Louvre Museum) mentions Omri, "king of Israel", and the divine name YHWH.
• Late 9th century BCE — The Aramaic Tel Dan Stele refers to a "king of Israel" and the "House of David": the first generally accepted extra-biblical reference to David's dynasty.
• 722–720 BCE — Samaria is taken by the Assyrians (Shalmaneser V, then Sargon II) and part of its population deported: the end of the kingdom of Israel.
• 701 BCE — Sennacherib campaigns in Judah: Lachish is taken and Jerusalem besieged, with Hezekiah shut up "like a bird in a cage", according to the Assyrian annals.

At Samaria, capital of the kingdom of Israel, excavations have produced a royal palace, magnificent carved ivories — recalling Ahab's "ivory house" (1 Kings 22:39) — and administrative ostraca in ancient Hebrew. In both kingdoms, hundreds of seals and seal impressions (bullae) bear names known from the Bible and document royal administration, such as the bulla of King Hezekiah unearthed on the Ophel, at the foot of the Temple Mount, and published in 2015. For a recent example of these small objects that shed light on great history, read our article on the Akkadian seal found in Jerusalem.

Hezekiah, Sennacherib and Lachish

Shephelah, near Kiryat GatTel Lachish: The Canaanite City Taken by JoshuaA royal Canaanite city under Egyptian rule, Lachish is one of the southern cities Joshua is said to have taken. Its excavations tell a more complex, and longer, story.View site →

Facing the Assyrian threat, King Hezekiah (late 8th century BCE) fortified Jerusalem — a section of his "Broad Wall" is still visible in the Jewish Quarter — and had a 533-metre tunnel cut to bring water from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam, inside the city.

The Siloam Inscription, carved in the tunnel and discovered in 1880, describes the moment the two teams of diggers met; the original is kept at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. In 701 BCE Sennacherib seized Lachish, the second city of Judah: the reliefs from his palace at Nineveh, now in the British Museum, depict the assault on the walls, and the Assyrian siege ramp can still be seen at Tel Lachish.

The kingdom of Judah survived for more than another century, until the campaigns of Nebuchadnezzar and the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, which opens the period of Exile and Return.