అధ్యాయం 7: ఇజ్రాయెల్ యొక్క మరచిపోయిన మొదటి రాజ్యం

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[ 7 ] Israel’s Forgotten First Kingdom

(884–842 BCE)

Violence, idolatry, and greed were the hallmarks of the northern kingdom of Israel as it is depicted in gory detail in the first and second books of Kings. After Jeroboam, the main villains of the story are the Omrides, the great northern dynasty founded by a former Israelite general named Omri, whose successors grew so powerful that they eventually managed to put one of their princesses on the throne of the kingdom of Judah as well. The Bible accuses the most famous Omride couple —King Ahab and his notorious wife Jezebel, the Phoenician princess—of repeatedly committing some of the greatest biblical sins: introducing the cult of foreign gods into the land of Israel, murdering faithful priests and prophets of YHWH, unjustly confiscating the property of their subjects, and violating Israel’s sacred traditions with arrogant impunity. The Omrides are remembered as among the most despised characters of biblical history. Yet the new archaeological vision of the kingdom of Israel offers an entirely different perspective on their reigns. Indeed, had the biblical authors and editors been historians in the modern sense, they might have said that Ahab was a mighty king who first brought the kingdom of Israel to prominence on the world stage and that his marriage to the daughter of the Phoenician king Ethbaal was a brilliant stroke of international diplomacy. They might have said that the Omrides built magnificent cities to serve as administrative centers of their expanding kingdom. They might have said that Ahab and Omri, his father before him, succeeded in building one of the most powerful armies in the region—with which they conquered extensive territories in the far north and in Transjordan. Of course, they might also have noted that Omri and Ahab were not particularly pious and that they sometimes were capricious and acted brutally. But the same could be said of virtually every other monarch of the ancient Near East. Indeed, Israel, as a state, enjoyed natural wealth and extensive trade connections

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that made it largely indistinguishable from other prosperous kingdoms of the region. As noted in the previous chapter, Israel had the necessary organization to undertake monumental building projects, to establish a professional army and bureaucracy, and to develop a complex settlement hierarchy of cities, towns, and villages—which made it the first full-fledged Israelite kingdom. Its character, goals, and achievements were dramatically different from those of the kingdom of Judah. Therefore, they have been almost totally obscured by the Bible’s condemnation, which supports the later claims of the southern, Davidic dynasty for predominance by demeaning and misrepresenting nearly everything that the northern, Omride dynasty did. The Rise and Fall of the House of Omri The books of Kings offer only a sketchy description of the first turbulent decades in the independent kingdom of Israel. After the twenty-two-year reign of Jeroboam, his son and successor, Nadab, was overthrown by a military coup in which all the surviving members of the house of Jeroboam were killed (thus neatly fulfilling the words of the prophet Ahijah that none of Jeroboam’s heirs would survive). The new king, Baasha, possibly a former military commander, immediately showed his bellicose nature by declaring war on the kingdom of Judah and advancing his forces toward Jerusalem. But he was quickly forced to lift his pressure on the southern kingdom when his own kingdom was invaded by the king of Damascus, Ben-hadad. Soon after the death of Baasha, his son Elah was deposed in yet another army uprising, in which the house of Baasha was annihilated (1 Kings 16:8–11). But the rebel leader, Zimri, a chariot commander, reigned for only seven days. The people of Israel rose up to declare Omri, the commander of the army, the next king of Israel. After a brief siege of the royal capital of Tirzah—and the suicide of the usurper Zimri in the flames of the palace—Omri consolidated his power and established a dynasty that would rule the northern kingdom for the next forty years.

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TABLE THREE

THE OMRIDE DYNASTY

KING:

Omri

DATES*:

884–873BCE

BIBLICAL TESTIMONY:

Foundation of Samaria

EXTRABIBLICAL EVIDENCE:

Mentioned in the Mesha stele from Moab

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS:

Foundation of Samaria

KING:

Ahab

DATES*:

873–852

BIBLICAL TESTIMONY:

Marries the Phoenician princess Jezebel; builds a House for the Baal at Samaria; sacks the vineyard of Naboth; confronted by prophet Elijah; fights several wars against the Arameans and dies on battlefield

EXTRABIBLICAL EVIDENCE:

Shalmaneser III mentions great chariot force of Ahab at the battle of Qarqar in 853 BCE; was possibly mentioned in the Tel Dan inscription

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS:

Main building phase at Samaria; Jezreel compound; Megiddo palaces; Hazor wall and gate

KING:

Ahaziah

DATES*:

852–851

BIBLICAL TESTIMONY:

Short reign; falls sick and dies

KING:

Jehoram

DATES*:

851–842

BIBLICAL TESTIMONY:

Defeats Moab; wounded in battle against Hazael of Aram-Damascus; prophecies of Elisha

EXTRABIBLICAL EVIDENCE:

Apparently mentioned in the Tel Dan inscription

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS:

Destruction of the Jezreel compound; destruction layers in other sites in the north * According to the Anchor Bible Dictionary and Galil’s The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah

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In the twelve years of his reign, Omri built a new capital for himself at a place called Samaria and laid the foundations for the continued rule of his own dynasty. Omri’s son Ahab then came to the throne, reigning over Israel for twenty-two years. The biblical evaluation of Ahab was even harsher than its usual treatment of northern monarchs, detailing the extent of his foreign liaisons and idolatry, with an emphasis on his famous foreign wife, who led her husband to apostasy: And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD more than all that were before him. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshiped him. He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. And Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. (1 KINGS 16:30–33) Jezebel is reported to have supported the pagan priesthood in Samaria, hosting at her spacious royal table “four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and four hundred prophets of Asherah.” And she further ordered that all the prophets of YHWH in the kingdom of Israel be slain. The biblical narrative then goes on to devote most of its description of the Omrides to their crimes and sins—and to their ongoing battle of wits with Elijah and his protégé, Elisha, two famous prophets of YHWH who roamed throughout the north. Elijah soon confronted Ahab and demanded that all the prophets of Baal and Asherah “who eat at Jezebel’s table” gather at Mount Carmel for a contest of sacred wills. There, in front of “all the people,” each of the two sides constructed an altar to their god and sacrificed a bull upon it, crying to the chosen deity to consume the offering by fire. While Baal did not respond to the cries of his prophets, YHWH immediately sent a great fire from the heavens to consume Elijah’s offering. Seeing this, the assembled witnesses fell on their faces. “The Lord, he is God,” they cried and seized the prophets of Baal, whom they slaughtered by the brook Kishon. Queen Jezebel reacted in fury and Elijah quickly escaped into the desert. Reaching the desolate wilderness at Horeb, the mountain of God, he received a divine oracle. YHWH spoke directly to Elijah and pronounced a prophecy of doom on the entire house of Omri. YHWH instructed him to anoint Hazael as king of Israel’s most dangerous rival, Aram-Damascus. Elijah was also ordered to anoint Ahab’s military commander, Jehu, as the next king of Israel. Finally, Elijah was instructed to make Elisha prophet in his place. These three, YHWH had determined, would punish the house of Omri for its sins: “And him who escapes from the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay; and him who escapes from the sword of

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Jehu shall Elisha slay” (1 Kings 19:17). Yet YHWH gave the northern kingdom a second chance when he came to the rescue of Israel when Ben-hadad, king of Aram-Damascus, invaded the country and laid siege to Samaria. He gave it a third chance when he allowed Ahab to defeat Ben-hadad in a battle near the Sea of Galilee in the following year. But Ahab proved unworthy of this divine assistance. He decided to spare the life of his enemy in exchange for earthly rewards: the return of cities that had formerly belonged to the kingdom of Israel and the right to “establish bazaars” in Damascus. A prophet of YHWH told Ahab that he would pay with his life for not obeying YHWH’s demand that Benhadad be put to the sword. The Bible then narrates a story about the immoral conduct of the wicked couple toward their own people—another sin for which they would have to pay with their lives. It so happened that a man named Naboth owned a vineyard near the palace of Ahab at Jezreel, and that vineyard got in the way of Ahab’s development plans. Seeking to take over the land for an expansion of his palace, Ahab made Naboth an offer he thought he could hardly refuse: he would take Naboth’s vineyard and give him a much better one, or if Naboth preferred, Ahab would pay him off in cash. But Naboth was not interested in giving away his family inheritance for any reason and he stubbornly refused. Ahab’s wife Jezebel had another solution: she fabricated evidence of blasphemy against Naboth and watched in satisfaction as the people of Jezreel stoned Naboth to death. No sooner had Ahab taken possession of the vineyard than the prophet Elijah appeared once more on the scene. His prophecy was chilling: Thus says the Lord: “Have you killed, and also taken possession? . . . In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick your own blood. . . . Behold, I will bring evil upon you; I will utterly sweep you away, and will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel; and I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for the anger to which you have provoked me, and because you have made Israel to sin. And of Jezebel the LORD also said, ‘The dogs shall eat Jezebel within the bounds of Jezreel. Any one belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat; and any one of his who dies in the open country the birds of the air shall eat.” (1 KINGS 21: 19–24) At that time the kingdoms of Israel and Judah had concluded an alliance in which Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, joined forces with Ahab to wage war against Aram-Damascus at Ramoth-gilead, across the Jordan. In the course of the fighting Ahab was struck by an arrow and died on the battlefield. His body was brought back to Samaria for a royal burial and when his chariot was being washed, dogs licked his blood—a grim fulfillment of Elijah’s prophecy.

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Ahab’s son Ahaziah then came to the throne and he too gravely sinned. Injured in a fall “through the lattice in his upper chamber in Samaria,” he dispatched messengers to consult Baal-zebub the god of the Philistine city of Ekron, about his prospects for recovery. But Elijah, chastising him for appealing to a foreign idol rather than YHWH, announced his imminent death. Finally Jehoram, Ahaziah’s brother and the fourth and last king of the Omride dynasty, ascended the throne. In response to a rebellion by Mesha, king of Moab, who had long been Israel’s vassal, Jehoram marched against Moab, joined by Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and an unnamed king of Edom. The prophet Elisha predicted victory only because the just Judahite king, Jehoshaphat, was with them. And indeed, the Moabites were vanquished by the Israelite-Judahite-Edomite alliance and their cities were destroyed. Yet the Omride dynasty could not ultimately escape its destiny of utter destruction. With the accession of Hazael as king of Damascus, the military and political fortunes of the Omride dynasty declined. Hazael defeated the army of Israel at Ramoth-gilead east of the Jordan, and the Israelite king, Jehoram, was badly wounded on the battlefield. At that moment of crisis, Elisha dispatched one of the sons of the prophets of YHWH to anoint Jehu, the commander of the army, as king of Israel, so that he would finally smite the house of Ahab. And so it happened. Returning to the Omride palace at Jezreel to heal his wounds in the company of King Ahaziah of Judah, Jehoram was confronted by Jehu (symbolically, in the vineyard of Naboth), who killed him with an arrow shot into his heart. Ahaziah attempted to escape, but was wounded and died at the nearby city of Megiddo, to which he had fled. The liquidation of the family of Ahab was nearing a climax. Jehu then entered the royal compound of Jezreel and ordered that Jezebel be thrown from an upper window of the palace. Jehu commanded his servants to take off her body for burial, but they discovered only her skull, her feet, and the palms of her hands in the courtyard—for stray dogs had eaten the flesh of Jezebel, just as Elijah’s chilling prophecy had warned. In the meanwhile, the sons of the king of Israel living in Samaria—seventy altogether—were slaughtered and their heads were put in baskets and sent to Jehu in Jezreel. He ordered that those heads be piled up in full public view at the entrance to the city gate. Jehu then set off for Samaria, where he killed all that remained of the house of Ahab. The Omride dynasty was thus extinguished forever and the terrible prophecy of Elijah was fulfilled to its last word. Distant Borders and Military Might

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The court tragedy of the house of Omri is a literary classic, filled with vivid characters and theatrical scenes, in which a royal family’s crimes against their own people are paid back with a bloody demise. The memory of the reigns of Ahab and Jezebel obviously remained vivid for centuries, as we can see from their inclusion in such a prominent way in the Deuteronomistic History—compiled over two hundred years after their deaths. Nonetheless, the biblical narrative is so thoroughly filled with inconsistencies and anachronisms, and so obviously influenced by the theology of the seventh century BCE writers, that it must be considered more of a historical novel than an accurate historical chronicle. Among other inconsistencies, the reported invasion of Samaria by Ben-hadad of Damascus did not take place during the reign of Ahab but later in the history of the northern kingdom. The mention of an alliance of Israel with an unnamed king of Edom is also an anachronism, for there is no evidence of monarchy in Edom until more than a century after the time of the Omrides. In fact, when one takes out the anachronisms and the stories of threats issued and prophecies fulfilled, there is very little verifiable historical material left in the biblical account, except for the sequence of Israelite kings, some of their most famous building projects, and the general areas of military activity. Fortunately there are—for the first time in the history of Israel—some important external sources of historical information that allow us to see the Omrides from a different perspective: as the militarily powerful rulers of one of the strongest states in the Near East. The key to this new understanding is the sudden appearance of monumental inscriptions that directly refer to the kingdom of Israel. The first mention of the northern kingdom in the time of the Omrides is not accidental. The westward advance of the Assyrian empire from its Mesopotamian heartland—with its fully developed bureaucracy and long tradition of recording its rulers’ acts in public declarations—profoundly influenced the culture of crystallizing states like Israel, Aram, and Moab. Beginning in the ninth century BCE, in the records of the Assyrians themselves and those of smaller powers of the Near East, we at last gain some firsthand testimony on events and personalities described in the biblical text. In the time of David and Solomon, political organization in the region had not yet reached the stage where extensive bureaucracies and monumental inscriptions existed. By the time of the Omrides a century later, internal economic processes and external political pressures had brought about the rise of fully developed territorial, national states in the Levant. In an anthropological sense, fully developed implies a territory governed by a complex bureaucratic organization that is capable of organizing major building projects, maintaining a standing army, and developing

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organized trade connections with neighboring regions. It is capable of keeping records of its actions in archives and in monumental inscriptions open to public view. In the ninth century and after, major political events were recorded in monumental writing, from the perspective of each king. These inscriptions are crucial for establishing precise dates for events and personalities mentioned in the Bible. And for anyone who knows the Bible’s version, they offer an unexpected picture of the extent and power of the kingdom of Israel. One of the most important is the Mesha stele, found in 1868 on the surface of the remote mound of Dhiban in southern Jordan, east of the Dead Sea—the site of biblical Dibon, the capital of the kingdom of Moab. This monumental inscription was badly damaged in the wrangling between rival European explorers and the local bedouin, but its surviving fragments have been pieced together to offer what is still the longest extrabiblical text ever found in the Levant. It is written in the Moabite language, which is closely related to biblical Hebrew, and it records the achievements of King Mesha, who conquered the territories of northern Moab and established his capital in Dibon. The discovery of this inscription caused great excitement in the nineteenth century because Mesha is mentioned in 2 Kings 3 as a rebellious vassal of the northern kingdom of Israel. Here for the first time was the other side of the story, the first nonbiblical description of the Omrides ever found. The events recorded in the inscription took place in the ninth century BCE, when, according to its fragmentary text, “Omri [was] king of Israel, and he oppressed Moab many days. . . . And his son succeeded him, and he too said: ‘I will humble Moab.’ In my days, he spoke thus. . . . And Omri had taken possession of the land of Medeba. And he dwelt in it his days and the sum of the days of his sons: forty years.” The inscription goes on to relate how Mesha gradually expanded his territory in rebellion against Israel, destroying the main settlements of the Israelites east of the Jordan, while fortifying and embellishing his own capital. Though Mesha barely disguises his contempt for Omri and his son Ahab, we nonetheless learn from his triumphal inscription that the kingdom of Israel reached far east and south of its earlier heartland in the central hill country. Likewise we hear about the conflicts with Aram-Damascus from the “House of David” inscription discovered at the biblical city of Dan in 1993. Although the name of the monarch who erected it was not found on the fragments that have so far been recovered, there is little doubt, from the overall context, that this was the mighty Hazael, king of Aram-Damascus. He is mentioned several times in the Bible, in particular as God’s instrument to humble the House of Omri. From the inscription,

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it seems that Hazael captured the city of Dan and erected a triumphal stele there around 835 BCE. The inscription records the words of the victorious Hazael in his angry accusation that “the king of I[s]rael entered previously in my father’s land.” Since the inscription apparently mentioned the name of Ahab’s son and successor, Jehoram, the implication is clear. The kingdom of Israel under the Omrides stretched from the vicinity of Damascus throughout the central highlands and valleys of Israel, all the way to the southern territory of Moab, ruling over considerable populations of non-Israelites. This Omride “empire,” we also learn, possessed a mighty military force. Though the biblical account of the Omride dynasty stresses repeated military disasters—and makes no mention whatsoever of a threat from Assyria—there is some dramatic evidence of the Omrides’ power from Assyria itself. Shalmaneser III, one of the greatest Assyrian kings, who ruled in the years 858–824 BCE, offers perhaps the clearest (if entirely unintentional) praise for the power of the Omride dynasty. In the year 853 BCE, Shalmaneser led a major Assyrian invasion force westward to intimidate and possibly conquer the smaller states of Syria, Phoenicia, and Israel. His advancing armies were confronted by an anti-Assyrian coalition near Qarqar on the river Orontes in western Syria. Shalmaneser boasted of his great victory in an important ancient text known as the Monolith Inscription, found in the 1840s by the English explorer Austen Henry Layard at the ancient Assyrian site of Nimrud. The dark stone monument, thickly inscribed with cuneiform characters, proudly recorded the forces ranged against Shalmaneser: “1,200 chariots, 1,200 cavalry men, 20,000 foot soldiers of Hadadezer of Damascus, 700 chariots, 700 cavalrymen, 10,000 foot soldiers of Irhuleni from Hamath, 2,000 chariots, 10,000 foot soldiers of Ahab, the Israelite, 500 soldiers from Que, 1,000 soldiers from Musri, 10 chariots, 10,000 soldiers from Irqanata . . . .” Not only is this the earliest nonbiblical evidence of a king of Israel, it is clear from the mention of the “heavy arms” (chariots) that Ahab was the strongest member of the anti-Assyrian coalition. And although the great Shalmaneser claimed victory, the practical outcome of this confrontation spoke much louder than royal boasts. Shalmaneser quickly returned to Assyria, and at least for a while the Assyrian march to the west was blocked. Thus we learn from three ancient inscriptions (ironically from three of Israel’s bitterest enemies) information that dramatically supplements the biblical account. Though the Bible speaks of an Aramean army besieging Samaria, Omri and his successors were in fact powerful kings who expanded the territory of their kingdom and maintained what was certainly one of the largest standing armies in the region.

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And they were deeply involved in international power politics (at a time when the kingdom of Judah was passed over in silence in Shalmaneser’s inscription) in a continuing effort to maintain their independence against regional rivals and the looming threat of the Assyrian Empire.

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Figure 20: Plans of three Omride sites: 1) Samaria; 2) Hazor; 3) Jezreel. The plans are drawn to the same scale. Numbers 1 and 2 courtesy of Professor Zeev Herzog, Tel Aviv University.

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Palaces, Stables, and Store Cities The archaeological evidence also reveals that the Omrides far surpassed any other monarchs in Israel or Judah as builders and administrators. In a sense, theirs was the first golden age of the Israelite kings. Yet in the Bible, the description of the Omride kingdom is quite sketchy. Except for the mention of elaborate palaces in Samaria and Jezreel, there is almost no reference to the size, scale, and opulence of their realm. In the early twentieth century, archaeology first began to make a significant contribution, as major excavations at the site of Omri’s capital city, Samaria, got under way. There is hardly a doubt that Samaria was indeed built by Omri, since later Assyrian sources call the northern kingdom “the house of Omri,” an indication that he was the founder of its capital. The site, first excavated in 1908–10 by an expedition of Harvard University, was further explored in the 1930s by a joint American, British, and Jewish–Palestinian team. That site further revealed the splendor of the Omride dynasty. The site of Samaria is, even today, impressive. Located in the midst of gently rolling hills, planted with olive and almond orchards, it overlooks a rich agricultural region. The discovery of some pottery sherds, a few walls, and a group of rock-cut installations indicated that it was already inhabited before the arrival of Omri; there seems to have been a small, poor Israelite village or a farm there in the eleventh and tenth centuries BCE. This may perhaps be the inheritance of Shemer, the original owner of the property mentioned in 1 Kings 16:24. In any case, with the arrival of Omri and his court around 880 BCE, the farm buildings were leveled and an opulent palace with auxiliary buildings for servants and court personnel arose on the summit of the hill. Figure 21: A Proto-Aeolic capital. Courtesy of the Israel Exploration Society.

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Samaria was apparently conceived from the start as the personal capital of the Omride dynasty. It was the most grandiose architectural manifestation of the rule of Omri and Ahab (Figure 20:1, p. 179). Located on a small hilltop, however, it was not the ideal place for a vast royal compound. The builders’ solution to this problem—a daring innovation in Iron Age Israel—was to carry out massive earthmoving operations to create a huge, artificial platform on the summit of the hill. An enormous wall (constructed of linked rooms, or casemates) was build around the hill, framing the summit and the upper slopes in a large rectangular enclosure. When that retaining wall was completed, construction gangs filled its interior with thousands of tons of earth hauled from the vicinity. The scale of this project was enormous. The earthen fill packed behind the supporting wall was, in some places, almost twenty feet deep. That was probably why the enclosure wall surrounding and supporting the palace complex was built in the casemate technique: the casemate chambers (which were also filled with earth) were designed to relieve the immense pressure of the fill. A royal acropolis of five acres was thus created. This huge stone and earth construction can be compared in audacity and extravagance (though perhaps not in size) only to the work that Herod the Great carried out almost a millennium later on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Rising on one side of this artificial platform was an exceptionally large and beautiful palace, which in scale and grandeur rivaled the contemporary palaces of the states in northern Syria. Although the Omride palace at Samaria has been only partially excavated, enough of its plan has been uncovered to recognize that the central building alone covered an area of approximately half an acre. With its outer walls built entirely of finely hewn and closely fitted ashlar stones, it is the largest and most beautiful Iron Age building ever excavated in Israel. Even the architectural ornamentation was exceptional. Stone capitals of a unique early style, called Proto- Aeolic (because of the resemblance to the later Greek Aeolic style), were found in the rubble of later centuries’ accumulations (Figure 21). These ornate stone capitals probably adorned the monumental outer gate to the compound, or perhaps an elaborate entrance into the main palace itself. Of the interior furnishings little remained except for a number of intricately carved ivory plaques, probably dating from the eighth century BCE and bearing Syro-Phoenician and Egyptian motifs. These ivories, used as inlays on the palace furniture, might explain the allusion in 1 Kings 22:39 to the ivory house that Ahab reportedly built.

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Figure 22: The eighth century BCE at Megiddo. The six-chambered gate (ascribed by Yadin to a “Solomonic” level) most probably belongs to this stratum. Courtesy Prof. David Ussishkin, Tel Aviv University. Several administrative buildings surrounded the palace, but most of the enclosure was left open. The simple houses of the people of Samaria apparently clustered on the slopes beneath the acropolis. For visitors, traders, and official emissaries arriving at Samaria, the visual impression of the Omrides’ royal city must have been stunning. Its elevated platform and huge, elaborate palace bespoke wealth, power, and prestige. Samaria was only the beginning of the discovery of Omride grandeur. Megiddo came next. In the mid-1920s, the University of Chicago team uncovered an Iron Age palace built of beautifully dressed ashlar blocks. The first director of the Oriental Institute excavations at Megiddo, Clarence S. Fisher, had also worked at Samaria and was immediately impressed by the similarity of construction. He was supported in this observation by John Crowfoot, the leader of the Joint Expedition to Samaria, who suggested that the similarity of building techniques and overall plan at Samaria and Megiddo indicated that both were built under Omride patronage. But this matter of architectural similarity was not fully pursued for many decades. The members of the University of Chicago team were more interested in the glory of Solomon than in the wicked Omrides. They ignored the similarity of the Megiddo and Samaria building styles and dated the complexes of pillared buildings (presumably stables) in the succeeding stratum to the days of the united monarchy. In the early 1960s, when Yigael Yadin of the Hebrew University came to Megiddo, he dated the Megiddo palaces—the one excavated in the 1920s and one he himself

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uncovered—to the time of Solomon and linked the later level containing the stables and other structures to the era of the Omrides. That city was certainly impressive (Figure 22). It was surrounded by a massive fortification and, according to Yadin, furnished with a large four-chambered city gate (built directly on top of the earlier “Solomonic” gate). The most dominant features inside the city were the two sets of pillared buildings that had long before been identified as stables. Yet Yadin did not link them to the biblical descriptions of Solomon’s great chariot army but to that of Ahab, noted in the Shalmaneser inscription. Yet as we will see, Yadin had not correctly identified Ahab’s city; those stables probably belonged to another, even later Israelite king. The northern city of Hazor, which Yadin excavated in the 1950s and 1960s, provided additional apparent evidence of Omride splendor. Hazor was also surrounded by a massive fortification. In the center of that city Yadin uncovered a pillared building somewhat similar in form to the Megiddo stables, divided into three long aisles by rows of stone pillars. But this structure contained no stone troughs for feeding, so it was accordingly interpreted as a royal storehouse. An imposing citadel was uncovered on the eastern, narrow tip of the mound, enclosed by the massive city wall. Another important site connected with the Omrides is the city of Dan in the far north at the headwaters of the Jordan River. We have already cited the opening lines of the stele erected at Dan by Hazael, king of Aram-Damascus, noting that the Omrides had previously taken that area from the Arameans. The excavations at Dan, directed by Abraham Biran, of the Hebrew Union College, uncovered massive Iron Age fortifications, a huge, elaborate city gate, and a sanctuary with a high place. This large podium, measuring about sixty feet on a side, and built of beautifully dressed ashlar stones, has been dated with the city’s other monumental structures to the time of the Omrides. Yet perhaps the most impressive engineering achievements initially linked to the Omrides are the enormous underground water tunnels cut through the bedrock beneath the cities of Megiddo and Hazor. These tunnels provided the city’s inhabitants with secure access to drinking water even in times of siege. In the ancient Near East this was a critical challenge, for while important cities were surrounded by elaborate fortifications to allow them to withstand an attack or siege by even the most determined enemy, they seldom had a source of freshwater within their city walls. The inhabitants could always collect rainwater in cisterns, but this would not be sufficient when a siege extended through the hot, rainless months of summer—especially if the population of the city had swelled with refugees.

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Since most ancient cities were located near springs, the challenge was to devise safe access to them. The rock-cut water tunnels at Hazor and Megiddo are among the most elaborate solutions to this problem. At Hazor, a large vertical shaft was cut through the remains of earlier cities into the solid rock below. Because of its enormous depth, of almost a hundred feet, support walls had to be constructed to prevent collapse. Broad steps led to the bottom, where a sloping tunnel, some eighty feet long, led into a pool-like rock-cut chamber into which groundwater seeped. One can only imagine a procession of water bearers threading their way single-file down the stairs and the length of the subterranean tunnel to fill their jars in the dark cavern and returning up to the streets of the besieged city with water to keep its people alive. Figure 23: A cross-section of the Megiddo water system The Megiddo water system (Figure 23) consisted of a somewhat simpler shaft, over a hundred feet in depth, cut through the earlier remains to bedrock. From there it led to a horizontal tunnel, more than two hundred feet long, wide and high enough for a few people to walk at the same time, which led to a natural spring cave on the edge of the mound. The entrance to the cave from outside was blocked and camouflaged. Yadin dated both the Megiddo and Hazor water systems to the time of the Omrides. He proposed to connect the Israelite skill of hewing water systems to a section in the Mesha stele where the Moabite king recounted how he dug a water reservoir in his own capital city with the help of Israelite prisoners of war. It was obvious that the construction of such monumental installations required an enormous investment and efficient state organization—and a high level of technical skill. From a functional point of view, Iron Age engineers could perhaps have reached a similar result with a much smaller investment by simply digging a well into the water table under the mound. But the visual impressiveness of these great

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water installations certainly enhanced the prestige of the royal authority that commissioned them. A Forgotten Turning Point in Israelite History Even though early and mid-twentieth century archaeologists assigned many magnificent building projects to the Omrides, the period of their rule over the kingdom of Israel was never seen as a particularly formative moment in biblical history. Colorful, yes. Vivid, to be sure. But in purely historical terms, the story of the Omrides—of Ahab and Jezebel—seemed to be spelled out in quite adequate detail in the Bible, with supporting information from Assyrian, Moabite, and Aramean texts. There seemed to be so many more intriguing historical questions to be answered by excavation and further research: the precise process of the Israelite settlement; the political crystallization of the monarchy under David and Solomon; or even the underlying causes of the eventual Assyrian and Babylonian conquests in the land of Israel. Omride archaeology was usually considered just a sidelight on the main agenda of biblical archaeology, given less attention than the Solomonic period. But there was something seriously wrong with this initial correlation between biblical history and archaeological finds. The new questions that began to be asked about the nature, extent, or even historical existence of Solomon’s vast kingdom— and the redating of the archaeological layers—inevitably affected the scholarly understanding of the Omrides as well. For if Solomon had not actually built the “Solomonic” gates and palaces, who did? The Omrides were the obvious candidates. The earliest architectural parallels to the distinctive palaces dug at Megiddo (and initially attributed to Solomon) came from northern Syria—the supposed place of origin of this type—in the ninth century BCE, a full century after the time of Solomon! This was precisely the time of the Omrides’ rule. The clinching clue to a redating of the “Solomonic” gates and palaces came from the biblical site of Jezreel, located less than ten miles to the east of Megiddo in the heart of the Jezreel valley. The site is located in a beautiful elevated spot, enjoying a mild climate in the winter and a cool breeze in the summer and commanding a sweeping panorama of the entire Jezreel valley and the hills surrounding it, from Megiddo in the west through Galilee in the north, to Beth-shean and the Gilead in the east. Jezreel is famous largely due to the biblical story of Naboth’s vineyard, and Ahab and Jezebel’s plans for palace expansion, and as the scene of the bloody, final liquidation of the Omride dynasty. In the 1990s the site was excavated by David Ussishkin of Tel Aviv University and John Woodhead of the British School of

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Archaeology in Jerusalem. They uncovered a large royal enclosure, very similar to that of Samaria (Figure 20:3, p. 179). This impressive compound was occupied for only a brief period in the ninth century BCE—presumably only during the reign of the Omride Dynasty—and was destroyed shortly after its construction, perhaps in connection with the fall of the Omrides or the subsequent invasions of northern Israel by the armies of Aram-Damascus. As in Samaria, an enormous casemate wall built around the original hill at Jezreel formed a “box” to be filled with many tons of earth. As a result of large-scale filling and leveling operations, a level podium was created on which the inner structures of the royal compound were built. At Jezreel the archaeologists discovered other striking elements of a hitherto unrecognized Omride architectural style. A sloping earthen rampart supported the casemate wall on the outside to prevent it from collapsing. As an additional defensive element, the compound was surrounded by a formidable moat dug in the bedrock, at least twenty-five feet wide and more than fifteen feet deep. The entrance to the Omride royal enclosure at Jezreel was provided by a gate, probably of the six-chamber type. Because Jezreel was chronologically restricted to a brief occupation in the ninth century BCE, it offered a unique case where the distinctive styles of pottery found within it could be used as a clear dating indicator for the Omride period at other sites. Significantly, the pottery styles uncovered in the Jezreel enclosure were almost identical to those found in the level of the “Solomonic” palaces of Megiddo. It was thus becoming quite evident, from both architectural and ceramic standpoints, that the Omrides—not Solomon—had constructed the ashlar buildings at Megiddo, in addition to the Jezreel and Samaria compounds. The hypothesis that the Omrides, not Solomon, established the first fully developed monarchy in Israel grew more convincing with a new look at the evidence from the other major cities of the kingdom of Israel. At Hazor, Yadin had identified a triangular compound on the acropolis—surrounded by a casemate wall and entered through a six-chambered gate—as the city established by Solomon in the tenth century BCE. The redating of the pottery on the basis of the Jezreel discoveries would place this city level in the early ninth century BCE. Indeed, there was an unmistakable structural resemblance to the palace compounds in Samaria and Jezreel (Figure 20:2, p. 179). Although the triangular shape of the Hazor compound was dictated by the topography of the site, its construction involved a massive leveling and filling operation that raised the level of the gate area in relation to the outside area to its east. A colossal moat, estimated to be 150 feet wide and over thirty feet deep, was dug outside the casemate wall. The overall similarity to Jezreel

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and Samaria is clear. Thus, another city long believed to be Solomonic is likely Omride. Evidence of the extent of Omride building projects emerges from a closer analysis of the remains at Megiddo and Gezer. Although Megiddo has no casemate compound, the two beautiful palaces on its summit that were built of distinctive ashlar masonry recall the building techniques used at Samaria (Figure 24). The resemblance is particularly strong in the case of the southernmost palace at Megiddo, which was built at the edge of a large courtyard, in the style of a north Syrian bit hilani palace, covering an area of about sixty-five by a hundred feet. Two exceptionally large Proto-Aeolic capitals (like those used in Samaria) were found in the vicinity of the gate leading into the palace’s compound, and they may have decorated the entrance to the palace itself. Norma Franklin of the current Megiddo expedition identified another similarity: the southern palace at Megiddo and the palace at Samaria are the only Iron Age buildings in Israel whose ashlar blocks share a specific type of masons’ marks. A second palace, which was partially uncovered by Yadin on the northern edge of the mound—and is now being fully unearthed by the new expedition to Megiddo—is also built of ashlar in the north Syrian palace style. Figure 24: The Omride city at Megiddo The evidence at Gezer is perhaps the most fragmentary of all the supposed Solomonic cities, but enough has been found to indicate a similarity to the other Omride sites. A six-chambered gate built of fine masonry, with ashlars at the jambs and connected to a casemate wall, was discovered on the southern edge of the site.

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The construction of the gate and the casemate wall involved the leveling of a terrace on the hillside and the import of a massive fill. In addition, fragmentary walls indicate that a large building, possibly an ashlar palace, was built on the northwestern side of the mound. It too may have been decorated with distinctive Proto-Aeolic capitals that were found at Gezer in the beginning of the twentieth century. These five sites offer a glimpse at the royal architecture of Israel’s Omride golden age. In addition to the artificial platforms for palace compounds of varying sizes and scale, the compounds—at least at Samaria, Jezreel, and Hazor—seem to have been largely empty, except for the specialized administrative buildings and royal palaces. Fine ashlar stones and Proto-Aeolic capitals were distinctive decorative elements in these sites. The main entrances to the royal compounds seem to have been guarded by six-chambered gates, and in some cases the compounds were surrounded by a moat and a glacis.1 Archaeologically and historically, the redating of these cities from Solomon’s era to the time of the Omrides has enormous implications. It removes the only archaeological evidence that there was ever a united monarchy based in Jerusalem and suggests that David and Solomon were, in political terms, little more than hill country chieftains, whose administrative reach remained on a fairly local level, restricted to the hill country. More important, it shows that despite the biblical emphasis on the uniqueness of Israel, a highland kingdom of a thoroughly conventional Near Eastern type arose in the north in the early ninth century BCE. A Forgotten Monument of Omride Rule? It is now possible to search for additional examples of Omride cities in more distant places, far beyond the traditional tribal inheritances of Israel. The Mesha stele reported that Omri built two cities in Moab, Ataroth and Jahaz, probably as his southern border strongholds in Transjordan (Figure 16, p. 136). Both are also mentioned in various geographical lists in the Bible, with Ataroth identified with the still unexcavated site of Khirbet Atarus southwest of the modern Jordanian town of Madaba. Jahaz is more difficult to identify. It is mentioned a few times in the Bible as being located on the desert fringe near the Arnon, the deep, winding canyon that runs through the heartland of Moab—from the eastern desert to its outlet in the Dead Sea. The Omrides seem to have extended their rule to this region. And on the northern bank of the Arnon is a remote Iron Age ruin called Khirbet el-Mudayna that contains all the features we have described as being typical

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of Omride architecture. The site, now being excavated by P.M. Michèle Daviau, of the Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, consists of a large fortress built on an elongated hill. A casemate wall encloses an area of about two and a half acres and is entered through a six-chambered gate. Defensive features include a sloping earthen rampart and a moat. Inside the compound are remains of a monumental building, including collapsed ashlars. Aerial photographs of the site hint that the entire complex was based on an artificial podium fill. The pioneering explorer of Jordan, Nelson Glueck, who visited the site in the 1930s, was so impressed with the compound’s features that he compared it to the immense and famous Maiden Castle Iron Age hill fort in England. Is it possible that this remote ruin is the ancient Omride outpost of Jahaz mentioned in the Mesha stele? Could it be that in the building of this remote border fort the Omride engineers and architects utilized the typical characteristics of their great construction projects in the northern kingdom west of the Jordan? Is it possible that as in the case of Samaria and Jezreel, they employed sophisticated earthmoving operations and huge retaining walls to turn a small hilltop settlement into an imposing stronghold? Perhaps the Omrides were even more powerful—and their cultural influence even more far-reaching—than is currently recognized.2 The Power of Diversity Where did the power and wealth to establish and maintain this full-fledged kingdom come from? What development in the northern hill country led to the emergence of the Omride state? We have already mentioned how the relatively limited resources and sparse population of Judah would have made it quite unlikely that David could have achieved vast territorial conquests or that his son Solomon would have been able to administer large territories. But as we have also mentioned, the resources of the northern hill country were much richer and its population was relatively large. With the destruction of the Canaanite centers in the lowlands, possibly during the raid of Shishak at the end of the tenth century BCE, any potential northern strongman would have been able to gain control of the fertile valleys of the north as well. That fits with what we see in the pattern of the most prominent Omride archaeological remains. In expanding from the original hill country domain of the northern kingdom of Israel to the heart of former Canaanite territory at Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer, and into the territories of southern Syria and Transjordan, the Omrides fulfilled the centuries-old dream of the rulers of the

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hill country of establishing a vast and diverse territorial state controlling rich agricultural lands and bustling international trade routes. It was also—of necessity —a multiethnic society. The northern kingdom of Israel joined the Samarian highlands with the northern valleys, integrating several different ecosystems and a heterogeneous population into its state. The highlands of Samaria—the core territory of the state and the seat of the capital—were inhabited by village communities that would have identified themselves culturally and religiously as Israelites. In the northern lowlands—the Jezreel and the Jordan valleys—the rural population was comprised mainly of settled peasant villages that had been for centuries closely linked to the Canaanite city-states. Farther north were villages more closely aligned to the Aramean culture of Syria and to the Phoenicians of the coast. In particular, the large and vibrant Canaanite population that endured in the north had to be integrated into the administrative machinery of any full-fledged state. Even before the recent archaeological discoveries, the unique demographic mix of the population of the northern kingdom, especially the relationship between Israelites and Canaanites, did not escape the attention of biblical scholars. On the basis of the biblical accounts of religious turmoil within the Omride kingdom, the German scholar Albrecht Alt suggested that the Omrides had developed a system of dual rule from their two main capitals, with Samaria functioning as a center for the Canaanite population and Jezreel serving as the capital for the northern Israelites. The recent archaeological and historical findings indicate exactly the opposite. The Israelite population was actually concentrated in the hill country around Samaria, while Jezreel, in the heart of the fertile valley, was situated in a region of clear Canaanite cultural continuity. Indeed, the remarkable stability in settlement patterns and the unchanging layout of small villages in the Jezreel Valley are clear indications that the Omrides did not shake the Canaanite rural system in the northern lowlands. For the Omrides, the task of political integration was especially pressing since competing states were emerging at the same time in neighboring Damascus, Phoenicia, and Moab—each with powerful cultural claims on population groups on the borders with Israel. The early ninth century was therefore the time when national and even some sort of territorial boundaries had to be defined. Thus the Omrides’ construction of impressive fortified compounds, some of them with palatial quarters, in the Israelite heartland, in the Jezreel valley, on the border with Aram-Damascus, and even further afield should be seen as serving both administrative necessities and royal propaganda. The British biblical scholar Hugh

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Williamson characterized them as visual displays of the power and prestige of the Omride state, aimed to impress, awe, and even intimidate the population both at home and along new frontiers. Of all the resources that the Omrides had at their disposal, heterogeneous population was perhaps the most important of all—for agriculture, building activities, and war. Although it is difficult to estimate the ninth century population of the kingdom of Israel with great precision, large-scale surveys in the region indicate that by the eighth century BCE—a century after the Omrides—the population of the northern kingdom may have reached about 350,000. At that time, Israel was surely the most densely populated state in the Levant, with far more inhabitants than Judah, Moab, or Ammon. Its only possible rival was the kingdom of Aram-Damascus in southern Syria, which—as we will see in greater detail in the next chapter—bitterly competed with Israel for regional hegemony. Other positive developments from outside the region greatly benefited the fortunes of the Omride kingdom. Its rise to power coincided with the revival of the eastern Mediterranean trade, and the harbor cities of Greece, Cyprus, and the Phoenician coast were once again strongly involved in maritime commerce. The strong Phoenician artistic influence on Israelite culture, the sudden appearance of large quantities of Cypro-Phoenician-style vessels in the cities of the kingdom of Israel, and—not coincidentally—the biblical testimony that Ahab married a Phoenician princess all seem to indicate that Israel was an active participant in this economic revival as a supplier of valuable agricultural products and a master over some of the most important overland trade routes of the Levant. Thus the Omride idea of a state covering large territories of both highlands and lowlands in certain ways revived ideas, practices, and material culture of Bronze Age Canaan, in the centuries before the rise of Israel. In fact, from the conceptual and functional points of view, the great Omride citadels resembled the capitals of the great Canaanite city-states of the Late Bronze Age, which ruled over a patchwork of peoples and lands. Thus from the point of view of both form and function, the layout of Megiddo in the ninth century BCE was not very different from its layout in the Late Bronze Age. Large parts of the mound were devoted to public buildings and open areas, while only limited areas were occupied by domestic quarters. As was the case in Canaanite Megiddo, the urban population constituted mainly the ruling elite, which controlled the rural hinterland. And a similar cultural continuity is exquisitely manifested in the nearby city of Taanach, where a magnificent decorated cult stand from the ninth century BCE bears elaborate motifs drawn from the Canaanite traditions of the Late Bronze Age.

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That is why it is difficult to insist, from a strictly archaeological perspective, that the kingdom of Israel as a whole was ever particularly Israelite in either the ethnic, cultural, or religious connotations of that name as we understand it from the perspective of the later biblical writers. The Israeliteness of the northern kingdom was in many ways a late monarchic Judahite idea. The Ultimate Villains? The writer of the books of Kings was concerned to show only that the Omrides were evil and that they received the divine punishment that their sinful arrogant behavior had so richly earned. Of course, he had to recount details and events about the Omrides that were well known through folktales and earlier traditions, but in all of them he wanted to highlight the Omrides’ dark side. Thus he diminished their military might with the story of the Aramean siege of Samaria, which was taken from events of later days, and with the accusation that in a moment of victory Ahab disobeyed a divine command to utterly annihilate his enemy. The biblical author closely linked the grandeur of the palace at Samaria and the majestic royal compound in Jezreel with idolatry and social injustice. He linked the images of the awesome might of Israelite chariots in full battle order with the Omride family’s horrible end. He wanted to delegitimize the Omrides and to show that the entire history of the northern kingdom had been one of sin that led to misery and inevitable destruction. The more Israel had prospered in the past, the more scornful and negative he became about its kings. The true character of Israel under the Omrides involves an extraordinary story of military might, architectural achievement, and (as far as can be determined) administrative sophistication. Omri and his successors earned the hatred of the Bible precisely because they were so strong, precisely because they succeeded in transforming the northern kingdom into an important regional power that completely overshadowed the poor, marginal, rural-pastoral kingdom of Judah to the south. The possibility that the Israelite kings who consorted with the nations, married foreign women, and built Canaanite-type shrines and palaces would prosper was both unbearable and unthinkable. Moreover, from the perspective of late monarchic Judah, the internationalism and openness of the Omrides was sinful. To become entangled with the ways of the neighboring peoples was, according to the seventh century Deuteronomistic ideology, a direct violation of divine command. But a lesson could still be learned from that experience. By the time of the compilation of the books of Kings,

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history’s verdict had already been returned. The Omrides had been overthrown and the kingdom of Israel was no more. Yet with the help of archaeological evidence and the testimony of outside sources, we can now see how the vivid scriptural portraits that doomed Omri, Ahab, and Jezebel to ridicule and scorn over the centuries skillfully concealed the real character of the first true kingdom of Israel.