Ancient Israel and Judah

In the Iron Age, the Southern Levant was home to two Israelite kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Their story begins with the early presence of Israelites in the hill country of Canaan. The first known written reference to "Israel" as a people appears on the Merneptah Stele, an Egyptian inscription from around 1208 BCE. Archaeologists believe Israelite culture grew out of the earlier Canaanite civilization. By the Iron Age II period, these two kingdoms covered much of Canaan.

The Hebrew Bible describes a "United Monarchy" that combined Israel and Judah as early as the 11th century BCE, led by kings Saul, David, and Solomon. According to this account, the unified kingdom later split: Israel in the north, with cities like Shechem and Samaria, and Judah in the south, home to Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple. However, historians and archaeologists debate whether this united kingdom ever existed—no physical remains of it are widely accepted. What is agreed is that Israel and Judah existed as separate kingdoms by around 900 BCE and 850 BCE, respectively. Much of what we know about them comes from the selective stories in the biblical Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.

Around 720 BCE, the northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Judah survived but became a client state, first of Assyria and then of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Jewish revolts against Babylon led to Judah's destruction in 586 BCE under King Nebuchadnezzar II. The Bible says his armies besieged Jerusalem from 589 to 586 BCE, destroying Solomon's Temple and exiling many Jews to Babylon—an event also recorded in the Babylonian Chronicles. This exile helped shape Israelite religion into a more monotheistic Judaism.

The exile ended when the Achaemenid Empire conquered Babylon around 538 BCE. Persian king Cyrus the Great issued the Edict of Cyrus, encouraging exiled Jews to return to Judah. This return to Zion began a formative period in which a distinct Jewish identity developed in the Persian province of Yehud. The destroyed temple was replaced by the Second Temple, starting the Second Temple period.

In archaeological terms, this history falls within the Iron Age, divided into Iron Age I (1150–950 BCE) and Iron Age II (950–586 BCE). An alternate name for this timeframe is the First Temple period (c. 1000–586 BCE). These periods cover the rise, development, and fall of Israel and Judah. Iron Age II ends with Babylon's conquest of Judah in 587/6 BCE. Afterward, periods are often named after ruling empires: the Babylonian period (586–539 BCE) and then the Second Temple period (c. 516 BCE–70 CE).

Geography shaped these kingdoms. The eastern Mediterranean coast runs 400 miles from the Taurus Mountains to the Sinai Peninsula, and 60 to 90 miles inland to the Arabian Desert. The coastal plain is broad in the south and narrows northward, backed by the Shephela foothills and then the hill country of Judea and Mount Ephraim, Galilee, and Mount Lebanon. To the east lies the Jordan River valley, the Dead Sea, and the Arabah, leading to the Red Sea. Beyond is the Syrian desert, separating the Levant from Mesopotamia. Egypt lies to the southwest, Mesopotamia to the northeast. This narrow region was a battleground for surrounding powers.

Ancient Israel emerged in the late second millennium BCE. In the Late Bronze Age (c. 1500–1200 BCE), Canaan was a patchwork of city-states under Egyptian rule. Many cities were abandoned or shrank, and the total settled population was probably under a hundred thousand. Settlement was mostly along the coast and major routes; the hill country that later became Israel was sparsely inhabited. The Amarna letters, found in Egypt, reveal regional politics and mention cities like Ashkelon, Hazor, Gezer, Shechem, Jerusalem, and Megiddo. Local rulers such as Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem and Lab'ayu of Shechem appealed to the pharaoh for help against rivals. Alongside these city-states, other groups are mentioned in Late Bronze Age texts.