Authors: Israel Finkelstein,Neil Asher Silberman
Critical evidence comes from the Assyrian sources, which reveal that the kingdom of Israel was famous for its chariot forces long after King Ahab faced Shalmaneser III with two thousand chariots at the battle of Qarqar in Syria in
853
BCE
. The Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley has found convincing evidence in Assyrian records that some of the empire’s vassal states specialized in the breeding and export of horses used in chariot and cavalry warfare. We know that Jeroboam’s Israel prospered through its specialization in certain commodities. Could it be that what we see at Megiddo is the architectural remains of an important horse breeding center for the famous chariot corps of the kingdom of Israel? And is it possible that in the days of Jeroboam II Israel bred horses not only for its own military requirements but for chariot units throughout the Assyrian empire? A clue in this direction comes from another Assyrian vassal state, the kingdom of Urartu in eastern Anatolia, which was considered to possess the best cavalry in the world. We know from an explicit mention in Assyrian sources that horses were bred there for export. And interestingly, buildings have been uncovered in Iron II sites in Urartu that are strikingly similar in plan to the Megiddo “stables.”
But perhaps the most indicative association of Israelites with military horsemanship comes from a period immediately after the conquest of the northern kingdom by Assyria—when a special Israelite chariot unit was incorporated into the Assyrian army. In fact, the research of Stephanie Dalley on Assyrian tablets called the “horse lists” provides information on officials, officers, and units in the Assyrian army in the days of Sargon II. These records indicate that while other specialized troops from conquered regions were incorporated into the Assyrian army as individuals, the Israelite chariot brigade was the only foreign unit permitted to retain its national identity. The Assyrian king Sargon II says it best: “I formed a unit with two hundred of their chariots for my royal force.”
It would seem, therefore, that because Israelite charioteers were so famous for their skill, they were allowed a special status. Among other details
in the horse lists was mention of an Israelite commander named Shema, probably from the chariot corps, who served in a high post in the Assyrian army and was a member of the king’s entourage.
The prosperity and prominence that the kingdom of Israel attained during the reign of Jeroboam II offered great wealth to the Israelite aristocracy. Although the rather chaotic digging methods of the early twentieth century excavations of Samaria do not permit a detailed analysis of the buildings and renovations of the royal city in the early eighth century, two extremely interesting sets of small finds offer at least a glimpse of the opulence and wealth of Israel’s ruling class. Over two hundred delicate ivory plaques carved in Phoenician style with Egyptian motifs and stylistically dated to the eighth century
BCE
probably decorated the walls of the palace or the fine furniture of Israelite royalty. They attest to the wealth and cosmopolitan tastes of the Israelite monarchs and the noble families of their kingdom. The famous Samaria ostraca, receipts for shipments of oil and wine delivered from the countryside to the capital city, represent a sophisticated system of credit and record keeping in which the produce of the hinterland was claimed by large landowners or by government tax officials who supervised the collection of the crop.
It is at the height of prosperity of the northern kingdom under the rule of Jeroboam II that we can finally identify the full complement of the criteria of statehood: literacy, bureaucratic administration, specialized economic production, and a professional army. It is also the period when we have the first record of prophetic protest. The oracles of the prophets Amos and Hosea are the earliest preserved prophetic books, containing material that reflects the heyday of Jeroboam II. Their scathing denunciations of the corrupt and impious aristocracy of the north serve both to document the opulence of this era and to express for the first time ideas that would exert a profound effect on the crystallization of the Deuteronomistic ideology.
Amos is described as a shepherd who wandered north from the rural Judahite village of Tekoa. But whatever his precise social status or reason for
preaching in the kingdom of Israel, the oracles recorded in his name provide a searing condemnation of the lavish lifestyles and material reality of Israel’s aristocracy in the eighth century
BCE
:
Woe to those who lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the midst of the stall; who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David invent for themselves instruments of music; who drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils . . . (A
MOS
6
:
4
–
6
)
Amos goes on to condemn those who “have built houses of hewn stone” (
5
:
11
), and his contemporary, the prophet Hosea, speaks out against those who “multiply falsehood and violence; they make a bargain with Assyria, and oil is carried to Egypt” (Hosea
12
:
1
). In these and many other allusions, the two prophets outline the economic connections and material culture that have been so abundantly illustrated by the archaeology of the kingdom of Israel.
Beyond the condemnation of the rich and the powerful, Amos and Hosea both offer searing critiques of the social injustices, idolatry, and domestic tensions that international trade and the dependence on Assyria have brought. According to Hosea, “Assyria shall not save us, we will not ride upon horses; and we will say no more, ‘Our God,’ to the work of our hands” (Hosea
14
:
3
). Amos condemns the wickedness of those who merely pay lip service to the dictates of religion while gathering riches for themselves and abusing the poor:
Hear this, you who trample upon the needy, and bring the poor of the land to an end, saying, “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, and that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great, and deal deceitfully with false balances, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and sell the refuse of the wheat?” (A
MOS
8
:
4
–
6
)
These prophetic condemnations were preserved by the followers of Amos and Hosea and took on a new meaning after the fall of the kingdom of Israel. For in their critique of the wealthy and in their revulsion at the effect of foreign ways on the life of the people of Israel, they heralded the
spiritual and social movement that would leave an indelible impression on the crystallizing biblical text.
With the death of Jeroboam II in
747
BCE
, the structure of Israelite society—despite its material prosperity and achievements in architecture and military arts—proved hollow. Factions probably arose among regional administrators, army officers, and special interest groups. King followed king in relatively quick and usually bloody succession. The delicate balance of economic independence and political alliance with, or subservience to, Assyria gradually broke down. The narrative presented in the second book of Kings, supplemented by occasional confirmations in the records of Assyria, is all we have to go on in documenting the fall of Israel.
The series of violent dynastic upheavals at Samaria could not have come at a more dangerous time. Great changes were taking place in Mesopotamia. In
745—
precisely after two kings were assassinated in Samaria—the ambitious governor of the great Assyrian city of Calah in the Tigris valley revolted against his own overlords and began the process of transforming Assyria into a brutal and predatory state.
This new king, Tiglath-pileser III (also known by his Babylonian name, Pul, in the Bible), began nothing less than a thorough revamping of the Assyrian empire—primarily in its relations to its former vassals, which would now be much more directly controlled. In
738
BCE
, he led his army on a great threatening campaign westward, in which he succeeded in cowering Assyria’s formerly semi-independent vassals with unprecedented economic demands. But that was only the beginning. In the era of Assyrian imperialism that Tiglath-pileser had inaugurated, vassaldom would soon give way to conquest and annexation—with local populations being subject to deportation wherever the Assyrian authorities wished.
In Samaria, the Israelite capital—with the death of King Menahem in
737
BCE
and the almost immediate assassination of his son and successor by a military officer named Pekah, son of Remaliah—the foreign policy of the kingdom of Israel changed. We have no information on the political and personal motives of Pekah, this latest usurper, but he suddenly ended Israel’s obsequious vassaldom to Assyria. Perhaps in a desperate reaction to
the change of Assyrian policies and the inability to meet Assyrian demands, Pekah joined a coalition of other local powers—including King Rezin of Damascus and some Philistine cities—in a desperate gamble for independence.
What followed was a tragic series of miscalculations that spelled the end of independent Israel—and indeed the possibility that any of the states in the Levant would ever be free to act independently as long as the Assyrian empire survived. Pekah and Rezin hoped to organize a broad, committed front of resistance to Assyria by all the states of the region. The coalition failed to materialize and Tiglath-pileser reacted in fury. After capturing Damascus, executing Rezin, and making his way down the Mediterranean coast, destroying potentially rebellious cities and ensuring that no help for the insurgents would be coming from Egypt, Tiglath-pileser set his sights with full force on the kingdom of Israel. Conquering most of its territories, destroying its main cities, and deporting part of its population, Tiglathpileser brought Israel to its knees.
By the time of Tiglath-pileser’s death in
727
BCE
, most of the territory of the northern kingdom had been annexed directly to the Assyrian empire. They were then administratively divided into the provinces of Dor (along the northern coast), Megiddo (in the Jezreel valley and Galilee), and Gilead (in the Transjordanian highlands). A relief from the time of Tiglath-pileser III depicting the siege of a city named Gaazru—probably Gezer—indicates that the southern coastal plain of Israel did not escape the bitter fate of the northern provinces. All that was left of the northern kingdom was merely the hill country around the capital, Samaria. And so Tiglath-pileser could boast in a monumental inscription: “The land of Bit-Humria [i.e., the House of Omri], all of whose cities I leveled to the ground in my former campaigns . . . I plundered its livestock, and I spared only isolated Samaria.”
The new-style Assyrian empire under Tiglath-pileser was not content with mere territorial conquest. The Assyrians viewed all the lands, animals, resources, and peoples of the areas they had conquered as objects—as chattel—that could and should be moved or exploited to serve the best
interests of the Assyrian state. Thus the Assyrians deployed a policy of deportation and repopulation on a grand scale. This policy had many objectives, which all served the goals of continuing imperial development. From a military point of view, the capture and removal of native villages had the effect of terrorizing and demoralizing the population and splitting them up to prevent further organized resistance. From an economic point of view, large-scale conscription into the imperial army brought new manpower and military technologies into a framework where the new recruits could be carefully watched. The forced resettlement of artisans in the centers of the Assyrian heartland boosted the trained human resources at the disposal of the Assyrian economy. And finally, the systematic resettling of new populations in empty or recently conquered territory was intended to expand the overall agricultural output of the empire.
Tiglath-pileser III initiated these processes almost immediately in the regions of the kingdom of Israel his armies had overrun. The number of deportees given by his annals amounts to
13
,
500
people. If it is not an exaggeration—as archaeological surveys in lower Galilee, indicating widespread depopulation, suggest—then the Assyrians deported a significant component of the rural population of these areas to Assyria.
The disastrous results of Tiglath-Pileser’s initial assault can be seen at many sites. At Hazor, which is specifically mentioned in the Bible in relation to his campaign (
2
Kings
15
:
29
), the last Israelite city was destroyed and burned to ashes. There is clear archaeological evidence that in the days before the final Assyrian assault, the city’s fortifications were reinforced—in vain, as events transpired. Wholesale destruction has also been traced at Dan and Beth-shean. But at Megiddo, the Assyrian intentions were somewhat different since it would become a new center of imperial administration. The domestic quarters were set on fire; collapsed, burnt buildings and crushed vessels tell the story of the last hours of the Israelite city. But the pillared buildings—the famous Megiddo stables—were left untouched and probably reused for a while. The Assyrians intended to rebuild the site for their own ends, and the fine stones in the stable structures proved to be an excellent source of building materials.
Megiddo provides the best evidence for the early stages of the Assyrian occupation. After the partial destruction of the last Israelite city, a short period of abandonment was followed by extensive rebuilding. The Assyrians
made Megiddo the capital of their new province, covering former territories of the northern kingdom in the northern valleys and the hills of Galilee. Within a few decades, official documents refer to Megiddo as the seat of the governor. The focus of the new city, which was rebuilt in a totally new plan, was near the gate, where two palaces were built in typical Assyrian style. The rest of the city was laid out in a precise grid of parallel east-west and north-south streets forming rectangular blocks for domestic buildings—a method of city planning hitherto unknown in the Levant. In light of the radical changes, it is possible that new people, deported from other conquered areas of the Assyrian empire, were now settled there.