Cow Town or Royal Capital?

043

BAR readers are already familiar with a recent school of Biblical interpretation that denies any historicity to the ancient Israelite kingdom of David and Solomon.¹ I call this the “revisionist” school. Others have described these scholars as “Biblical minimalists”² or even “Biblical nihilists.”

Jerusalem in the tenth century B.C.E., when David and Solomon were supposed to have lived, was, according to the Biblical revisionists, hardly a town, let alone a city. It was, they contend, still centuries away from being able to challenge any of the dozens of more powerful small autonomous towns in the region. According to two prominent members of this school of thought, University of Copenhagen scholars Niels Peter Lemche and Thomas Thompson, “[Jerusalem] first took on the form and acquired the status of a city, capable of being understood as a state capital, sometime in the middle of the seventh century.”³

The Biblical evidence that contradicts this view is worthless, they say, because it was written down hundreds of years after the events it describes. The Deuteronomistic history (Deuteronomy through Kings) was composed, according to these scholars, no earlier than the fifth century B.C.E. The histories of David and Solomon were thus written hundreds of years after the deaths of the two kings—assuming they were real people. Therefore, we are told, only non-Biblical sources and archaeological evidence can be used to write a history of early Israel—and, alas, there is not enough material of this kind to write such a history.

The argument of the Biblical revisionists is thus essentially negative: We cannot rely on the Bible. And other evidence varies from scant to nonexistent. Especially for Jerusalem, the archaeological evidence, despite the enormous number of excavations in the city, has provided very little, if anything, from the tenth century B.C.E.

My first response—I shall concentrate on Jerusalem here—is that they are wrong about the archaeological evidence. In the 1980s Yigal Shiloh found a few walls that can be dated to this period.⁴ In the 1960s Kathleen Kenyon also exposed a wall fragment from the tenth century.⁵ The famous Stepped-Stone Structure may also date to this period.⁶ Nevertheless, it is true that tenth-century remains from Jerusalem are few and come only from the ridge south of the Temple Mount known as the City of David; no pottery from this period has been found in other excavated areas of Jerusalem.

From this the revisionists conclude that at this time Jerusalem was at most a small provincial town.⁷

The paucity of material from the tenth 044century, however, can be explained on other grounds. First, the most likely place where Jerusalem’s public buildings and important monuments were located is under the Temple Mount, which for obvious reasons cannot be excavated. Thus, the most important area for investigation, and the one to which the Biblical histories of David and Solomon mainly refer, remains terra incognita.

But even the area that is, at least partially, available for excavation—the ridge known as the City of David—was continuously settled from the tenth through the early sixth centuries B.C.E. Destructions leave a distinct mark in the archaeological record. Not so continuous occupation, which often leaves only a few remains of earlier building activity. Jerusalem was built on terraces and bedrock; each new city destroyed what was underneath, robbed and reused stones from the earlier buildings, and set its foundations on the solid rock. So we should not expect to find abundant remains of earlier strata. No wonder that the city destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. is the best-known level of the Iron Age city.

For these reasons, it is dangerous to draw negative inferences from the lack of archaeological evidence.

Fortunately, in this case we have a way of testing whether it is legitimate to make any negative conclusions based on the paucity of archaeological evidence. This involves the famous Amarna letters of the 14th century B.C.E., discovered at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt. The letters, written in Akkadian cuneiform, the diplomatic lingua franca of the day, consist of over 300 pieces of diplomatic correspondence between two Egyptian pharaohs (Amenophis III [1391–1353] and Amenophis IV, also known as Akhenaten [1353–1337]) and local rulers in Canaan. The letters are, of course, a treasure trove of information about the period.

Jerusalem, called Urusalim in the Amarna letters,^a figures prominently in this diplomatic correspondence. 045According to the Amarna letters, Canaan was then under Egyptian hegemony, and Jerusalem was ruled by a local king. The city was the seat of a local dynasty in which governance passed from father to son. In non-Egyptian correspondence these local rulers were also referred to as kings.⁸ Egyptian messengers came quite often to the court of Jerusalem. The Jerusalem king sent rich caravans loaded with gifts for the pharaoh.

Jerusalem’s territory extended from just south of Bethel in the north to Tel Hebron in the south, and from the Jordan River in the east to the hills of the Shephelah in the west.⁹

It is clear from the Amarna letters that in the 14th century B.C.E. Jerusalem was a capital city from which a considerable territory was ruled (subject to Egyptian oversight). It had a palace and a court with attendants and servants, a temple in which the king played a central role, and an ideology that established him as head of state.

The court also had a scribe, who was in charge of diplomatic correspondence with Egyptian authorities. Six letters were sent by the king of Jerusalem to the pharaoh, exhibiting the diplomatic sophistication of his court and the quality of his scribe.

The picture as revealed by the archaeological record alone, on the other hand, is rather opaque. As with the tenth century, there are hardly any remains from the Late Bronze Age II (14th–13th century B.C.E.). Only a handful of Late Bronze Age II pottery and a few building fragments have been unearthed in the extensive excavations in the Late Bronze Age II city. Scholars would never have guessed from the excavations of Jerusalem that any scribal activity took place there in Late Bronze Age II.

Let’s now turn from the Amarna letters to the Bible—in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, after the return to Jerusalem of the exiles from Babylonia in the fifth century B.C.E. A major fortification wall built under Nehemiah’s supervision is described in detail in Nehemiah’s memoirs (Nehemiah 3:1–32). There is little doubt that such a wall was in fact constructed, but almost no trace of it has been positively identified in excavations. The city of the Persian period, described so vividly in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, is known only from fills and building fragments and is mainly identified because it is sandwiched between the debris from the Iron Age and the Hellenistic period.¹⁰ This is another example of the difficulty in recovering strata that developed peacefully and did not end with catastrophe. It is another caution against drawing negative conclusions from negative archaeological evidence.

What I have argued so far is that we cannot judge Jerusalem on the basis of negative archaeological evidence. Is there anything we can say affirmatively about the tenth-century city? The answer is yes, on several counts.

First, the Bible. Did the scribes who wrote the histories of David and Solomon have before them original documents from the time of these kings? Or did they compose the history only on the basis of oral traditions? Was there even writing in tenth-century Jerusalem?

Many scholars argue that the Bible’s references to the office of the scribe in the courts of David and Solomon, along with various Biblical lists that were possibly drawn from original documents, indicate that the tenth-century court of Jerusalem was indeed literate. Scholars of the revisionist school, on the other hand, assume that writing did not enter the Jerusalem court until the eighth century B.C.E. and that the Biblical history of the united monarchy is no different from the history of premonarchical Israel.

It is true that no extra-Biblical source mentions either David or Solomon. This is not surprising. Detailed accounts of first-millennium international affairs appear for the first time in the ninth century B.C.E. All Syro-Palestinian inscriptions of the tenth century refer to local affairs and shed no light on political events. In other words, even if David and Solomon accomplished the deeds attributed to them in the Bible, no source would have mentioned their names.

There is one exception to the local nature of tenth-century inscriptions: the topographical list of Pharaoh Shishak (945–924 B.C.E.), the founder of Egypt’s XXII Dynasty. Toward the end of his reign, Shishak conducted a military campaign in Canaan, primarily against Israel and the non-Judahite parts of the Negev, and left a long list of places conquered by his army—including the town of Arad.

Shishak’s campaign is described in 1 Kings 14:25–28. How did the author of the Book of Kings, who probably lived in the late seventh or early sixth century B.C.E., some 300 years after the time of Shishak, know about this military operation? The answer is clear: He must have taken the information from a written text. Otherwise, the memory of the operation would have fallen into oblivion.

The account of Shishak’s campaign in Kings indicates that scribes must have been active in Jerusalem’s court at least by the 046late tenth century B.C.E., during the reign of Rehoboam. It is unlikely, however, that scribes were introduced by the relatively unimportant Rehoboam. The Bible relates that the court employed scribes even earlier; royal scribes are mentioned in David’s and Solomon’s lists of high officials (2 Samuel 8:17, 20:25; 1 Kings 4:3). It would have been scribes who kept the administrative records that are included in the histories of David and Solomon:

• the lists of David’s wives and sons (2 Samuel 3:2–5, 5:14–16);

• the list of David’s officers (2 Samuel 23:8–39);

• the list of Solomon’s high officials (1 Kings 4:2–6);

• the list of Solomon’s 12 officers and their districts (1 Kings 4:9–19);

• details of Solomon’s building activities in Jerusalem and elsewhere in his kingdom (1 Kings 9:15, 17–18).

Records of this kind are routinely produced by scribes as part of the administrative management of kingdoms. This information might well have been drawn from old written records and used by the Biblical author to describe affairs of state in the time of David and Solomon.

Ostraca from both Israel and Judah dating to the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E. also demonstrate that writing was an important aspect of the tenth-century court. These ostraca, in Old Hebrew script, contain certain hieratic numerals and signs (hieratic is a cursive form of Egyptian hieroglyphics) that are not found in the documents of Israel’s neighbors, but only in Hebrew script. Egyptian relations with the Philistine and Phoenician kingdoms were much closer in the ninth and early eighth centuries than they were with Israel and Judah—so it is hardly conceivable that hieratic signs would have entered only the Hebrew script at that time. Moreover, no definite eighth- or seventh-century paleographical parallels have been found in Egypt for many of the hieratic signs found on the Hebrew ostraca. These hieratic signs must have entered the Hebrew script before the division of the monarchy—namely, in the tenth century B.C.E.¹¹

From all of this we can reasonably conclude that writing was introduced into the Jerusalem court in the tenth century B.C.E., probably in the time of David or Solomon. Scribes operated in the court of Jerusalem as the king’s private secretaries and as officials in the administration of the kingdom.

There is more: The memory of David’s founding of Jerusalem as the capital of his dynasty is deeply rooted in Israelite historical traditions. David is described as the conqueror of Jerusalem and the founder of a royal dynasty in Biblical passages written at different times and in a variety of genres—history, prophecy, hymn, liturgy. These accounts tell how David captured the stronghold of Zion, renamed it the City of David, occupied and rebuilt the city (2 Samuel 5:6–9), and transferred the ark of YHWH to his new capital (2 Samuel 6:1–19). A passage from Isaiah recalls David’s capture of Jerusalem (which is metaphorically called “Ariel,” or YHWH’s altar hearth) with the words “Ah, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David encamped!” (Isaiah 29:1). The procession of the ark from its former abode in “the countryside of Jaar” to its permanent abode in Jerusalem is alluded to in a royal psalm (Psalm 132:6–8). The variety of sources and genres strongly suggest a historical basis for these records. Since scholars generally accept the reliability of the Biblical account of Omri’s founding of Samaria as the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 16:24), why should they not believe that the account of David’s conquest and occupation of Jerusalem is also basically historical?

Moreover, David’s renaming of Jerusalem as “City of David” has distinct parallels in the ancient Near East. It was a common practice to name cities after their founders. For example, Kar Tukulti-Ninurta is named after the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I; Dur Sharru-ken is named after the Assyrian king Sargon II; and Azitiwadiya is named after its founder, the king of Adana.

Another vital piece of evidence for the existence of the Davidic monarchy comes from the ninth-century B.C.E. stela from Tel Dan, in northern Galilee. The first fragment of this Aramaic stela was discovered in 1993; two other pieces were found in 1994.¹² In lines 7 through 9 of the inscription, the Aramean king, most probably Hazael, king of Damascus, writes: “[I killed Jo]ram son of [Ahab] king of Israel, and [I] killed [Ahaz]iahu son of [Jehoram kin]g of Beth David.” 047This indicates that the kingdom of Judah was called Beth David (House of David) in the second half of the ninth century B.C.E. We know from other sources that this form of designation—“house of” (beth), plus the name of the founder—was typical of the many new west Semitic kingdoms that emerged in the Fertile Crescent in the early first millennium B.C.E. For example, the north Syrian kingdom of Arpad is called Bit-Agusi, after the name of Gusi/Agusi; the kingdom of Damascus is called Bit-Hazaili, after the name of Hazael; and the kingdom of Israel is called Bit-Humri, after the name of Omri.¹³ The name Beth David for the kingdom of Judah fits perfectly into this ancient Near Eastern usage.

I also believe that we have enough in the Bible to conclude that Solomon must have built a temple, even if it was not as grand as the Bible describes it. We must remember that the author of the Book of Kings lived hundreds of years after the time of Solomon and did not know the exact shape, dimensions or contents of the original temple. He therefore described it after the temple of his own day, assuming a direct continuity between the earliest and latest temples. The original temple would have been much smaller and more modestly decorated; it would have been renovated and gradually expanded during the 350 years of its existence, until it assumed the splendor of the late monarchical period temple. Yet the memory of Solomon as founder of the temple must be authentic, and it is even possible that the historian had seen a Solomonic building inscription from the dedication of the original temple.

Another bit of evidence confirming the existence of the tenth-century B.C.E. united monarchy comes from Isaiah. This eighth-century prophet knew that a united monarchy existed before the division, after Solomon’s death, into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. In an undeniably early passage (late eighth century B.C.E.), Isaiah speaks of a terrible time that is coming, a time so bad that we have not seen its like “since the day that Ephraim left Judah” (Isaiah 7:17). Ephraim is another name for Israel. The prophet is referring to the split-up of the united monarchy.

All this evidence strongly supports the Biblical claims that (a) David conquered Jerusalem and made it his capital, (b) he founded a royal dynasty that ruled from Jerusalem, (c) Solomon built a temple, and (d) a court was established in the new capital with scribes among its officials.

We can also learn a great deal about the united monarchy from the archaeological evidence relating to its emergence. The period before this monarchy is the period of the Judges. In archaeological terminology, the period of the Judges is Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.E.). Recent archaeological surveys have shown that there were about 255 settlements in the central hill country of Canaan in Iron Age I.¹⁴ Even if there was only a modest increase during the time of the united monarchy, there must have been 300 to 350 settlements in the central highlands that were ruled from Jerusalem, as compared to about 30 settlements in Late Bronze Age II. Such a large number of settlements within the monarchy’s confines would have required the immediate creation of an administrative apparatus to manage the districts of the new kingdom.

After the split-up, there is no question about the settlement density in the northern kingdom of Israel. The situation in Judah was less dramatic, but not quite so extreme as the Biblical revisionists would have us believe. For example, according to Thompson, “There is … little basis for affirming the existence of a kingdom of Judah in the south [at the time of the split-up described in the Bible].”¹⁵ There was not “sufficient density of population,” he says.¹⁶ According to recent archaeological surveys, however, there were at least 34 settlements in the Judahite highlands alone in the tenth century. Following the division of the monarchy, there must have been 35 to 45 sites in the kingdom of Judah, plus a few more sites in the Shephelah and in the Beersheba Valley—more than the number of sites in the kingdoms of Shechem and Jerusalem combined during the Amarna period (14th century B.C.E.).

Thompson unfortunately neither takes into account all of the available evidence nor does justice to the complexity of the problem.

Before concluding, I would like to discuss two other points. First, should the united monarchy be considered a kingdom, like a modern state, or should it more properly be described as a chiefdom? Second, what were the geographical limits of the Davidic “empire”?

A monograph by D.W. Jamieson-Drake¹⁷ is widely cited by the Biblical revisionists for the proposition that Judah did not become a state, and that Jerusalem was not a major administrative center, any earlier than the eighth century B.C.E. Jamieson-Drake bases his conclusion on surveys and excavations in modern Israel; he analyzes the size and distribution of settlements as well as the kinds of social stratification suggested by public works and luxury items. In the tenth and ninth centuries, Jamieson-Drake argues, Judah should be defined as a chiefdom, not even an incipient state: “Judah was a small state in the eighth-seventh centuries, but not before.”¹⁸ The Biblical revisionists have reached similar conclusions.¹⁹

To his credit (and in contrast to other Biblical revisionists), Jamieson-Drake uses clear definitions of “chiefdom” and “state,” and he provides clear criteria for the transition from one kind of entity to the other.²⁰ His conclusions are sound and reasonable, and accord well with the survey conducted recently in the area of the kingdom of Judah.²¹ Jamieson-Drake does not dismiss the Biblical descriptions of David and Solomon, but he gives them little credence and suggests that these two kings only set in motion the institutional forces that developed gradually into a full-blown state in the eighth century B.C.E.²²

While Jamieson-Drake draws a clear line between Biblical and socio-archaeological definitions and data, the line is less clear in the works of his followers. Broadly speaking, they all adopt his conclusion that a state (in the modern sociological sense) centered in Jerusalem emerged in the early eighth century B.C.E. at the earliest. Other Biblical revisionists, however, illegitimately use Jamieson-Drake’s socio-archaeological conclusions to dismiss most, or even all, of the Biblical data about tenth-century Israel.²³

I agree with Jamieson-Drake that Judah was a chiefdom in the tenth and ninth centuries and that it did not become a state until the eighth century. I would suggest that Jerusalem, the center of this chiefdom, was what might be defined as a “stronghold,” that is, a fortified residence located in the mountains. 067It was common in western Asiatic chiefdoms for tribal chiefs to have their seats in fortified or naturally hilly strongholds. Such forts were sometimes the nuclei around which capital cities later developed. This is how Jerusalem gradually expanded in the ninth century B.C.E., becoming a capital city and the center of a state only in the eighth century.

But its rulers considered themselves kings and were regarded as such by their neighbors and inhabitants. They saw Jerusalem as the governing center of the tenth-century B.C.E. kingdom. The “stronghold of Zion” was the seat of the Davidic dynasty and the ruling elite. Indeed, the City of David was known as “the stronghold of Zion” (2 Samuel 5:7; 1 Chronicles 11:5).

We must always take into account the gap between modern definitions of states and how ancient societies defined themselves. A clear line must be drawn between the two sets of terms. Scholars should state explicitly which terminology they are using. Modern definitions might be the more “scientifically” accurate, but it is equally important to analyze ancient societies according to their own terms and self-perceptions.

The same kinds of considerations are relevant to the geographical extent of the Davidic kingdom: We must distinguish between what was understood at the time as part of the kingdom and how we would characterize it today using modern sociological and anthropological definitions.

According to the Biblical account, David conquered Philistia, Aram, Ammon, Moab and Edom and brought all these kingdoms under his yoke. This great kingdom was short-lived, however, and fell apart immediately after David’s death (1 Kings 11:14–25).

Revisionist scholars sometimes assume that such an “empire” could not have existed.²⁴ But was it really impossible?

Again, let us look at a comparison provided by the Amarna letters. In about 1400 B.C.E. (Late Bronze Age II), Shechem was the seat of a local dynasty. A military offensive by the Shechemite king Lab’ayu extended his kingdom east to the Jordan River and southwest as far as Gezer and Gath in southern Canaan. Lab’ayu mounted this offensive even though his kingdom previously included only about 25 settlements.

Compare this with the situation in David’s time. As we have seen, about 255 Iron Age I sites have been discovered in the central hill country of Palestine. Taking into account a moderate increase of settlement, we may assume that the overall number of tenth-century sites in the central highlands was at least 300. Even if we assume that David’s kingdom encompassed only the highlands on both sides of the Jordan, the population in his kingdom was many times larger than that of Shechem in the Late Bronze Age II. This abundance of manpower would have enabled David to mobilize an army and conquer large areas. Since David’s conquest is described as short-lived, with the “empire” falling apart immediately after the conqueror’s death, no established administration would have been set up in the subjugated areas. Only the might of David and the fear of his army would have kept them under his dominion. There are many historical analogies for short-lived conquests of large territories; these conquests also ended with the death of the conqueror. There is therefore nothing impossible about the main outlines of the Biblical account of David’s conquest.

Mario Liverani has written about the requirements for the exertion of physical control over a population: “The physical presence of the king in a remote country is sufficient (although necessary) to demonstrate his political control thereon. A victorious raid, even a pacific one, an expedition aiming at knowledge more than at conquest, is the [only] required symbolic achievement—not an effective administrative organization.”²⁵

This notion of subjugation, which is supported by many historical examples, may well explain the Biblical description of David’s great kingdom, provided that at a certain moment in his career he actually reached the remote areas attributed to him. In short, there is nothing impossible about the Biblical description of the extent of David’s kingdom, even applying modern concepts of political control.

BAR readers are already familiar with a recent school of Biblical interpretation that denies any historicity to the ancient Israelite kingdom of David and Solomon.1 I call this the “revisionist” school. Others have described these scholars as “Biblical minimalists”2 or even “Biblical nihilists.” Jerusalem in the tenth century B.C.E., when David and Solomon were supposed to have lived, was, according to the Biblical revisionists, hardly a town, let alone a city. It was, they contend, still centuries away from being able to challenge any of the dozens of more powerful small autonomous towns in the region. According to two […]