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For some, archaeology proves that David and Solomon ruled over a powerful kingdom made up of walled, well-fortified cities and towns, places like Megiddo, Hazor, Gezer, and more recently, Khirbet Qeiyafa. For others, the same archaeology shows that their kingdom wasn’t much of a kingdom at all—and certainly nothing like the great power described in the Bible.
We contend, however, that archaeology, at least as traditionally practiced, will likely never be able to identify David and Solomon’s kingdom. Why? Because it was largely invisible.1
What do we mean? It is very possible that David and Solomon did rule over a powerful kingdom, but it was made up of not only city dwellers and townspeople but also pastoral nomads, a population whose nomadic way of life—living in tents and herding animals as they move from place to place—leaves few, if any, archaeological traces. Their temporary campsites are difficult to identify and date, and in most of the southern Levant, such remains have been erased by later agricultural activities and environmental forces. Even when such ephemeral remains are found, as is sometimes the case in arid regions of southern Israel and Jordan, the finds are typically so poor that, except for indicating the presence of such groups, we gain little insight into their cultural identity or political connections.
Our claim represents a substantial challenge for biblical archaeology, which has long suffered from an “architectural bias.” In prioritizing the excavation of ancient cities and towns, archaeologists have assumed that ancient Israel’s population was primarily urban or settled and that only settled societies form complex political structures like states and kingdoms. Both of these assumptions must now be rethought.
Most scholars agree that the Israelites first emerged from the pastoral-nomadic populations of the southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1200 BCE). The subsequent Iron Age I (c. 1200–1000 BCE) is often imagined as a time when the Israelite tribes began to settle down in small highland villages, as attested by scores of small sites that appear in the central hill country at this time. By the time of David and Solomon in the tenth century, larger fortified cities had appeared, at sites like Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer, which were thought by many to evidence the formation of a united kingdom that had extended its power both north and south across the land. More recently, however, the date of many of these sites has been challenged, with some scholars arguing they were only fortified in the ninth century BCE, during the time of Kings Omri and Ahab of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
Even if some fortified cities and towns were built and settled, however, they tell only part of the story. It is likely that many Israelites remained pastoral nomads and continued this way of life through the tenth century. For one thing, the Hebrew Bible references tent-dwelling Israelites well into the period of the Divided Monarchy, with some groups, like the nomadic and wine-avoiding Rechabites (Jeremiah 35), remaining in tents through the time of the Babylonian conquest in 586 BCE.
Archaeologically, the problem is that it is very difficult to find the remains of nomads in the main areas of David and Solomon’s rule—the central highlands, the Shephelah (the foothills between the highlands and coastal plain), and the northern valleys. These regions have been affected by millennia of almost continuous settlement, farming, and environmental disruptions. As a result, the archaeological remains of these nomadic Israelites are largely invisible, as are any indications of the role they may have played in the kingdom’s society, economy, and political structure.
Timna map
We do have one important archaeological clue, however, that during the time of the United Monarchy a large portion of Israel’s population was still nomadic. Between the tenth and early eighth centuries, the Southern Kingdom of Judah witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of settled sites; suddenly a very large number of people become archaeologically visible. This dramatic increase is best explained by the “settling down” of a large and previously nomadic population. Otherwise, archaeology tells us little about the nomads who made up the bulk of ancient Israel’s population.
Fortunately, the Hebrew Bible provides several direct and indirect references to these pastoral-nomadic groups. Perhaps the most famous is found in 1 Kings 12:16, when the northern tribes rebel against Rehoboam, Solomon’s son and successor, and shout out, “To your tents, O Israel!” While some scholars understand “tents” to be a symbolic anachronism referencing Israel’s earliest history, it is much more likely that most Israelites still lived in tents during the time of Rehoboam.
We find another clear example in 1 Kings 4, which lists the officials whom Solomon posted in different parts of his kingdom to collect taxes. One of these officials was located on the east side of the Jordan River at or near a place called Mahanaim (Hebrew for “two camps”). There is no obvious reason for locating an official here until we consider that Mahanaim lies on a route known as the Way of the Tent Dwellers (Judges 8:11). This route was used by pastoral nomads moving between the Transjordanian highlands and the Jordan Valley, making Mahanaim a good place from which to levy the king’s taxes as they came past.
TODD BOLEN/BIBLEPLACES.COM
It is also likely that the very frequent Hebrew term ‘ir (plural: ‘arim), which is most commonly translated as “city” or “town,” could sometimes refer to a pastoral-nomadic encampment. Numbers 13:19, for example, clearly indicates that ‘ir could be a fortified place or an unwalled camp (Hebrew: mehaneh). We also have Judges 10:4, where ‘arim are equated with encampments (Hebrew: hawot), and 1 Samuel 15:5, where we find ‘ir Amalek, which should be understood as the central camp of the Amalekites, a pastoral-nomadic group from the desert lands south of Judah. As such, it may well be that many of the “cities” we read about in the narratives of early Israel and the kingdom of David and Solomon should actually be imagined as camps of pastoral-nomadic clans or communities made up of both settled families and tent dwellers.
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On the surface, it might seem that our argument stands in contrast to the possibility of a powerful United Monarchy. After all, how could nomads, whom we typically think of as fragmented and unruly, create a kingdom? For most people, the word “nomad” brings to mind the 19th-century stories of European explorers who had to pay bribes to nomadic tribes to cross the Ottoman Empire’s more lawless territories. In fact, this very perception is the main reason why biblical scholars and archaeologists alike could not imagine nomads as being part of the ancient Israelite kingdom, despite the biblical and anthropological evidence to the contrary.
Although rare, powerful nomadic kingdoms are certainly known to history. Indeed, if we widen our historical and geographical perspective, we find the well-known empire of the Mongol nomads created by Genghis Khan in the 13th century. From the Near East, we have the Middle Bronze Age kingdom of Mari along the Euphrates, which was composed of a dynamic mix of sedentary people and pastoral nomads, often within the same tribal groups.
Closer in time and place with ancient Israel, there is the biblical Kingdom of Edom. Recent archaeological work at sites such as Timna and Wadi Faynan in the Aravah region south of the Dead Sea has uncovered evidence of a highly organized nomadic society that mined, smelted, and traded vast quantities of copper during the early Iron Age (12th–9th centuries BCE). Based on their location, this nomadic group can be identified with the biblical Edomites (2 Samuel 8:13; 1 Kings 11:15-17).
Importantly, however, archaeologists can see these Edomites only because of the remains of their copper industry, which left thousands of mines and rich assemblages of artifacts in the waste piles of the smelting sites. Yet we are missing evidence for where they lived, as no remains of their tents or houses have been found. Without the evidence of their copper industry, this powerful kingdom would otherwise be invisible.
PHOTO COURTESY OF EREZ BEN-YOSEF AND THE CENTRAL TIMNA VALLEY PROJECT
We can infer from the Edomite case that the ancient Israelites also established a powerful—though archaeologically inconspicuous—kingdom that had a substantial nomadic element. This idea is supported by the unique situation that prevailed in the southern Levant during the early Iron Age. With the collapse of the stabilizing presence of the Egyptian empire in Canaan and a deteriorating climate that gave economic and political advantages to more mobile societies,2 groups that formerly were on the fringes were able to accumulate power. As such, it was during this period that nomads were able to create tribal coalitions and rule over the city-states and settled peoples who had once had the upper hand.
Such nomadic polities are typically united less by monumental architecture or royal building projects than through the creation of real or imagined kinship bonds, where the ruler is viewed as the head of one big family. In the Bible, David and Solomon are portrayed as patriarchs who ruled over the one great house that is Israel (2 Samuel 2:4; 1 Kings 12:19). This repeats a very similar pattern of social and political organization that we see throughout the Near East, a pattern that showed little concern for whether someone led a nomadic or settled life.
PHOTO COURTESY OF EREZ BEN-YOSEF AND THE CENTRAL TIMNA VALLEY PROJECT
Does all this mean there is no way for archaeology to uncover David and Solomon’s “invisible” nomadic kingdom? The archaeological sciences may provide some hope. Analysis of animal bones from Israelite settlement sites, for example, may indicate the presence of pastoralist elements who were also part of the same tribes and communities.3 Such advances, however, do not get around the fundamental archaeological invisibility of nomads and, thus, the problem of trying to study a kingdom that is largely invisible to modern scholars.
When it comes to the quest for David and Solomon’s kingdom, biblical archaeologists have long assumed that we can excavate our way to an answer. If we can only nail down the chronology of Megiddo or securely identify David as the ruler responsible for Khirbet Qeiyafa, all will be settled. But as important as these sites may be for understanding the tenth century, they do not give the full story of David and Solomon’s kingdom. They may be only a few bright lights on what, for archaeologists, is a long street almost entirely in shadow.
