How the Ten Tribes of Israel Were Lost

PUBLIC DOMAIN, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The final demise of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, at the hands of the powerful Assyrian Empire in 720 BCE, receives only a few terse passages in the Book of 2 Kings:

Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria; for three years he besieged it. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria; he carried the Israelites away to Assyria. He placed them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

(2 Kings 17:5–6)

The implication of these sparse words, written some years later from the triumphant perspective of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, is made clear in the chapter’s subsequent verses (7–20): The decadent idolaters in the north got what they deserved. The true “Israel” was Judah, which survived, while the lands and tribes of the north were irrevocably lost, their peoples exiled to Assyria and abandoned by Yahweh. From these traumatic and divisive events eventually emerged the enduring myth of the “ten lost tribes” of Israel.

But what does archaeology add to the brief and biased biblical account of the fall of the Northern Kingdom? Indeed, as we will see, the archaeological evidence from sites throughout the Northern Kingdom attests to the swiftness and ferocity of the Assyrian campaign to take Israel’s capital, Samaria. Before examining the archaeological record, however, we need to reconstruct the general situation both in Assyria and in Israel and Judah in the mid-eighth century. This will allow us to understand the social, economic, and political context of those biblical events.¹

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From at least the ninth century BCE, the Northern Kingdom of Israel had been more powerful and dominant than the small and relatively isolated Southern Kingdom of Judah. It was larger, more prosperous, and more international in character. Yet its situation made it more vulnerable, not only to the Aramean city-states farther north, but especially to the expanding Assyrian Empire to the east. Israel stood directly in the path of the Assyrian advance to the Mediterranean. Already at the Battle of Qarqar, in 853 BCE, King Ahab, the son and successor to Omri, the eponymous founder of the Northern Kingdom’s leading dynasty, had collaborated with the kings of several nearby kingdoms to fight off the Assyrian advance. In fact, the Assyrian sources credit Ahab with bringing 2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers to the fight, well more than any other king could muster.

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By the early eighth century, the Northern Kingdom had seen its population swell to some 300,000. It had developed large and heavily defended administrative centers, such as Abel Beth Maacah, Hazor, and Kedesh. It possessed an impressive capital at Samaria, a flourishing economy dominated by a class of wealthy elites, and a sophisticated culture with strong ties to Phoenicia. Israel would seem to have been at its peak and scarcely threatened by any enemies, even neighboring Judah.

By the middle of the century, however, the Assyrians, after a brief period of weakness, again looked to expand westward under Tiglath-Pileser III (r. 745–727). Both the Assyrian records and the biblical texts note that King Menahem of Israel (r. 749–738) paid tribute to the Assyrians (2 Kings 15:20), as did the rulers of Damascus and other cities in Syria. But this gesture only bought time, not the mercy of the Assyrians.

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In 734, Tiglath-Pileser III campaigned down the Levantine coast to Philistia, attacking Ashkelon and Gaza. Then in 733 and 732, there were further campaigns against Damascus, and the stage was set for a major offensive against the Northern Kingdom. It was undertaken first by Shalmaneser V (r. 726–722), then pursued by Sargon II (r. 722–705). During this brief period of scarcely more than ten years, the Northern Kingdom was obliterated.

The terse biblical account in 2 Kings mentions only a half-dozen cities and towns as destroyed by the Assyrians in the lead-up to the ultimate end of the Northern Kingdom in 720 BCE: Ijon, Abel Beth Maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor (15:29), and its capital, Samaria (17:5–6). Notably, the Assyrian annals list four of the six places (Ijon, Abel Beth Maacah, Hazor, Samaria) and in the same north–south order as they appear in the Bible. The Assyrian version adds that the campaign’s goal was to subdue Samaria and “all the land of Israel” (or the “house of Omri”), and it ends with the claim that victory was complete: “Israel is no more.”

The Hebrew Bible describes captives taken away to Assyria, but it does not give any numbers. The Assyrian annals, however, specify that 27,290 captives were deported from Samaria. This refers to the region of Samaria and not just the capital, which could scarcely have had a population of more than a thousand.^a

Let us turn now to the archaeological evidence, which I believe has gone underappreciated in historical reconstructions of the Northern Kingdom’s last days. In particular, we will briefly examine the evidence from two well-excavated sites mentioned in the biblical and Assyrian accounts, before turning to the evidence from Gezer, a border town between Israel and Judah that, as we will see, also suffered a massive destruction at the hands of the Assyrians.

At Hazor, archaeologist Yigael Yadin, who excavated much of the site in the 1950s and 1960s, described how the site’s eighth-century levels ended in “final, complete” conflagration, which he identified with a layer of rubble and ash nearly 3 feet thick.²

Samaria, which was the focus of the Assyrian campaign, presents what at first may seem to be unreliable or ambiguous archaeological evidence for destruction. The excavator, British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, claimed that nearly all of the site’s late eighth-century buildings were destroyed and that a layer of soot covered the walls. She argued that afterward, the whole area was leveled over with debris from the destruction.

More recent analysis, however, has shown there is actually limited archaeological evidence for an intense, large-scale destruction at Samaria.³ It seems that the Assyrian intent was not to utterly destroy the capital but rather to deport the local population and transform the city into an Assyrian administrative center, which is exactly what happened after 720 BCE.

We turn now to Gezer, a city that was uniquely and strategically positioned in the Judean foothills, right on the border between the northern and southern kingdoms. Before the Assyrian destructions in the late eighth century, Gezer was reckoned with the Northern Kingdom, with pottery types and forms of Hebrew writing nearly identical to that found in northern Israel. After the Assyrian destruction, however, Gezer became part of Judah, as indicated by the royal Judahite stamped jar handles that have been found at the site. Gezer thus survived the Assyrian campaign against the Northern Kingdom and was resettled—as a significant town of the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

BILL SCHLEGEL/BIBLEPLACES.COM

Gezer’s principal structure throughout the Iron Age II period (1000–586 BCE) was a monumental multi-entryway city gate, one of the most impressive Iron Age structures found anywhere in Israel. It was first constructed in the mid-tenth century during the time of King Solomon, as indicated by 1 Kings 9:15–17 and now confirmed by radiocarbon dating.^b Adjoining the gate was a large royal administrative building. Both were destroyed in the late tenth century, probably at the hands of the Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq (biblical Shishak; see 1 Kings 14:25).

CHARLES WILSON, TEL GEZER EXCAVATION AND PUBLICATION PROJECT

By the early eighth century, the gate complex had been rebuilt with a four-chamber gate, while a new monumental building complex (designated Palace 8000) was erected atop the earlier structure, though its function had shifted from being an administrative building to a large, elite residence, as indicated by its close association with a nearby four-room house that may have been used by the city’s governor. In addition, Gezer’s engineers augmented the city’s fortifications with an outer buttress wall and tower, presumably when the Assyrian advance toward the southern Levant began to seem inevitable.

A.H. LAYARD, THE MONUMENTS OF NINEVEH, LONDON: J. MURRAY, 1849, PL . 62B; PUBLIC DOMAIN

Such desperate measures appear to have done little to protect the city from the Assyrian onslaught. In the late eighth century, the city’s new outer wall was breached just east of the gate, and both the four-chamber gate and Palace 8000, along with the nearby four-room house, were violently destroyed. The clearest evidence for this destruction comes from a section of the casemate wall that abutted the gate’s western tower and formed part of the southern wall of Palace 8000. Inside the double walls of the casemate, we encountered more than 5 feet of burnt destruction debris above the room’s cobbled floor. Among the items recovered were more than a hundred fire-baked clay loom weights, several iron arrowheads, a cache of clay inkwells, and several storage jars, including one inscribed with the Hebrew word for wine (yayin).

We also have a rare eye-witness account that can be definitively attached to the Assyrian destruction of Gezer. In the 19th century, a stone relief, unfortunately now lost, was found in Iraq with a scene depicting the Assyrian siege of a city gate. Above the scene, a cuneiform inscription from the time of Tiglath-Pileser III reads “siege of Gezer” (Assyrian Gazru). The Assyrian commander shown in the scene may even be Tiglath-Pileser himself.

We must try to imagine what it was like for the inhabitants of Gezer that perilous day in the spring of 732 BCE. On the ramparts of the walled city, the inhabitants had watched as the Assyrian troops massed outside the gate, throwing up wood to burn and weaken the mudbrick superstructure. The Assyrians then began battering the wooden doors with a wheeled battering ram. It must have been a scene of sheer terror. Imagine a man of Gezer surveying the scene, holding his weeping wife, their children crying and clinging to their legs, knowing what was inevitably in store for them. After all, they had heard rumors of what the Assyrians had done to prisoners elsewhere.

Once the gate was breached, those inside were trapped. There was no chance to flee or to defend themselves. They were likely to be slaughtered, or at best marched off to exile, their identity and heritage irrevocably lost.

We know that this was the fate of thousands of people in Israel and Judah in the Assyrian destructions of the late eighth century. In some cases, as at Lachish (see sidebar, “The Assyrian Siege of Lachish”), we actually have storybook-like illustrations of these destructions and what happened to the innocent people caught up in them.

Following the destruction of all the key sites in the north and the deportation of thousands, the Assyrians resettled the area with displaced peoples whom they had conquered and deported from other regions of the Near East, including Syria and the Transjordan. The practice shredded the social and cultural fabric of the region so that it could never recover, while providing some revenue from a foreign population now rendered homeless. Among the settlers in the north were people later called Samaritans (preserving the name “Samaria”), whose descendants survive until this day in Israel and the West Bank.

While we have little evidence about the fate of the Israelites who were exiled to Assyria, we do know that the Assyrians completely reorganized the former Northern Kingdom. They turned it into an imperial province, complete with administrative centers that featured Assyrian-style buildings, pottery, and other material culture, and the use of cuneiform writing.

COURTESY STEVEN ORTIZ , TEL GEZER EXCAVATION AND PUBLICATION PROJECT

As for Gezer, the city only partially recovered in the seventh century under Assyrian domination. Two Neo-Assyrian cuneiform legal contracts with both Hebrew and Assyrian names attest to a mixed population. The site was finally destroyed in the Babylonian campaigns of 586 BCE.

WILLIAM G. DEVER

The biblical prophets of the era did not need to be soothsayers to predict the fall of the Northern Kingdom. They even identified the agents of destruction accurately. Isaiah has God declare “Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger!” (Isaiah 10:5). In their eyes, the disobedient and corrupt people of Israel got what they deserved.

Yet despite their being harbingers of doom, the prophets held out some hope. It is usually couched in terms of “a saving remnant” who would eventually return to the land, restore the people of Israel, and eventually usher in a new golden age.

Micah has God declare, “I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob; I will gather the survivors of Israel,” and they will even triumph over Assyria (Micah 2:12; 5:5–7). And in the Book of Amos, God declares, “I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up” (Amos 9:15). Even Hosea, the most pessimistic of the prophets, speaks of a remnant returning (Hosea 14:7).

The biblical prophets were prescient in their profound insights into the meaning of events of their day, which is why we still heed their message. But their optimism in this case, while admirable, was misguided. The “ten lost tribes” of Israel disappeared from history, leaving only the two southern tribes of Benjamin and Judah.

When the Assyrians conquered Samaria in 720 BCE, the once-prosperous Northern Kingdom of Israel came to a disastrous end. Massive deportations of Israelites followed, and the land was resettled by deportees from other parts of the Assyrian Empire. Later biblical tradition remembered these events as the disappearance of ancient Israel’s ten northern tribes. Explore the archaeological evidence from Gezer, an important stronghold in the Judean foothills.