How the Ten Tribes of Israel Were Lost

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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.

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Footnotes

1. See K. Lawson Younger, “Israelites in Exile,” BAR, November/December 2003.

2. Steven Ortiz and Samuel Wolff, “Solomon’s Powerplay: Gezer’s Royal Complex Confirmed,” BAR, Summer 2024.

Endnotes

1. For the general situation and the Assyrian destructions, see William G. Dever, Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), pp. 503–525.

2. Yigael Yadin, Hazor: The Head of All Those Kingdoms (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972), pp. 190–194.

3. Ron E. Tappy, The Archaeology of Israelite Samaria, Vol. 2. The Eighth Century BCE (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 240–241.