In their book The Bible Unearthed archaeologist Israel Finkelstein and historian Neil Asher Silberman laid down the parameters of the new archaeological vision: “Had the biblical authors and editors been historians in the modern sense, they might have said that Ahab was a mighty king who first brought the kingdom of Israel to prominence on the world stage, and that his marriage to the daughter of the Phoenician king Ithbaal was a brilliant stroke of international diplomacy. They might have said that the Omrides built magnificent cities to serve as administrative centers of their expanding kingdom. They might have said that Ahab and Omri, his father before him, succeeded in building one of the most powerful armies in the region, with which they conquered extensive territories in the far north and in Transjordan.”
The real story of the Omrides—the dynasty founded by Omri—was one of stability established out of near chaos. The succession of coups d’état in the northern kingdom had reached such absurd proportions that Omri’s predecessor, the corrupt chariot commander Zimri, lasted exactly seven days on the throne until Omri cornered him in his capital of Tirza, burned it to the ground, and built a new capital on the hill of Samaria. Over the next twelve years, until he died of natural causes—by then a refreshingly different style of death for an Israelite king—Omri set about establishing his legacy to his eldest son, Ahab: a newly stabilized kingdom with expanded borders, achieved by the judicious use of military might.
Even Israel’s enemies would acknowledge the military prowess of the Omrides. They did so on the principle that the greater your enemy, the greater you must be. The power of your foes was a measure of your own power, and both Omri and Ahab were eminently worthy foes.
One densely chiseled stone document of the time records the military campaigns of Shalmanezer III, the ruler of the dangerously expansionist Assyrian empire in what is now northern Iraq and Syria. Known as the Monolith Inscription, it lists “Ahab the Israelite” as fielding the largest force—two thousand chariots and ten thousand infantry—in a coalition that held off the Assyrian army at the Battle of Qarqar on the Orontes River. Another, a black basalt stele known as the Moabite Stone, found in Jordan but now in the Louvre, recounts in the voice of Moab’s King Mesha that Omri and Ahab “oppressed Moab many days,” building border strongholds there to consolidate their control of the King’s Highway caravan route, which ran from Arabia and the Red Sea through Edom, Moab, and Gilead to Damascus. Even after the Omride dynasty had been destroyed, Assyrian records would continue to refer to Israel as bit-Humri—the House of Omri—and to its kings as the sons of Omri. Thanks to these stone documents and other archaeological evidence, we now know that Ahab, the king the Bible would call “the most evil of all the kings of Israel,” was probably the most gifted, the most respected, and the most powerful. As would be his new queen.
The marriage to Jezebel was especially important to Ahab because this alliance with Tyre would mark a major turning point in Israelite policy. Like his father before him, Ahab had a reputation based so far on his military accomplishments, extending Israelite control north to Mount Hermon and east almost to Damascus. He had proved himself a great warrior, leading his men into battle instead of giving orders from the rear because he knew it would inspire them. In the process, he established a military legacy that nearly three thousand years later would be the making of the modern Israeli army, with its officers’ battle-cry of aharai (“follow me”), the extraordinary cohesiveness of its ranks and officers, and the legends of military derring-do on the part of generals like Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ariel Sharon—legends that played a large part in propelling their political careers.
Like his modern successors, Ahab had fought more wars than anyone should ever have to fight. Now he was ready for the fruits of victory. Not the usual long lines of chained and shackled prisoners, the orgies of massacre and decapitation, the sadness of royal harems incorporated wholesale into his own; these were the spoils of victory, not its fruit. The fruit was peace, and the prosperity that would come with it. Like Rabin, even like Sharon, the experienced soldier eventually realizes that all the bloodshed is for nothing if it does not ensure that he and his people can live without constant fear of retaliation. Only those so young that their idealism is untainted by humanity, or those armchair warriors who speak out loud and bravely to send others off to be killed, think there is glory to be found in other people’s blood.
Tyre dominated through trade, not weapons, and had proved—as it would for hundreds of years to come—that commerce was a far more effective keeper of the peace than the sword. Ahab may have lacked the surface sophistication that Jezebel was accustomed to, but he had a soldier’s sense of strategic pragmatism. This Tyrian princess represented the prosperity he wanted for his kingdom. If she worshipped other gods than Yahweh, that was no great matter. Her gods might be powerful in their own territory to the north, but they could be no threat to him on Israelite soil, no matter what a prophet like Elijah might think.
Throughout the week leading up to their wedding night, as he watched Jezebel will herself to self-control and noted the awed excitement in his court at this apparition of refinement and culture, Ahab must have congratulated himself on his choice. If this princess was indeed repelled, she gave no sign of it. The whole principle of this alliance was a marriage of opposites; each needed the other. Jezebel was not to be deterred by the whiff of sweat and bloodshed. Though perhaps she should have been.
What remains of the royal city of Samaria is still haunted by the ghosts of battle. Just getting there turns out to be a journey fraught with tension and uncertainty. Driving north from Jerusalem, you go through a long succession of Israeli military checkpoints. The soldiers are hot and tired, and this is the last place they want to be, on a Palestinian road where Israeli civilians are forbidden to drive. They are the most visible signs of the heavily resented military occupation of the West Bank, and this makes them irritable, curt, and rude. If you travel as I did with Palestinian archaeologists, all conversation inside the car stops at each checkpoint. You bite your tongue, wait patiently while the soldiers make a show of examining documents, answer their questions as briefly as possible. Both sides are all too aware of the potential for sudden violence.
A landscape interrupted by barbed wire and concrete barricades can hardly be considered beautiful, but as you make your halting way from the high desert reaches of the Judean hills and into the northern part of the West Bank, the hills seem to round out and lose some of their harshness. The landscape begins to feel a bit softer, more inclined to human settlement.
You don’t realize how steep the hill of Samaria is until the car’s engine moans in protest on the narrow winding road through the hillside village of Sebastiya. People stare with a mix of curiosity and resentment as you go past the dry fountain in the village square, past the dilapidated mosque where John the Baptist’s head is said to be buried, and on up to the top of the hill, fourteen hundred feet above sea level. The parking lot is empty; half a dozen restaurants and coffeehouses surround it, but all are closed. Nobody comes here any longer. No buses full of tourists or schoolchildren, not even most archaeologists. The trip is too unpredictable; it can take hours or even days to drive the forty-five miles from Jerusalem, depending on the security situation, or you may never arrive at all. Israelis think it too dangerous; Palestinians, too difficult.
Yet once you are up here, the daily misery of the political situation seems to fall away. The hill rises in solitary splendor, surrounded by deep valleys setting it off from the rest of the highlands so that in every direction you have the heady sense of space and height. A soft breeze blows, erasing the heat of the dusty roads you’ve traveled. There’s the illusion of peace, of being above it all.
The most impressive ruins are the most recent: the Roman-era colonnaded street, the temple to Augustus, the tiered stone theater, the huge gateways that are the work of Herod, the tyrant puppet king of the Romans who imagined he could build himself into history. It would have be
en a bitter irony for him to realize that his main claim to historical fame would come thanks to an impoverished peasant preacher from the Galilee. But Herod is a latecomer in biblical terms. He built on top of ruins from nearly nine hundred years earlier: Omri and Ahab’s city.
What’s left of Ahab and Jezebel’s palace is magnificently sited on the southwest side of the acropolis, at the very edge of the hill. The view is stunning, as though a grand penthouse had been built where eagles nest. My companions tell me that on a clear day you can see the Mediterranean glimmering twenty-five miles to the west, but there are very few clear days anymore; the haze of pollution has muddied the horizon, confusing the once clearly perceptible geography of the land. I have to take the Mediterranean on trust.
Only the foundations remain, the bare supports of what were once magnificently finished walls. Made of giant ashlar blocks with chiseled edges, they were cut so straight by Phoenician master masons that they fit together with perfect precision. Just an occasional ornate capstone indicates what the walls once enclosed: the massive columns, the covered walkways, the stairways of the palace called “the house of ivory” in Kings, so that many people still think, against all probability, that the whole place was made of ivory. In much the same way, would-be immigrants once believed that the streets of Manhattan were literally paved with gold.
But ivory there certainly was, and in abundance. In the 1930s, archaeologists found large caches of delicately carved bas-relief and fretwork ivory plaques inside the palace walls—plaques used as decorative inlays on thrones, altars, and feasting couches. Shaded with blue faience and highlighted with gold leaf and precious stones, they were clearly the work of Phoenician craftsmen. Some show ibex feeding from the branches of the palm tree that represents the great mother goddess Astarte—the tree that would be known in Genesis as the Tree of Life. Others show the goddess herself framed in a triple-recessed window, her hair arranged like the branches of the Tree of Life. Still others depict lions hunting deer, and banquets, and ornamental motifs like doves and lotus blossoms, the motifs themselves evidence of their Phoenician origin, since the semidesert highlands of Samaria are not exactly lotus land.
Close by the palace are the remains of what was probably an ornamental pool with a fountain in its center and peacocks strutting around it, fanning their tails in gaudy display. There’s no water in the pool anymore, of course; the tunnels and shafts that brought spring water within reach of the acropolis are long gone, and the only water the hill gets now is what falls in winter. But as you walk around the perimeter of the palace, shaded by wild fruit trees, you can still quench your thirst. White mulberries hang overhead, heavy and luscious with moisture. You reach up and pick one here and there and let the luxury of sweetness flood your mouth. It’s like drinking fruit. You pick an unripe apricot and split it open to savor the seeds, fresh and green-tasting like tender young almonds. You look around at the olive and fig trees growing on the steep slopes and the patches of wheat planted among the ruins, and these combine in your mind with everything you know about the palace that was once here—its sounds, its furnishings, its temples—and you find yourself thinking that ancient Samaria might have been a rather pleasant place to live. Unless, that is, you happened to be from Tyre. And had brought your Tyrian gods with you.
Jezebel had traveled in style. Her entourage included not only courtiers and servants, emissaries and traders, but also, according to Kings, no less than four hundred priestesses and four hundred and fifty priests to serve in her new temple. Given the large number of priestesses, this temple was almost certainly dedicated to the goddess Astarte, but the Kings authors nevertheless called it “a temple of Baal.” Refusing to accord any foreign deity the honor of his or her full name, they instead adopted a kind of speak-no-evil shorthand by referring to all foreign gods as “baals,” meaning “lords.” But much as they might abhor Astarte’s presence in the Samarian acropolis, she was not nearly as foreign as they wished. As Jezebel was yet to discover, Yahweh did indeed have a consort—a lesser version of Astarte known as Asherah.
We know of her from ancient inscriptions calling down the blessings of “Yahweh and his Asherah” as well as from the Bible itself. In Jeremiah she is known as “the queen of heaven,” and her image—a stylized Tree of Life—was placed beside the main altar in the temples of Yahweh. Pilgrims “dressed” it with ribbons and hangings, and made ritual offerings of fertility cakes: folded pastry triangles brimming over with poppy seeds in clear symbolism of female genitalia. Like most Israelites of the time, they saw no contradiction between worshipping the national god Yahweh and seeking intercession from his consort. They were practicing what historian of religion Mark Smith called “polytheistic Yahwism.” In much the same way, animistic beliefs and practices have been absorbed into modern Christianity in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, creating a hybrid often called “folk religion.” But in ninth-century B.C. Israel, Asherah as an adjunct of Yahweh was one thing; Astarte as a powerful goddess in her own right was quite another. For the Yahwist purists, the new temple quickly became a flashpoint of resentment.
Beneath the surface of Jezebel’s official welcome in Samaria lay a potentially explosive combination of cultural rancor with religious absolutism, one that had been brewing long before her arrival. So long as Israel had been at almost continual war with its neighbors, this rancor had been kept bottled up, external enemies being an excellent means of keeping internal dissent under control. But now that the kingdom had achieved stability, it was merely waiting for the spark to set it into play.
The presence of the exquisite temple to Astarte in the heart of the Samaria acropolis had something of the same effect as that of McDonald’s in Paris or of Starbucks inside the walls of the Forbidden City in Beijing—highly visible, immensely popular, and therefore all the more provocative to ideologues concerned with maintaining separate national identity. It was a piece of Tyrian territory in the very heart of Samaria, much as a foreign embassy in a national capital today is an independent presence within its host country. And just as American embassies in Islamic countries would be perceived as bastions of wealth and privilege threatening the cultural integrity of their host nations, so too Jezebel’s temple would become the focus of those opposed to Ahab’s policies of alliance and détente.
What these opponents feared was cultural dominance, and they had a strong argument. It was not just a matter of the alphabet or of the exact borders of “the land of milk and honey.” The similarities between Yahweh and Baal Shamem were too close for monotheistic comfort, as we know from the hundreds of clay tablets found from 1929 on at Ras Shamra, the site of the northernmost Phoenician city-state of Ugarit. Among these tablets were the magnificent series of religious epic poems known as the Baal Cycle, in which we see Baal Shamem riding the clouds with thunder and lightning in his hands—the very same imagery later used in the biblical portrayal of Yahweh. We see Astarte called “the queen of heaven” and the consort of the great god El, as Asherah would be the consort of Yahweh. And we realize that many of the customs we think of as uniquely Israelite were in fact adopted from Phoenician practices, including the festivals of Matzot at the beginning of the barley harvest and Succot at the grape harvest.
Such a degree of influence does not inspire gratitude. As in Islamic countries today, it inspires a mix of envy and resentment, a mix that finds its most volatile expression in the form of religious principle. The Yahwist ideologues saw Jezebel’s new temple as a clear and present danger to the purity of the Israelite kingdom, but they needed more than a temple to brand the king an infidel. Now they would find the perfect opportunity in the very arena that had made him such a formidable opponent: the battlefield.
To the modern mind, what happened next sounds like the story of an extraordinarily successful end to hostilities. But to the biblical mind, it was a tale of shameful apostasy. To invert Shakespeare’s phrase about Julius Caesar, it was told not to praise Ahab, but to bury him.
The story, told
as a stand-alone chapter in Kings, begins with a declaration of war. Just when it seems that stability has been achieved, Israel’s traditional enemy Damascus, the leading city-state of Aramea, renews hostilities. It’s a surprise move on the part of Ben-Hadad, the king of Damascus, and a well-timed one. Ahab is relatively new to the throne, a battle-tested warrior but still untested as commander in chief, and history has already proved that young, inexperienced kings tend to fall more easily than older, wilier ones.
Ben-Hadad demands that Israel cede the territory of Gilead on the east bank of the Jordan, and declares that he’ll pummel Ahab’s kingdom into dust if he does not comply. In a classic formulation of the time, he invokes his own gods to back up his threat. “So may the gods do to me, and more,” he says, “if Samaria be anything but handfuls of dust compared to my strength.” He even makes outrageous demands for tribute. “Your gold and silver are mine,” he declares, “and your wives and children too.”
Your wives and children too? Though it was standard procedure of the time for a victorious king to take a defeated opponent’s wives into his harem, the reaction of Ahab’s newest wife, Jezebel, had to be quite spectacular. Forget rage and indignation; this was pure unadulterated insult. If such a word had existed at the time, one can almost hear her saying, “The chutzpah!” But there will be no Cleopatra-like asp at hand in case Ben-Hadad succeeds, not for Jezebel. The queen who in thirty years’ time will taunt her assassin in the moments before her death is hardly to be intimidated by pompous threats from Damascus. Neither is a warrior as experienced as Ahab.
Jezebel: The Untold Story of the Bible's Harlot Queen Page 4