In fact, Yigael Yadin believed that his excavations at Hazor in the 1950s had found evidence for the Israelite destruction of the thirteenth-century BCE city established at the site, thus confirming (for him) the biblical account of the Israelite conquest of Canaan. After a break of more than three decades, excavations at Hazor began again in 1990, directed by Yadin’s former student Amnon Ben-Tor, who found additional remains from this destroyed city. There is still debate as to who was responsible for the destruction— was it Israelites, Egyptians, Canaanites, or Sea Peoples?
Like Yadin before him, Ben-Tor argues that the Israelites are the most likely perpetrators of this destruction and provides a list of reasons why this is so, including the fact that neither the Egyptians nor the Canaanites were guilty because both Egyptian and Canaanite statues were found defiled in the destruction level, and neither group would have condoned such an act. But not all scholars are convinced by his arguments, and it is difficult to decide between Israelites, a destructive migrating group known as the Sea Peoples who appeared in the region at about the same time, or some other unknown group as the agents of destruction at Hazor. There is no archaeological evidence that contradicts Yadin’s and Ben-Tor’s theory, but there is also no additional archaeological evidence to support it at the moment.
Important components of this discussion are the related questions of who, exactly, the Israelites were and how one knows when one has uncovered archaeological evidence for their existence. It used to be an accepted axiom in biblical archaeology that if one found collar-rim jars or four-room houses in a Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age settlement, then one was excavating an Israelite settlement, since those items were considered to be uniquely Israelite and not Canaanite in origin. More recently, though, a number of scholars have stated that such objects and structures are not unique to the Israelites and, indeed, may not be unique to the Early Iron Age.
So, how does one tell an Israelite from a Canaanite? It has been suggested by some archaeologists that an absence of pig bones from a settlement of the appropriate time period may be an indication of the presence of Israelites, rather than Canaanites, because of the prohibitions against eating pork set out in the Hebrew Bible. Others insist that one cannot make such a generalized observation and that, in any event, arguing from negative evidence—the lack or absence of something at a site—is always dangerous since the next trowelful of dirt may turn up the necessary piece of evidence. The question, like many others in biblical archaeology, remains open.
Chapter 8
From David and Solomon to Nebuchadnezzar and the Neo-Babylonians
Debates concerning David and Solomon have been at the forefront of biblical archaeology for a long time, but especially since the early 1990s when their very existence was called into question. The problem is that although the Tel Dan Stele—fragments of which were discovered in 1993 and 1994—now presents us with the first known extrabiblical attestation for the House of David (Beit David), there is little other direct archaeological evidence available for either king at the moment.
On the other hand, biblical archaeologists have had considerably more success in corroborating the biblical accounts concerned with events just after the time of David and Solomon, during the early first millennium BCE from ca. 925 BCE to 586 BCE. There are extrabiblical inscriptions, archival and accounting records, and other data from this period, including inscriptions that name individual kings of Israel and Judah, archaeological evidence of Sennacherib’s attack on Judah in 701 BCE, and Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 BCE. In a certain sense, it is fortunate that military destruction sometimes leaves an archaeological record that can be correlated with biblical texts.
According to the biblical account, one of the first major events to take place after the death of Solomon was an invasion by Pharaoh Shishak of Egypt in about 925 BCE. According to the text (1 Kings 14.25; 2 Chron. 12.9), Shishak invaded the land of Judah and besieged the city of Jerusalem, carrying away “the treasures of the house of the LORD.” Egyptologists have long noted the existence of an inscription written on the walls of the Temple of Amon in Karnak (modern Luxor), recording an attack made by a Pharaoh Sheshonq upon the region of Israel and Judah, with a list of 150 cities that he claimed to have conquered. Sheshonq was the founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty of Egypt, coming to the throne ca. 945 BCE and ruling until ca. 924 BCE.
Among the conquered cities listed by Sheshonq was Megiddo. And at Megiddo itself, the Chicago excavators in 1925 recovered a fragment from a stone inscription bearing the royal cartouche of Sheshonq. It came from the type of inscription usually reserved for use by the Egyptians as a victory monument placed at a site that they had captured and then occupied. The inscription had later been broken up, with the pieces reused as building material. The fragment had been uncovered during the 1903–1905 excavations at Megiddo by Schumacher, but had been thrown out on the spoil heap, where it was later discovered by the Chicago workmen. Sheshonq’s claim to have captured Megiddo was thus corroborated archaeologically. However, it remains unresolved whether the Egyptian Sheshonq is the same as the biblical Shishak, although most archaeologists and biblical scholars believe this to be the case.
Sheshonq’s attack took advantage of the fact that the United Monarchy of David and Solomon had split into the two separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah immediately after the death of Solomon. Many stories in the Hebrew Bible concern kings who ruled the lands during this period of the Divided Kingdoms. Several of these kings are mentioned in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian texts from the early first millennium BCE, thus providing independent corroboration for their historical existence. One can speculate that if the kings in the Bible are real, then its various descriptions of daily life may well be accurate too.
One northern king discussed by the biblical writers is Ahab, son of Omri, who married Jezebel and who “did evil in the sight of the LORD more than all who were before him” (1 Kings 16:30). The Bible recounts a number of battles that Ahab fought against Ben-Hadad of Aram who ruled from Damascus (as 1 Kings 20 says). Ahab is mentioned in an extrabiblical inscription on a seven-foot-tall stone monument that dates to 853 BCE. This, the so-called Monolith Inscription of the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser III, describes a battle that he fought at the city of Karkar, located in what is now modern Syria. There Shalmaneser fought against a coalition of troops gathered from Damascus, Bylos, Egypt, Israel, and elsewhere, including 2,000 chariots and 10,000 infantry belonging to Ahab:
Karkar, his royal city, I destroyed, I devastated, I burned with fire. 1,200 chariots, 1,200 cavalry, 20,000 soldiers, of Hadad-ezer, of Aram; 700 chariots, 700 cavalry, 10,000 soldiers of Irhuleni of Hamath; 2,000 chariots, 10,000 soldiers of Ahab, the Israelite...—these twelve kings he brought to his support; to offer battle and fight, they came against me.
Some archaeologists and historians have suggested that the Ben-Hadad mentioned in the Bible as Ahab’s enemy and the Hadad-ezer described in Shalmaneser’s inscription as Ahab’s ally are one and the same person, but this theory is still unsupported by hard evidence. We can say with relative confidence, however, that Shalmaneser’s text clearly establishes that Ahab was a real, historical person. Moreover, excavations conducted during the 1990s by Israeli archaeologist David Ussishkin and British archaeologist John Woodhead at the site of ancient Jezreel, which was located near Megiddo and was the home city to Ahab and his wife Jezebel according to the biblical account, confirms that there was indeed a city in existence at the site during the appropriate time period, i.e., the ninth century BCE. Unfortunately, thus far even the most ardent of archaeological investigators have been unable to find confirmatory evidence that Jezebel was actually thrown out of a window and eaten by dogs (2 Kings 9:30–37).
Archaeological evidence also exists to confirm that King Jehu was a real person. The biblical account (2 Kings 8:25–10:27) relates that Jehu usurped the throne of Israel by killing both the king of Israel and the king of Judah. Jehu is indep
endently described as the “son of Omri” (to whom he may or may not have actually been related) on the so-called Black Obelisk—another seven-foot-tall stone monument of Shalmaneser III—dating to 841 BCE. Jehu is depicted there, bowing at the feet of the king. The accompanying text reads: “Tribute of Iaua (Jehu), son of Omri. Silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden beaker, golden goblets, pitchers of gold, lead, staves (staffs) for the hand of the king, javelins, I received from him.”
Almost 150 years later, the Neo-Assyrian King Sennacherib invaded the land of Judah and marched on Jerusalem in 701 BCE—an event recorded in the Bible. His forces attacked forty-six cities, including the second-largest in the land, Lachish. The biblical account states succinctly: “In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, King Sennacherib of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them” (2 Kings 18:13).
This event was extensively confirmed by major archaeological excavations at the site of Lachish, conducted by David Ussishkin of Tel Aviv University beginning in 1973. Lachish was the focus of earlier excavations by James L. Starkey, from 1932 to 1938, but those ended when Starkey was murdered while traveling to Jerusalem for the opening of the Palestine Archaeological Museum (now called the Rockefeller Museum), in East Jerusalem. Ussishkin realized that the “tons and tons” of rocks and stones that Starkey and his team had been trying to dig through were actually the remnants of a siege ramp that the Neo-Assyrians had built when they attacked the city in 701 BCE. In addition, he found a Judean countersiege ramp within the city dating to the same period.
The site of Lachish is inextricably and forever linked to Jerusalem because of passages found in the Hebrew Bible and in extrabiblical depictions and inscriptions at the ancient site of Nineveh in what is now Iraq. Its importance for biblical archaeology lies not only in its connections to the Bible but in the careful and deliberate way that it was stratigraphically excavated by Ussishkin, and in the means by which he was able to use a variety of different sources, from as far away as Nineveh, to establish the history of the site. Ussishkin published the results of his excavations in a mammoth set of five volumes containing all the data uncovered by the expedition, from macroscopic architectural details to microscopic details of archaeobotany in each phase of the city’s history.
When Sennacherib and his men eventually captured Lachish, they marched the captives back to Assyria—part of the more than 200,000 Judean exiles that Sennacherib claims to have deported in this campaign. Sennacherib ordered pictures of his triumph to be engraved and displayed on the walls of a room in his “Palace without a Rival”, as he called it, at Nineveh in Assyria, on the banks of the Euphrates.
These pictures, which one can follow like a modern cartoon strip in panels along the four walls of the room, depict the entire siege. First, the Assyrian warriors, archers, and infantrymen march up to the city. Then the siege engines are wheeled up the seven or more ramps that the Assyrians built (including the one excavated by Starkey and then Ussishkin). Next is the battle for the city itself, with torches flying through the air and the defenders shooting arrows from the defensive towers, and then the aftermath, with triumphant Assyrians carrying away loot as some of the defeated Judeans are staked out on the ground and flayed alive, while others have their heads cut off (which are then hung from trees and used for target practice by Assyrians). The vast majority of the Jews are depicted as refugees, trudging toward far-off Assyria with their families and their belongings stacked on carts. Sennacherib himself is shown in one of the final scenes, seated on his throne as goods and captives are presented before him.
The depiction of the siege and capture of Lachish in Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh was undoubtedly meant not only to immortalize the victory but also to serve as propaganda. It was a warning to the ambassadors and visiting delegations from other subservient nations not to rebel against the might of Assyria. It was effective, for though the Neo-Assyrians seem to have been as brutal and bloodthirsty as they depicted themselves, they apparently negotiated diplomatic settlements as often as they settled things on the battlefield.
The excavations by Starkey and then Ussishkin at Lachish, the depictions at Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh, and Sennacherib’s own inscriptions offer separate and unique sources of information and evidence for the Neo-Assyrian siege of Lachish, a compelling corroboration and elaboration of the spare details that are given in the Hebrew Bible. This is one of the very few instances where there are numerous separate sources of evidence for an event in ancient Israel or Judah. For this reason, the discoveries relating to the Neo-Assyrian siege of Lachish in 701 BCE are considered to rank among the greatest finds to date in biblical archaeology.
After his successful capture of Lachish, Sennacherib and his army headed for Jerusalem. The Judean king Hezekiah laid in supplies and established a number of defensive mechanisms, or so it is written in the Hebrew Bible (2 Chron. 32 and Isa. 22:10). According to archaeologists, these defensive mechanisms may have included the construction of a wall more than 20 feet thick and 130 feet in length, for the Israeli archaeologist Nahman Avigad found a long segment of just such a wall (the so-called Broad Wall) in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem in the 1970s.
From the biblical account, it is unclear whether the defensive measures taken by Hezekiah actually succeeded, for two different tales are presented within the Hebrew Bible. In one instance (2 Kings 19:32–36; repeated, with slight differences, in Isa. 37:33–37 and 2 Chron. 32:20–21), the Bible says that a plague ravaged the Assyrian troops besieging the city, so that 185,000 died in a single night and the Assyrians subsequently retreated. However, in another instance (2 Kings 18:14–16), the biblical account states that Hezekiah sent a bribe to Sennacherib, who was still besieging Lachish at the time, to leave Jerusalem in peace, paying him three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.
Sennacherib’s own records seem to corroborate the latter story, for in one of his inscriptions he records that a bribe was paid, but that it was in fact eight hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold. Moreover, he stated: “As for Hezekiah, the Judaean, he did not submit to my yoke. I laid siege to forty-six of his strong fortified cities, and countless small villages in their vicinity, and conquered them ...I brought out of them 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered them booty. Himself [Hezekiah] I shut up as a prisoner within Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage” (Oriental Institute Prism).
A little more than one hundred years later, Nebuchadnezzar and the Neo-Babylonians—successors to the Neo-Assyrians—attacked Jerusalem and captured the city in 597 and again in 586 BCE. The biblical account states, “Against him [King Jehoiakim of Judah] came up Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and bound him in fetters to take him to Babylon” (2 Chron. 36:6). Elsewhere it states, “In his days, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up... and the LORD sent against him [Jehoiakim] bands of the Chaldeans [Neo-Babylonians] . . . and sent them against Judah to destroy it” (2 Kings 24:1–2).
These accounts are substantiated by an entry for the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, found in the Babylonian Chronicles— contemporary records kept on clay tablets in Mesopotamia by the Neo-Babylonian priests of the chief events for each year, which have been recovered and translated by archaeologists. The records state: “In the seventh year [598/597 BCE], the month of Kislev, the king of Akkad mustered his troops, marched to the Hatti-land, and encamped against [i.e., besieged] the city of Judah and on the second day of the month of Adar he seized the city and captured the king. He appointed there a king of his own choice, received its heavy tribute and sent [them] to Babylon” (Chronicles of the Chaldaean Kings).
In other words, Nebuchadnezzar’s scribes stated that Jerusalem was conquered and the vanquished peoples of Judah were transported to Babylon in 597 BCE, thereby corroborating the biblical account. Nebuchadnezzar and his army did the same thing again in 586 BCE, as mentioned, and for th
is attack and destruction we have archaeological evidence, in the form of ash, arrowheads, and toppled stones found in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem by Israeli archaeologist Nahman Avigad, excavating in the years after 1967.
Although it is likely that Nebuchadnezzar carried off the Hebrew royalty and the leading citizens of Jerusalem, as the Bible says— and initiated the Babylonian Exile of the Jews, which was to last for approximately fifty years (586–538 BCE)—recent archaeological surveys have shown that the land of Judah was not completely emptied of its inhabitants. This is contrary to what had been previously thought based upon the biblical account. Although there was a grave demographic crisis, as Oded Lipschits of Tel Aviv University has phrased it, archaeological surveys have confirmed that upwards of 70 percent of the population remained on the land during the years following the conquest—that is, sites continued to be occupied and there was no widespread abandonment of cities, towns, or villages as might have been expected. The majority of those left behind were probably peasants and members of the lower classes, for the members of the upper classes had all been taken off to Babylon.
Overall, the relevant extrabiblical inscriptions represent crucial confirming evidence for archaeologists that the biblical account does contain accurate details concerning first millennium BCE people, places, and events. These inscriptions have confirmed the existence of various kings of Israel and Judah mentioned in the biblical account and, in some cases, have corroborated the entire biblical account—such as the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BCE. In no case has the biblical account of an event in the early first millennium BCE yet been shown by an extrabiblical inscription to be completely false.
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