The Socioeconomic Impact of Hezekiah's Preparations for Rebellion

Although the Iron II period, from the 10th–6th centuries BC, may easily be the most extensively excavated and researched era of ancient Palestine, still not much is known of the economic background of its societies. Most scholarly surveys are content to rely on the picture presented in the biblical sources, which depict the king as a wealthy ruler, head of a well-organised state, and heavily engaged in economic activities. These biblical stories are supposed to ‘explain’ the economic base of the land and its government. The archaeological background of this biblical picture, however, is still not filled in completely. What has really been found in the ground and how should this be interpreted? The question is not only what was produced in ancient Israel and its neighbours, and what goods were distributed, but more importantly: how was this production organised, and which process governed the distribution.

The geography of Judah is unique among the territorial kingdoms of the southern Levant, featuring four distinct regions with the potential for exploitation in different economic strategies. In the Iron IIB the vassal kingdom experienced a dramatic economic transformation directed by the Assyrian empire, from traditional Mediterranean subsistence to specialised economy based on its four zones: viticulture in the highlands, oleo-culture in the Shephelah, services to the Arabian trade in the Beersheba Valley and date and exotic plant groves in the Dead Sea Valley oases. This high-risk/high-gain system may clarify the development of advanced administration, which, in turn, explains the unique features in the material culture of Judah compared to neighbouring kingdoms: The system of stamped handles and weights and the proliferation of scribal activity. The division of the kingdom into districts, as portrayed in Josh 15, is connected to this reality, and hence probably originated slightly earlier than conventionally argued.

PEQ, 2021

The geography of Judah is unique among the territorial kingdoms of the southern Levant, featuring four distinct regions with the potential for exploitation in different economic strategies. In the Iron IIB the vassal kingdom experienced a dramatic economic transformation directed by the Assyrian empire, from traditional Mediterranean subsistence to specialised economy based on its four zones: viticulture in the highlands, oleo-culture in the Shephelah, services to the Arabian trade in the Beersheba Valley and date and exotic plant groves in the Dead Sea Valley oases. This high-risk/high-gain system may clarify the development of advanced administration, which, in turn, explains the unique features in the material culture of Judah compared to neighbouring kingdoms: The system of stamped handles and weights and the proliferation of scribal activity. The division of the kingdom into districts, as portrayed in Josh 15, is connected to this reality, and hence probably originated slightly earlier than conventionally argued

Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 2021

The geography of Judah is unique among the territorial kingdoms of the southern Levant, featuring four distinct regions with the potential for exploitation in different economic strategies. In the Iron IIB the vassal kingdom experienced a dramatic economic transformation directed by the Assyrian empire, from traditional Mediterranean subsistence to specialised economy based on its four zones: viticulture in the highlands, oleo-culture in the Shephelah, services to the Arabian trade in the Beersheba Valley and date and exotic plant groves in the Dead Sea Valley oases. This high-risk/high-gain system may clarify the development of advanced administration, which, in turn, explains the unique features in the material culture of Judah compared to neighbouring kingdoms: The system of stamped handles and weights and the proliferation of scribal activity. The division of the kingdom into districts, as portrayed in Josh 15, is connected to this reality, and hence probably originated slightly earlier than conventionally argued.

PALESTINE EXPLORATION QUARTERLY, 2021

The geography of Judah is unique among the territorial kingdoms of the southern Levant, featuring four distinct regions with the potential for exploitation in different economic strategies. In the Iron IIB the vassal kingdom experienced a dramatic economic transformation directed by the Assyrian empire, from traditional Mediterranean subsistence to specialised economy based on its four zones: viticulture in the highlands, oleo-culture in the Shephelah, services to the Arabian trade in the Beersheba Valley and date and exotic plant groves in the Dead Sea Valley oases. This high-risk/high-gain system may clarify the development of advanced administration, which, in turn, explains the unique features in the material culture of Judah compared to neighbouring kingdoms: The system of stamped handles and weights and the proliferation of scribal activity. The division of the kingdom into districts, as portrayed in Josh 15, is connected to this reality, and hence probably originated slightly earlier than conventionally argued.

in M. S. Pinarello, J. Yoo, J. Lundock, C. Walsh (eds.), Current Research in Egyptology 2014: Ancient Egypt in a Global World, 2015

The book’s aim is to identify and treat comprehensively those phenomena and trends that define the development of the Bablyonian economy in the first millennium BC and in particular in the 'long sixth century' between the fall of the Assyrian empire and the Babylonian rebellions against Xerxes in 484 BC. These phenomena include: an agrarian expansion; an intensification of agrarian production; an increasing monetization of economic exchange; an increasing importance of free wage labour; and a modicum of economic growth. The book discusses extensively the models which structure its approach and offers a detailed treatment of the empirical information on which it is based, including the price data which are subjected to statistical analysis. It is argued that the Mesopotamian economy of the Iron age was structurally closer to the economies of the Greco-Roman world than to its Bronze-age precursors.

Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, 2004

This article deals with commerce as it was conducted in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The author questions the existence of edifices intended for commerce and concludes that it was the open markets that played the central role in the economy. Basing her argument on the fact that the majority of marked weights characteristic of 7th-century assemblages were found in dwelling contexts, she reasons that merchants kept their weights at home since it was unsafe to leave scales unguarded in open markets, The author also poses a possible alternative: that the weights found in living quarters suggest small-scale commercial activity within the home.

Tag un g e n d e s L a nd e s m u s eum s f ür Vo r g e s c hi c h T e h a L L e • B a nd 13 • 2016 Summary After briefly considering the various forms and degrees of social differentiation that may be included in a generic concept of »inequality«, the type of »unequal social relations« will be outlined. The paper focuses on the potential of certain social differences to evolve into real socioeconomic disparities and forms of permanent political authority, looking both at some specific types of social conditions which lie at the root of those inequalities and at the different conditions and requirements of subsistence economies in different environments. The next step is an attempt to analyse the nature of the first unequal and hierarchical social relations in Middle Eastern societies by identifying their economic and/or political bases, with particular reference to the Mesopotamian and peri-Mesopotamian world in the 4 th millennium BC. This region shows very interesting examples of the transformation from ranked to truly hierarchical societies, based on a growing centralisation of primary resources and labour, and also offers relevant data for the study of the dynamics of change that led to the formation of early state societies. The paper analyses the historical roots of the changes that occurred in southern Mesopotamia, from forms of hierarchical kinship ties, recognisable in the Ubaid period (5 th millennium BC), to the establishment of unequal economic and politi cal relations in the Late Uruk phases. Such changes resulted in the formation of strong centralised power systems. Since inequality involves subordinate relations, it goes hand in hand with the rise of »power« and differentiated access to resources; a process which also took place in other regions in northern Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia, which are comparatively analysed. Finally, the case of Arslantepe, in the Upper Euphrates region, is presented in detail, as a meaningful example of the transition from prestige to power and from the use of reli-gious/ideological consensus in public ceremonial practices to the exercise of power in more secular and direct forms, seen here in a very precocious example of a fully fledged palace dated to the end of the 4 th millennium BC. This transition is seen as a crucial stage in the rise of the state and the consolidation of unequal socio-political and economic relations. But the centralised system at Arslantepe, albeit very powerful , probably did not have the solid foundation for a differentiated and hierarchical system of social and economic relations that only an urban society can guarantee. It therefore collapsed as soon as it was born.