Ancient Israel: History of the kingdoms and dynasties formed by ancient Jewish people

The Stela of Amenophis III, shown here at the Cairo Museum, Egypt. This enormous stela, hewn out of black granite, bears the earliest mention of Israel of any of the exhibits in the National Museum of Egypt.

(Image credit: The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

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Early history
King David
Northern & southern kingdoms
Assyrian involvement
Fall of Judah & Babylonian exile
The Hasmonean Dynasty
Herod the Great
Rebellions against Rome
Additional resources
Bibliography

The term "ancient Israel" is used by scholars to refer to the tribes, kingdoms and dynasties formed by ancient Jewish people in the Levant (an area that encompasses modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria).

Scholars draw mainly on three sources to reconstruct the history of ancient Israel — archaeological excavations, the Hebrew Bible and texts that are not found in the Hebrew Bible. The use of the Hebrew Bible can be challenging for scholars — while some of the accounts are thought by many scholars to be mystical, others, such as Nebuchandezzar II's conquest of Jerusalem are known to have happened.

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The Hebrew Bible claims that the Jewish people fled Egypt as refugees before arriving (with some divine help) in the Levant, where they started conquering territory from the local population — such as the Canaanites. When exactly this would have happened is unclear although it would have been more than 3,000 years ago. Whether there is any truth to this biblical account is a point of contention among modern-day scholars. Some scholars think that there was no exodus from Egypt, while others believe that some Jewish people could have fled Egypt in the second millennium B.C.

James Hoffmeier, an archaeologist and professor at Trinity International University in Illinois, pointed out in papers and lectures that people from the Levant did live in ancient Egypt at different points in Egypt's history. He also noted that the ancient city of Ramesses, mentioned in the exodus stories told in the Hebrew Bible, did exist, and archaeologists have discovered that it flourished for several centuries during the second millennium B.C., before it was abandoned about 3,100 years ago.

After King David's death, possibly around 3,000 years ago, his son Solomon took over the kingdom and constructed what is now called the First Temple — supposedly the first purpose-built temple in which to worship God. The temple was located in Jerusalem and contained the Ark of the Covenant, which held tablets inscribed with the 10 Commandments. Recent archaeological excavations show that smaller temples also existed in Israel at the time the First Temple was flourishing.

"Over a century of archaeological explorations in Jerusalem — the capital of the glamorous biblical United Monarchy — failed to reveal evidence for any meaningful 10th-century building activity," Finkelstein wrote in a paper published in 2010 in the book "One God? One Cult? One Nation: Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives" (De Gruyter, 2010). Finkelstein wrote that King David's kingdom was likely a more modest state than the one described in the Hebrew Bible.

Between the ninth and seventh centuries B.C., the Assyrian Empire, originally from the region that is now northern Iraq, grew in size and conquered an empire that stretched from modern-day Iraq to the borders of Egypt. As the Assyrian Empire grew, it came into contact with both Israel and Judah. The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III claims that an Israeli king named Jehu was forced to pay tribute to the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (reign 859 to 824 B.C.); the obelisk is now in the British Museum.

Hoshea was forced to pay tribute to the Assyrians, the Hebrew Bible says. He later rebelled but was crushed by Assyrian forces around 723 B.C. (the exact date is not clear). The kingdom of Israel then came to an end, and its remaining territory was incorporated into the Assyrian Empire. Many Israelites were deported to Assyria. The Hebrew Bible says that Judah was the last Jewish kingdom standing, although it was forced to pay tribute to Assyria.

In 705 B.C., Sennacherib ascended the throne of Assyria, and launched a military campaign against Judah that culminated in the siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C. Both the Hebrew Bible and cuneiform texts tell of the siege. The Hebrew Bible says that Taharqa, a ruler who controlled both Nubia and Egypt, marched against Sennacherib, which may have helped end the siege. The Hebrew Bible also says that at one point, "The angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning — there were all the dead bodies!" (2 Kings 19:35 and Isaiah 37:36)

Cuneiform texts written by the Assyrians also say that Sennacherib failed to take Jerusalem. They don't specify why, only saying that Sennacherib trapped Hezekiah, the king of Judah, in Jerusalem "like a caged bird" and that the Assyrian king captured other cities that Hezekiah had controlled. The Assyrian texts claim that Hezekiah paid an enormous tribute to Sennacherib before the Assyrian king went home.

Ultimately, it wasn't the Assyrian Empire that destroyed Judah. Nearly a century after Sennacherib's unsuccessful siege of Jerusalem, a Babylonian king named Nebuchadnezzar II conquered much of Assyria's former empire and laid siege to Jerusalem. His forces conquered the city in 587 B.C., destroyed the First Temple, along with much of the rest of Jerusalem, and deported many of Judah's inhabitants to Babylonia (modern-day southern Iraq). Both the Hebrew Bible and cuneiform tablets that were written in Nebuchadnezzar II's time recorded these events.

The tablets give details on Jewish people who lived at a village called Āl-Yahūdu, which in Akkadian means the "village of Judea." The tablets were "written by Babylonian scribes on behalf of the Judean families that lived in and around Āl-Yahūdu," Kathleen Abraham, a professor at the University of Leuven in Belgium, wrote in a paper for an exhibition catalog, "Light and Shadows: The Story of Iran and the Jews" (Beit Hatfutsot, 2011).

The Persian Empire was virtually destroyed in the fourth century B.C. after suffering a series of stunning defeats at the hands of Alexander the Great, who went on to conquer an empire that stretched from Macedonia to Afghanistan. Even before Alexander's time, Greek forces launched raids on Persian territories, including Israel; a 2,500-year-old helmet that may be from a Greek raid was found in Haifa harbor in 2007.

The Seleucid Empire began to weaken during the 2nd century B.C., and a line of Jewish rulers descended from a priest named Simon Maccabeus gained semi-autonomy and eventually full independence from the Seleucids. This line of rulers is called the Hasmonean dynasty by modern-day scholars. By 100 B.C., the Hasmoneans had gained control of the territory that was once controlled by Israel and Judah, as well as territories that those kingdoms had never controlled, such as some areas of Jordan.

However, the Hasmonean dynasty's success proved short-lived. Roman power grew in the eastern Mediterranean during the first century B.C., taking territory in Anatolia during the late second and early first centuries B.C — gradually inching closer to Hasmonean territory. The Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, more commonly known as Pompey the Great, took advantage of a Hasmonean civil war to launch a military expedition into Hasmonean territory. Jerusalem fell to Pompey in 63 B.C. and from that point on the territories that the Hasmoneans controlled were effectively under Roman rule — with Herod the Great eventually being named as a client king.

The most famous of these client kings was Herod the Great (who lived circa 73 B.C. to 4 B.C.). The Roman general Mark Antony was a key supporter of Herod and supplied the military strength necessary to cement Herod's position as king of Judea, Barry Strauss, a professor of history and classics, wrote in his book "The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra and Octavian at Actium" (Simon & Schuster, 2022). Despite this, Antony also forced Herod to cede land to Cleopatra VII, Strauss wrote.

Herod became well known for his building achievements. "Without a doubt he [Herod] was the greatest builder in the Holy Land, planning and overseeing the execution of palaces, fortresses, theatres, amphitheatres, harbours and the entire city of Caesarea, and to crown them all, he organized the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem," Geza Vermes, who was professor emeritus of Jewish Studies at Oxford University in the U.K., wrote in his book "The True Herod" (Bloomsbury, 2014).

Some scholars think that a group called the Essenes established a retreat at Qumran during or shortly after King Herod's reign. The Dead Sea Scrolls — thousands of fragments from 900 manuscripts — were found in 11 nearby caves near Qumran in the 1940s and 1950s. An additional scroll was found blank inside another cave in 2017. Some of the scrolls contain parts of the Hebrew Bible while others include calendars, community rules and astronomical texts.

Masada's defenders were part of a group that modern-day scholars often refer to as the "Zealots." The ancient Jewish writer Josephus (who lived from A.D. 37 to 100) wrote that the Zealots took their own lives rather than surrender to the Romans. "For the husbands tenderly embraced their wives, and took their children into their arms, and gave the longest parting kisses to them, with tear in their eyes," before they committed suicide, Josephus wrote.

"Five hundred and eighty thousand men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out … thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate," Dio wrote. (Translation by Earnest Cary, from volume VIII of the "Loeb Classical Library" published in 1925). Archaeologists are still finding treasure hoards buried by people who lived during this rebellion.

Owen Jarus is a regular contributor to Live Science who writes about archaeology and humans' past. He has also written for The Independent (UK), The Canadian Press (CP) and The Associated Press (AP), among others. Owen has a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Toronto and a journalism degree from Ryerson University.

Early history

King David

Northern & southern kingdoms

Assyrian involvement

Fall of Judah & Babylonian exile

The Hasmonean Dynasty

Herod the Great

Rebellions against Rome

Additional resources

Bibliography