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48JOURNAL OF HEBREW SCRIPTURESAchaemenids were also interested in the continued existence of therural settlement in the hill country. It was an important source foragricultural supply, which was probably collected as tax. 45This historical – archaeological situation in post-exilic Judah is ofimportance for understanding the developments there during thePersian period. Prof. Williamson raised doubts and questions whethersome of those who returned to Judah early in the Persian period metwith hostility from those who had remained in the land. I can just agreewith Williamson's thoughts, which he demonstrated it in a persuasiveway based on the biblical texts from the early Persian period. This viewalso gains support from the above described historical, archaeologicaland social-demographic processes. As many biblical scholars, historiansand archaeologists have observed, there is no more room for theoriesregarding a 'mass return' at the beginning of the Persian period. 46 Itseems that beside the rebuilding of the temple and the renewedJerusalemite cultic life in Judah after 70 years, the actual 'return' was aslow and graduate re-establishment of the power of the local social,religious and fiscal classes around the temple in Jerusalem. This processmay have crystallized around the middle of the fifth century BCE. Wecannot detect the details of this process with archaeological tools, sincethe changes were too slow and incremental. It is clear, however, that atthe middle of the fifth century B.C.E. Jerusalem had arrived at a pointof a change. 47 In this period, the fortifications of Jerusalem were rebuilt.Beside the scanty archaeological finds, we have a clear description ofthis event in the Nehemiah narrative. The list of the builders of the wall(Nehemiah 3) that was combined with Nehemiah’s memoirs by a latereditor is another testimony for it. Even more, the impression of thisevent as one of the most conspicuous and most important at that timeled to enormous expectations for the renewed status of Jerusalem. Thisimpression stands behind the composition of Nehemiah 11. Thesignificance of such a change in Jerusalem in the middle of the fifthcentury B.C.E. can only be interpreted in one way: Jerusalem becamethe capital of the province (Bîrāh) and replaced Mizpah.In this period, one historical circle was closed. Jerusalem's statuswas renewed. A temple, fortifications and the status of a central politicalcity were restored in Jerusalem. The actual situation in Jerusalem was,in the hill country. See Lehman, East Greek or Levantine? Band-DecoratedPottery in the Levant during the Achaemenid Period, Transeuphratène 19 (2000),83-113.45 The many ‘yehud’ stamp impressions found in Judah are the best prooffor the role of the agricultural economy of Judah. The same situation probablyexisted in the area of the Negev and the Southern Shephelah, as we can learnfrom the many ostraca from this region, most of them dated to the 4 th centuryB.C.E.46 See, for example, B. Becking, ‘‘We all returned as One’: Critical Notes onThe Myth of the Mass Return,” O. Lipschits and M. Oeming (eds.), Judah andthe Judaeans in the Persian Period (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 3-18,with further literature.47 Stern worked with the same assumption, basing his view on thearchaeological material, but he interpreted the cause and the results in adifferent way. See Stern, E., Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Volume II: TheAssyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods (732-332 B.C.E.), 581-582.