Secret_History

362 The Secret History of the World
is no evidence of any kind of unified culture, nor of any sort of central
administration. The area from Jerusalem to the north was densely settled, and the
area from Jerusalem to the south, the land “in question”, was very sparsely settled
in the time that David and Solomon were supposed to have lived. In fact,
Jerusalem itself was little more than a typical highland village. Archaeologically,
nothing can be said about David and Solomon. Yet the legend endured. Why?
The important thing to remember at this point is the fact that the evidence
supports only a gradual emergence of a distinct group in Canaan at the end of the
thirteenth century BC, not a sudden arrival of a vast number of Israelite settlers.
And, as noted, the ones who were present in the land were not very organized or
“civilized” in the area that was claimed as the great kingdom of David and
Solomon.
Ahab and Jezebel: Solomon and Sheba?
Biblical historians and biblical archaeologists have long attempted to take the
biblical account of the rise and fall of the united monarchy at face value. They
have assumed an original ethnic unity and distinctiveness of the Hebrew people
reaching into the primeval past. They took for granted that the united monarchy of
David and Solomon, and its tragic collapse, were facts belonging to Israel in terms
of the land of Palestine at a particular period in time. Further, it was assumed that,
since Judah and Israel, the two kingdoms, had originally been one, when they split,
they both inherited fully formed institutions of church and state. At that point, they
were believed to have engaged in competition with one another on a more or less
equal footing.
However, intensive archaeological work in the hill country of Israel in the 1980s
put those ideas to rest. Curiously, what the archaeologists found was that there had
been three waves of settlement activity. The first was between 3500-2200 BC. The
second was around 2000-1550 BC. The third was 1150-900 BC. We recognize
these time windows as being previously related to possible cataclysms. 258
In any event, during these three periods of settlement activity - periods when
new people arrived and left evidence of a distinct cultural norm, the northern and
southern “kingdoms” always seemed to be separate in these terms. The northern
settlement system was always dense and possessed evidence of complex hierarchy
of large, medium, and small sites. These sites were heavily dependent on settled
agriculture.
The southern “kingdom”, on the other hand, was sparsely settled in small sites,
with only evidence of a population of migratory pastoral groups. We have, then, a
division between agriculturalists and shepherds right from the beginning.
258 Baillie, Mike, Exodus to Arthur (London: B.T. Batsford 1999).