Secret_History

364 The Secret History of the World
The problem is, as Redford notes, that “one has the sinking feeling in
approaching this period that a most significant page is missing in the record”. And
indeed there is.
The bottom line is: archaeological evidence suggests that despite the biblical
claims of richness and glory, Jerusalem was little more than a village in the time
assigned to David and Solomon. In the interim, during the “missing page period”,
the former fortified city had long since disappeared. In other words, the northern
kingdom that was supposed to have “broken away” from the rule of Jerusalem was
well on its way to major state status while Judah had been returned to a condition
not unlike a backwater sheep station.
At the same time that the northern highlands were outpacing the southern
highlands during all the three periods of settlement, the coastal city-states were
leaving both of them in the dust. They were busy, thriving, cosmopolitan, and
wealthy. Archaeologists think that what made possible the initial independence of
the highlands was the fact that the city-state system of Canaan suffered a series of
catastrophically destructive upheavals at the end of the Late Bronze Age. The
archaeologists are uncertain as to the cause of this “cataclysm”, suggesting it to be
the invasion of the Sea Peoples or other such propositions. We have an idea
already that it was probably more than that.
What seems to have happened is that the coastal city-states recovered from the
“cataclysms”, had been rebuilt and were thriving, when suddenly they were
destroyed a second time in a rather short period, this time - supposedly - by
military onslaught and fire. Whatever it was, the destruction was so complete that
the Canaanite cities of the plain and the coast never recovered. The source of this
destruction is thought to have been the military campaign of Shishak, founder of
the twenty-second Dynasty. This invasion is mentioned in the Bible where it says
that, “In the fifth year of Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against
Jerusalem; he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures
of the king’s house; he took away everything. He also took away the shields of
gold that Solomon had made”.
Shishak/Sheshonq commissioned a triumphal inscription to commemorate the
event on the temple walls at Karnak. This inscription lists about one hundred fifty
towns and villages he wiped out in his “march to the sea”, so to speak. The targets
of the Egyptians seem to have been the great Canaanite cities of Rehov, Bethshean,
Taanach, and Megiddo. A fragment of a victory stele bearing the name of
Shishak was found at Megiddo. 259 Thick layers of ash and the evidence of the
collapse of buildings bear mute testimony to the rage of Pharaoh, which led to the
sudden death of the Canaanite territory in the late tenth century BC. There is very
259 Unfortunately, it had been dumped in the trash at the archaeological site so its precise provenance is
unknown.