Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)

The united monarchy is the single Israelite kingdom that, according to the Hebrew Bible, was ruled in turn by Saul, Ish-bosheth, David and Solomon and took in the lands of the later kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Those who accept that it existed usually place it between about 1047 and 930 BCE. Whether it was a real state, and if so how large and how organised, is one of the most debated questions in the archaeology of the southern Levant.

The name Israel first appears outside the Bible on the Merneptah Stele, an inscription of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah dated to 1208 BCE. Everything about the monarchy itself comes from later biblical writing, above all the Books of Samuel. Most scholars think these books were put together in the 8th century BCE, long after the events they describe, from older historical and legendary material. They point to details that seem out of place for the 10th century, such as camels, cavalry and widespread iron tools.

In the biblical story the elders of Israel ask for a king, and the prophet Samuel, despite misgivings, anoints Saul, who rules from Gibeah. After Saul dies fighting the Philistines, his son Ish-bosheth reigns briefly from Mahanaim while David rules Judah from Hebron. Ish-bosheth is murdered, and David becomes king of all Israel; some biblical critics suspect that David's innocence in the killing was a later invention. David survives a revolt by his son Absalom, makes Jerusalem his capital and, in the text, brings Philistia, Moab, Edom, Ammon and the Aramean states of Zobah and Damascus under his power.

His son Solomon, who wins the throne over his elder brother Adonijah, builds the Temple in Jerusalem with craftsmen and materials from Tyre and fortifies cities such as Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer. After Solomon's death, northern resentment of his son Rehoboam's harsh rule splits the realm, around 930 BCE, into Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

From the 1980s some scholars argued that there was too little evidence for a large kingdom before the late 8th century BCE. In the mid-1990s Israel Finkelstein proposed a "Low Chronology" that moved monumental buildings once credited to Solomon, such as six-chambered gates and ashlar palaces, into the 9th century. In his view and that of Neil Silberman, David and Solomon may have been real rulers of a small Judah, but the united kingdom is largely a later literary creation.

Amihai Mazar answered with a "Modified Conventional Chronology" that keeps many of these finds in the 10th century, and scholars including William Dever, Kenneth Kitchen and Amnon Ben-Tor rejected Finkelstein's dating. Eilat Mazar dated a large building and walls in Jerusalem to the 10th century, and Yosef Garfinkel's excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa uncovered a fortified town radiocarbon-dated to that period; both claims remain disputed. On the other side, Aren Maeir's work at Gath suggests a large Philistine city that may have dwarfed Jerusalem at the time.

Views therefore range widely. Dever describes 10th-century Judah as an "early inchoate state" rather than the empire of the text, Oded Lipschits has argued that the idea of a united monarchy should be abandoned, and Avraham Faust and Zev Farber argued in 2025 for a real but modest "mini-empire". There is no consensus.

In the north, the Kingdom of Israel, with Shechem and Samaria among its cities, lasted until its conquest by Assyria in 722 BCE. Judah, centred on Jerusalem, survived until the Babylonian conquest of 586 BCE. In the biblical tradition, the reigns of David and Solomon remained the model of a single Israel under one king.

Our 1000 BCE map labels this territory the Kingdom of David and Solomon, within the period traditionally given for the united monarchy. The outline follows the biblical extent, which many archaeologists consider too large. Nearby sit the Arameans, the Phoenician cities (Phoenicia) and, earlier, New Kingdom Egypt; the region today is covered on our Israel page.