The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Isreal and the Origin of Sacred Texts (28 page)

Ahab’s son Ahaziah then came to the throne and he too gravely sinned. Injured in a fall “through the lattice in his upper chamber in Samaria,” he dispatched messengers to consult Baal-zebub the god of the Philistine city of Ekron, about his prospects for recovery. But Elijah, chastising him for appealing to a foreign idol rather than YHWH, announced his imminent death.

Finally Jehoram, Ahaziah’s brother and the fourth and last king of the Omride dynasty, ascended the throne. In response to a rebellion by Mesha, king of Moab, who had long been Israel’s vassal, Jehoram marched against Moab, joined by Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and an unnamed king of Edom. The prophet Elisha predicted victory only because the just Judahite king, Jehoshaphat, was with them. And indeed, the Moabites were vanquished by the Israelite-Judahite-Edomite alliance and their cities were destroyed.

Yet the Omride dynasty could not ultimately escape its destiny of utter destruction. With the accession of Hazael as king of Damascus, the military
and political fortunes of the Omride dynasty declined. Hazael defeated the army of Israel at Ramoth-gilead east of the Jordan, and the Israelite king, Jehoram, was badly wounded on the battlefield. At that moment of crisis, Elisha dispatched one of the sons of the prophets of YHWH to anoint Jehu, the commander of the army, as king of Israel, so that he would finally smite the house of Ahab. And so it happened. Returning to the Omride palace at Jezreel to heal his wounds in the company of King Ahaziah of Judah, Jehoram was confronted by Jehu (symbolically, in the vineyard of Naboth), who killed him with an arrow shot into his heart. Ahaziah attempted to escape, but was wounded and died at the nearby city of Megiddo, to which he had fled.

The liquidation of the family of Ahab was nearing a climax. Jehu then entered the royal compound of Jezreel and ordered that Jezebel be thrown from an upper window of the palace. Jehu commanded his servants to take off her body for burial, but they discovered only her skull, her feet, and the palms of her hands in the courtyard—for stray dogs had eaten the flesh of Jezebel, just as Elijah’s chilling prophecy had warned. In the meanwhile, the sons of the king of Israel living in Samaria—seventy altogether—were slaughtered and their heads were put in baskets and sent to Jehu in Jezreel. He ordered that those heads be piled up in full public view at the entrance to the city gate. Jehu then set off for Samaria, where he killed all that remained of the house of Ahab. The Omride dynasty was thus extinguished forever and the terrible prophecy of Elijah was fulfilled to its last word.

The court tragedy of the house of Omri is a literary classic, filled with vivid characters and theatrical scenes, in which a royal family’s crimes against their own people are paid back with a bloody demise. The memory of the reigns of Ahab and Jezebel obviously remained vivid for centuries, as we can see from their inclusion in such a prominent way in the Deuteronomistic History—compiled over two hundred years after their deaths. Nonetheless, the biblical narrative is so thoroughly filled with inconsistencies and anachronisms, and so obviously influenced by the theology of the seventh century
BCE
writers, that it must be considered more of a historical novel than an accurate historical chronicle. Among other inconsistencies, the reported
invasion of Samaria by Ben-hadad of Damascus did not take place during the reign of Ahab but later in the history of the northern kingdom. The mention of an alliance of Israel with an unnamed king of Edom is also an anachronism, for there is no evidence of monarchy in Edom until more than a century after the time of the Omrides. In fact, when one takes out the anachronisms and the stories of threats issued and prophecies fulfilled, there is very little verifiable historical material left in the biblical account, except for the sequence of Israelite kings, some of their most famous building projects, and the general areas of military activity.

Fortunately there are—for the first time in the history of Israel—some important external sources of historical information that allow us to see the Omrides from a different perspective: as the militarily powerful rulers of one of the strongest states in the Near East. The key to this new understanding is the sudden appearance of monumental inscriptions that directly refer to the kingdom of Israel. The first mention of the northern kingdom in the time of the Omrides is not accidental. The westward advance of the Assyrian empire from its Mesopotamian heartland—with its fully developed bureaucracy and long tradition of recording its rulers’ acts in public declarations—profoundly influenced the culture of crystallizing states like Israel, Aram, and Moab. Beginning in the ninth century
BCE
, in the records of the Assyrians themselves and those of smaller powers of the Near East, we at last gain some firsthand testimony on events and personalities described in the biblical text.

In the time of David and Solomon, political organization in the region had not yet reached the stage where extensive bureaucracies and monumental inscriptions existed. By the time of the Omrides a century later, internal economic processes and external political pressures had brought about the rise of fully developed territorial, national states in the Levant. In an anthropological sense,
fully developed
implies a territory governed by a complex bureaucratic organization that is capable of organizing major building projects, maintaining a standing army, and developing organized trade connections with neighboring regions. It is capable of keeping records of its actions in archives and in monumental inscriptions open to public view. In the ninth century and after, major political events were recorded in monumental writing, from the perspective of each king. These inscriptions are crucial for establishing precise dates for events and personalities
mentioned in the Bible. And for anyone who knows the Bible’s version, they offer an unexpected picture of the extent and power of the kingdom of Israel.

One of the most important is the Mesha stele, found in
1868
on the surface of the remote mound of Dhiban in southern Jordan, east of the Dead Sea—the site of biblical Dibon, the capital of the kingdom of Moab. This monumental inscription was badly damaged in the wrangling between rival European explorers and the local bedouin, but its surviving fragments have been pieced together to offer what is still the longest extrabiblical text ever found in the Levant. It is written in the Moabite language, which is closely related to biblical Hebrew, and it records the achievements of King Mesha, who conquered the territories of northern Moab and established his capital in Dibon. The discovery of this inscription caused great excitement in the nineteenth century because Mesha is mentioned in
2
Kings
3
as a rebellious vassal of the northern kingdom of Israel.

Here for the first time was the other side of the story, the first nonbiblical description of the Omrides ever found. The events recorded in the inscription took place in the ninth century
BCE
, when, according to its fragmentary text, “Omri [was] king of Israel, and he oppressed Moab many days. . . . And his son succeeded him, and he too said: ‘I will humble Moab.’ In my days, he spoke thus. . . . And Omri had taken possession of the land of Medeba. And he dwelt in it his days and the sum of the days of his sons: forty years.”

The inscription goes on to relate how Mesha gradually expanded his territory in rebellion against Israel, destroying the main settlements of the Israelites east of the Jordan, while fortifying and embellishing his own capital. Though Mesha barely disguises his contempt for Omri and his son Ahab, we nonetheless learn from his triumphal inscription that the kingdom of Israel reached far east and south of its earlier heartland in the central hill country.

Likewise we hear about the conflicts with Aram-Damascus from the “House of David” inscription discovered at the biblical city of Dan in
1993
. Although the name of the monarch who erected it was not found on the fragments that have so far been recovered, there is little doubt, from the overall context, that this was the mighty Hazael, king of Aram-Damascus. He is mentioned several times in the Bible, in particular as God’s instrument
to humble the House of Omri. From the inscription, it seems that Hazael captured the city of Dan and erected a triumphal stele there around
835
BCE
. The inscription records the words of the victorious Hazael in his angry accusation that “the king of I[s]rael entered previously in my father’s land.” Since the inscription apparently mentioned the name of Ahab’s son and successor, Jehoram, the implication is clear. The kingdom of Israel under the Omrides stretched from the vicinity of Damascus throughout the central highlands and valleys of Israel, all the way to the southern territory of Moab, ruling over considerable populations of non-Israelites.

This Omride “empire,” we also learn, possessed a mighty military force. Though the biblical account of the Omride dynasty stresses repeated military disasters—and makes no mention whatsoever of a threat from Assyria—there is some dramatic evidence of the Omrides’ power from Assyria itself. Shalmaneser III, one of the greatest Assyrian kings, who ruled in the years
858
–
824
BCE
, offers perhaps the clearest (if entirely unintentional) praise for the power of the Omride dynasty. In the year
853
BCE
, Shalmaneser led a major Assyrian invasion force westward to intimidate and possibly conquer the smaller states of Syria, Phoenicia, and Israel. His advancing armies were confronted by an anti-Assyrian coalition near Qarqar on the river Orontes in western Syria. Shalmaneser boasted of his great victory in an important ancient text known as the Monolith Inscription, found in the
1840
s by the English explorer Austen Henry Layard at the ancient Assyrian site of Nimrud. The dark stone monument, thickly inscribed with cuneiform characters, proudly recorded the forces ranged against Shalmaneser: “
1
,
200
chariots,
1
,
200
cavalry men,
20
,
000
foot soldiers of Hadadezer of Damascus,
700
chariots,
700
cavalrymen,
10
,
000
foot soldiers of Irhuleni from Hamath,
2
,
000
chariots,
10
,
000
foot soldiers of Ahab, the Israelite,
500
soldiers from Que,
1
,
000
soldiers from Musri,
10
chariots,
10
,
000
soldiers from Irqanata . . . .”

Not only is this the earliest nonbiblical evidence of a king of Israel, it is clear from the mention of the “heavy arms” (chariots) that Ahab was the strongest member of the anti-Assyrian coalition. And although the great Shalmaneser claimed victory, the practical outcome of this confrontation spoke much louder than royal boasts. Shalmaneser quickly returned to Assyria, and at least for a while the Assyrian march to the west was blocked.

Thus we learn from three ancient inscriptions (ironically from three of Israel’s bitterest enemies) information that dramatically supplements the biblical account. Though the Bible speaks of an Aramean army besieging Samaria, Omri and his successors were in fact powerful kings who expanded the territory of their kingdom and maintained what was certainly one of the largest standing armies in the region. And they were deeply involved in international power politics (at a time when the kingdom of Judah was passed over in silence in Shalmaneser’s inscription) in a continuing effort to maintain their independence against regional rivals and the looming threat of the Assyrian Empire.

The archaeological evidence also reveals that the Omrides far surpassed any other monarchs in Israel or Judah as builders and administrators. In a sense, theirs was the first golden age of the Israelite kings. Yet in the Bible, the description of the Omride kingdom is quite sketchy. Except for the mention of elaborate palaces in Samaria and Jezreel, there is almost no reference to the size, scale, and opulence of their realm. In the early twentieth century, archaeology first began to make a significant contribution, as major excavations at the site of Omri’s capital city, Samaria, got under way. There is hardly a doubt that Samaria was indeed built by Omri, since later Assyrian sources call the northern kingdom “the house of Omri,” an indication that he was the founder of its capital. The site, first excavated in
1908
–
10
by an expedition of Harvard University, was further explored in the
1930
s by a joint American, British, and Jewish–Palestinian team. That site further revealed the splendor of the Omride dynasty.