The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Isreal and the Origin of Sacred Texts (42 page)

Archaeologically, it is not easy to distinguish the finds of the early seventh century from those of the second half of that century (see
Appendix E
).
Yet we know enough to argue that with the widespread devastation in the Shephelah (and the annexation of large tracts by the Philistine cities), the population of the Judean highlands grew. This was almost certainly due to the arrival of displaced Judahite refugees who fled from the desolated regions of the Shephelah. Agricultural production intensified around the capital. A dense system of farmsteads was built around Jerusalem and south of it, near Bethlehem, in the seventh century
BCE
. They were probably aimed at feeding the growing population of the metropolis.

But the most fascinating development in Judah during the seventh century is the demographic expansion of Judahite settlements into the arid zones to the east and south (
Figure 27
, p.
258
). In the Judean desert, which was empty of permanent settlement during the eighth century, something extraordinary happened in the following decades. In the seventh century, groups of small sites were established in every ecological niche that was slightly better suited for cultivation than the rest of the desert: in the Buqeah valley halfway between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, near Jericho, and along the western coast of the Dead Sea. In the Beersheba valley the number of sites grew far beyond that of the previous period. Between the eighth and the seventh centuries the built-up area and thus the population in this region grew by ten times. Could this development be related to Manasseh’s policies?

That seems very likely. It is clear that until Sennacherib’s campaign, the economy of the Judahite kingdom was well balanced by the different ecological niches of its territory: olive and vine orchards were grown mainly in the hill country, grain was grown primarily in the Shephelah, and animal husbandry was practiced mostly in the desert fringe in the south and east. When the Shephelah was handed over to the Philistine city-states, Judah lost its rich grain-producing lands in the west. At the same time the population that had to be fed in the remaining parts of the kingdom grew significantly. These pressures probably drove part of the population of Judah to the marginal areas of the kingdom, in a desperate attempt to compensate for the loss of the rich farmland of the Shephelah. Indeed, the exploitation of the arid zones could solve the problem. Estimates of the agricultural potential of the Beersheba valley in antiquity suggest that if production there was well organized, it alone could have supplied up to
one quarter of the overall grain needs of Judah. But this could not have been done on such a large scale without the assistance of the state. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the expansion into the arid zones was inspired if not actually directed by Manasseh’s new political and economic policies.

Manasseh’s program went far beyond subsistence. He was intent on integrating Judah into the Assyrian world economy. The two main economic activities of Assyria in and around the region of Judah were trade in exotic luxury goods and incense from Arabia and the mass production and distribution of olive oil.

The Arabian trade was one of the main economic interests of Assyria and there is hardly a doubt that from the late eighth century it provided the empire with significant revenues. Assyria accordingly had a strong interest in the security of the desert roads leading northward from the Arabian peninsula to their termini on the Mediterranean coast. The Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III counted Gaza, the traditional terminus of the desert roads, in one of his triumphal inscriptions “as the custom-house of Assyria” and he set his officials there to collect duties from the harbor, which served as an outlet for the overland caravan routes. Sargon II declared that he opened the border of Egypt to trade and mingled Assyrians and Egyptians. A number of Assyrian forts and administrative centers have indeed been uncovered in different places in the southern coastal plain, and a large fortified site, with remains of storehouses, has been excavated on the coast south of Gaza. The assemblage of animal bones excavated from Tell Jemmeh, another site near Gaza, shows a dramatic increase in the number of camels in the seventh century. A study of the bones by archaeozoologist Paula Wapnish suggests that these camels—all of mature age and therefore not part of a natural, locally raised flock—were probably used in the caravan trade.

The southernmost territories still controlled by the kingdom of Judah in the Beersheba valley, the Edomite highlands, and the southern coastal plain contained some of the most important caravan routes. They were
areas that experienced unprecedented demographic growth in the seventh century. The first widespread occupation of the Edomite plateau took place at this time, under Assyrian domination. In fact, Edom emerged only then as a fully developed state, as a result of these developments.

The rich and varied archaeological finds from the vast area between Edom and Philistia indicate that Assyrians, Arabs, Phoenicians, and Edomites were involved in this thriving commercial activity. Judah under Manasseh was also a prominent participant. The wave of settlement in the Beersheba valley should be understood on this background. Judah may have been expanded even farther south along the trade routes. Two large seventh century forts have been excavated in the deep desert. The first is Kadesh-barnea on the western margin of the Negev highlands, about fifty miles to the southwest of Beersheba. The site commands the largest oasis on the important trade road from southern Palestine to the head of the Gulf of Aqaba and onward to Arabia. The second fort has recently been excavated in Haseva, a site located about twenty miles to the south of the Dead Sea on another route to the south. The finds at the two forts led the biblical historian Nadav Naaman to suggest that both were built in the early seventh century
BCE
under Assyrian auspices with the assistance of the local vassal states—and were manned by troops from Judah and Edom.

South Arabian inscriptions found in several sites in Judah supply conclusive evidence for the strong connections with Arabia at that time. This kind of evidence also comes from Jerusalem. Three ostraca with south Arabian script were uncovered in the city of David. Since they were carved on typical Judahite vessels—rather than on imported types—they probably attest to a resident Arabian population in Judah. And an otherwise typical seventh century Hebrew seal seems to carry a south Arabian name. In this connection several scholars have argued that Manasseh’s wife Meshullemeth was an Arabian woman. Could this have been a diplomatic marriage aimed at strengthening Judah’s commercial interests in the south? Could the Deuteronomistic tale of the queen of Sheba visiting Solomon in Jerusalem be inspired by the cultural contacts and economic ambitions of another Davidic king in the seventh century?

Arabian contact was not the only widened economic horizon. The Assyrians also monopolized and developed Levantine olive oil production.
Evidence for this comes from Tel Miqne, a site in the western Shephelah that is the location of ancient Ekron, one of the main cities of Philistia. A modest site in the centuries before the Assyrian takeover of the region, Ekron grew to be a huge olive oil production center in the early seventh century. Over a hundred olive oil presses were found there—more than in any other site in the history of the country. In fact, this is the most impressive olive oil production center known anywhere in the ancient Near East. The industrial zone covered about one-fifth of the area of the city. The annual capacity has been estimated at about a thousand tons.

The Ekron oil was apparently transported to both Assyria and Egypt—the two lands lacking the environment to grow olive orchards and to produce their own oil. But Ekron itself is not located in the classical olive-growing country in the hills. In fact, it is situated in typical, flat grain-growing land. It was apparently chosen as the center of production because of its location on the main road network of the southern coastal plain, halfway between the olive regions of the hill country and the main distribution centers on the coast to the west.

The groves that supplied the olives to the Ekron industry must have been located in the hill country of Judah and possibly also in the Assyrian province of Samaria to the north. As we have already mentioned, the seventh century marked the real industrialization of olive production in Judah and it was probably the major supplier of olives to the Ekron industry. The excavators of the site of Ekron—Trude Dothan, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Seymour Gitin of the Albright Institute—noting the significant numbers of typical Israelite horned incense altars in the buildings of the oil presses, have suggested that large numbers of Judahites might have been resettled in Philistia by Sennacherib as forced laborers. Thus another barrier—in however cruel and coldhearted a fashion—was broken between Judah and the outside world.

All these active, centrally planned economic initiatives required a further centralization of the Judahite state. Large-scale cultivation of olives and grapes and their industrial products required facilities for storage, transport, and efficient distribution. Moreover, extensive settlement and cultivation in arid areas required long-range planning. It was necessary to store large quantities of surplus grain in good years and to distribute them
from the centers in years of severe drought. The archaeological evidence supports the assumption of heightened government involvement in all phases of life in Judah—to the extent that the number of seals, seal impressions, administrative ostraca, and official weights in seventh century Judahite levels far exceed the quantities found before.

The Assyrian century—from the last years of the rule of Ahaz to the days of Hezekiah and Manasseh—is a fascinating case of dramatic policy swings in Judah. The three kings—grandfather, father, and son—flip-flopped between defiance and engagement with the Assyrian authorities and between syncretistic and puritan religious policies. Their treatment by the biblical historian also reflects these changes, but from an entirely different perspective. Ahaz was described as an idolater who cooperated with the Assyrians. Hezekiah is the complete reverse. There were no mistakes in his reign, only merits. He was an ideal king, who cleansed Judah from all the transgressions of the past. And unlike his sinful father, who willingly subjected Judah to Assyria, Hezekiah fought bravely and threw off the yoke of Assyria. The Assyrians threatened Jerusalem, but YHWH delivered the city miraculously. The story ends with no hint of future subjugation to Assyria, and except for one verse, there is no word on the catastrophic results of the Assyrian campaign in the Judahite countryside. Manasseh is also a mirror image of his father, but this time a negative one. He is the ultimate apostate, who wiped out the reforms and brought back all the abominations of the past.

What we get from the external sources and from archaeology is very different. The collapse of the northern kingdom raised dreams in Jerusalem of uniting the entire Israelite population under one capital, one Temple, and one dynasty. But in the face of the mighty Assyrians, there were only two options: forget the dream and cooperate with Assyria, or push for nationalistic policy and wait for the right moment to throw off the yoke of Assyria. High stakes call for extreme measures; the Assyrian century witnessed dramatic shifts between these two options.

Ahaz was a cautious and pragmatic king who saved Judah from the terrible
fate of Israel and led it to prosperity. He understood that the only way to survive was to ally with Assyria, and as a loyal vassal he gained economic concessions from his overlords, and incorporated Judah into the Assyrian regional economy. Ahaz reigned over a period of unprecedented prosperity in Judah, when it first reached the stage of fully developed statehood. But by allowing traditional religious practices to flourish, he gained the wrath of the Deuteronomistic historian.

In his first years in power, Hezekiah had no choice but to follow in the footsteps of his father. But when the great Sargon died on the battlefield and Sennacherib came to power, Assyria faced rebellion in various parts of the empire. All of a sudden, the “restoration” of a Pan-Israelite state looked realistic, especially with the expected assistance from Egypt. Hezekiah launched a religious reform that served to justify the uprising and rouse the population to support it. But the revolt against Assyria proved to be a reckless decision that resulted in disaster.

When Manasseh came to the throne, power in Jerusalem returned to the moderate camp. Since he was only twelve years old at that time, there can hardly be a doubt that the coup in Jerusalem was preplanned. Manasseh turned the wheel back to the days of Ahaz. His long rule marks a complete triumph of the pragmatic, syncretistic camp. He opted for cooperation with Assyria and reintegrated Judah into the Assyrian regional economy. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Judah started to recover from the trauma of Sennacherib’s campaign.

The prophets and sages of the YHWH-alone movement must have been terribly frustrated at this turn of events. All the former achievements of their hero Hezekiah in destroying the sin of idolatry and challenging the foreign empire were wiped out—first by Sennacherib’s brutal armies and then by Hezekiah’s own son. If Hezekiah might have been considered Israel’s potential savior, his son Manasseh was the devil for them. There are indications in the biblical narrative that civil unrest occasionally flared up in Judah. The specific incidents behind the report that Manasseh “shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another” (
2
Kings
21
:
16
), are unknown, but we can imagine that the king’s opponents might have tried to seize power. Little wonder, then, that when the Deuteronomists won over the power in Judah a short while after Manasseh’s death and set out to write the history of the kingdom, they settled the account. They portrayed Manasseh as the wickedest of all kings and the father of all apostates.