David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (18 page)

In contrast to the great administrative achievements of the fallen kingdom of Israel, Manasseh’s efforts at reorganization would have seemed puny. But in the crafting of the pan-Israel ideology in Hezekiah’s time, the David tradition—and by extension the birthright of Solomon—had been expanded to cover the territory of
both
Judah and Israel. Thus the geographical expansion of Solomon’s extensive administration to encompass the north would have been a logical and necessary step in legitimizing the new Judahite royal order—and its Davidic pedigree—as a venerable tradition that stretched back to the origins of the dynasty.

Until recently, a single biblical verse plucked from the Solomonic narrative, which deals with three celebrated northern sites, convinced many archaeologists that Solomon’s great empire was a historical fact:

The excavation of similar six-chambered gates at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer—linked with this single biblical verse and thus dated to the tenth century
BCE
—established the foundation for the traditional archaeology of Solomon and his united monarchy. Yet this interpretation has been conclusively disproved both on stratigraphic and chronological grounds.
*
The supposedly Solomonic gates date to different periods of time, in the ninth and eighth centuries
BCE
, and strikingly similar city gates have been found
outside
the borders of the kingdom of Solomon, even according to a territorially maximalist view. But the specific mention in the Bible of Solomon’s building of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer is significant in an entirely different respect. All three cities were located in the territory of the northern kingdom and were probably its most important administrative centers after its capital in Samaria. Hence, the historical reality behind 1 Kings 9:15 should probably be sought in how the Solomonic tradition assimilated cherished memories from the history of the north.

The six-chambered gate of Megiddo (courtesy of Zeev Herzog)

Megiddo first prospered as a northern Israelite city under the Omrides in the ninth century
BCE
, when two beautiful ashlar palaces were constructed there. In the eighth century, presumably in the time of Jeroboam II, the city was equipped with an elaborate six-chambered gate and housed an extensive complex of stables, surrounded by a massive city wall. It had a sophisticated water system—a deep shaft and a tunnel that led to a spring at the foot of the mound. Hazor, likewise, had been a prominent city in the time of the Omrides, was briefly occupied and embellished by the kingdom of Damascus, and was returned to Israelite rule and rebuilt on a grand scale in the time of the northern king Jeroboam II, in the eighth century
BCE
. At Hazor, too, an elaborate rock-cut water system was constructed in the early eighth century
BCE
. Gezer was also within the boundaries of the northern kingdom and reached its greatest extent in the eighth century
BCE
, when the town was surrounded by a massive stone wall, similar to the walls unearthed at Megiddo and Hazor. An existing six-chambered gate was then incorporated—as an inner gate—into an elaborate entrance system. Thus Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer were all Israelite cities that flourished in the first half of the eighth century, the days of the great Jeroboam II, as the main administrative centers of the northern kingdom. There can be little doubt that their mention in the Solomonic narrative represented an attempt both to enhance Solomon’s stature and to further integrate the prestige of the northern and southern kingdoms by anachronistically attributing their architectural grandeur to him.

The list of Solomonic district officers (1 Kings 4:7–19) likewise bears a close correspondence to the organization of the northern kingdom. It includes royal districts—all of which are located in the north—that roughly cover the geographical extent of the northern kingdom at its peak. West of the Jordan, these districts stretch from Asher and Naphtali in Galilee to the area around the Valley of Aijalon and the highlands of Benjamin in the south. To the east of the Jordan, they extend from Gilead to northern Moab. Many of the main cities of the northern kingdom are explicitly mentioned, but Judah—with its highlands, the Negev, and the Shephelah—is excluded, which suggests that the list is most probably based on a northern administrative text. But this source was adjusted by adding Judah in a summary verse; it could then be put to service in celebrating the Jerusalem-based King Solomon as the father of organized statehood in all of Israel.

We seem to be faced here with a case of creative writing, in the inclusion of later northern administrative history into the biblical tradition of Solomon. For just as Hezekiah was faced with the influx of a significant refugee population from the conquered northern kingdom and sought to integrate them into a new Judah and Israel united into a single nation under the twin banners of Dynasty and Temple, his son Manasseh faced the problem of justifying the dramatic increase in royal power to the same mixed population, now resettled and regimented according to royal will.

If it could be shown that such kingly prerogatives were the natural fulfillment of the promise to the house of David, as well as the fulfillment of the venerable royal tradition of the north in the glory days of the Omrides and Jeroboam II, the Solomonic narrative would gain the authority of traditions from
both
Judah and Israel. The vision of the united monarchy under Solomon is thus an expression of seventh-century political, economic, and social objectives, reinforced by memories of the great administrative and political sophistication of the north. It was the ultimate expression of seventh-century
BCE
Judahite statism.

A closer look at another element of the Solomon tradition—his association with horses—suggests that the same process of legendary elaboration and assimilation of northern traditions was at work in regard to legitimizing Judah’s increasingly vital participation in the international trade.

ALL THE KING’S HORSES

King Solomon is remembered in the biblical tradition as one of history’s greatest horse traders:

In the 1920s, archaeologists mistakenly believed that the actual remains of Solomon’s stables had been found at the great northern city of Megiddo. An expedition of the University of Chicago uncovered a series of elaborate pillared buildings, fitted with stalls and feeding troughs, that were identified as the stables of Solomon. Later research at Megiddo has disproved the Solomonic date of the buildings. It is now clear that they were constructed in the time of great prosperity in the northern kingdom in the first half of the eighth century
BCE
, under Jeroboam II. Though some specialists continue to question whether these structures really were stables, the American scholar Deborah Cantrell has convincingly proved that they were indeed used for horses. In other parts of the ancient Near East, similar structures have been uncovered. At Bastam in northern Iran, in the territory of ancient Urartu, then famous for its cavalry force, chemical investigation of the soil in a similar building revealed evidence for animal urine, further confirming the use of this type of structure as a stable. And near Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, stone troughs similar to those at Megiddo were found bearing inscriptions explicitly identifying them as horse troughs.

Indeed the kingdom of Israel was well known for its equestrian skills. Assyrian texts testify to the special role of Israelite charioteers in the Assyrian royal army after the conquest of the north. The “horse lists” from Fort Shalmaneser dating to the days of Sargon II mention seven units, one of which—the second largest in size—consisted of chariot officers from Samaria. This Israelite force is the only one outside Assyria proper that is mentioned as a national unit, under its own city name. These Israelite charioteers were treated with special favor, with only a moderate tax imposed on them—similar to that levied on native Assyrians. The royal inscriptions of Sargon II mention a group of deportees with the same professional talent: “I formed a unit of 50 [200 in a parallel text] chariots from them, and I allowed the rest to pursue their own skills.” The association of the kingdom of Israel with horses may even have been more extensive than its own chariotry and cavalry forces. Megiddo’s complexes of pillared buildings equipped with stalls for hundreds of horses may actually represent an ambitious and successful Israelite involvement in the international horse trade.

What types of horses were traded in this period? Among all the warhorses so highly prized by the Assyrians, none was more sought after than the famous thoroughbreds from the region of Kush, south of Egypt, along the upper Nile. These Kushite horses were considered the best for chariots and are mentioned in Assyrian texts—as gifts or purchases—from the days of Tiglath-pileser III to Ashurbanipal. Starting in the late eighth century
BCE
, when Assyrian commercial centers had been established in Philistia, along the southern coastal plain, the Assyrians obtained their Kushite horses by direct trade with Egypt. A few decades later Egypt was at least nominally conquered by Assyria, and the great Assyrian kings of the seventh century
BCE
—Esarheddon and Ashurbanipal—obtained their Egyptian horses not through trade but through the imposition of an annual horse tribute. However, in the era before official Assyrian presence in the cities of Philistia and later in Egypt, the long-distance horse trade between Egypt and Assyria—so vital for military purposes—would have been indirect.

Here we may have the link between the Megiddo stables, the Assyrian records, and the Solomonic tradition. Throughout most of the eighth century
BCE
, it seems probable that the northern kingdom of Israel gained great prosperity by being the main importer and intermediary between the famed Egyptian—and especially Kushite or Nubian—horses and Assyria. The horses were bred and trained at the stable complex at Megiddo, the largest known anywhere in the ancient Near East, and were then sold to Assyria and possibly to other clients during the reign of Jeroboam II. By the time of Manasseh there is no evidence of horse trading in Judah. Yet a memory of the profitable equine trade of the northern kingdom would have had positive value. It played a conspicuous role in enhancing the glamour and wealth of King Solomon. The anachronistic description of Solomon’s dealings with horses suggests that it was based on vaguely remembered details of the eighth-century Israelite—and possibly more modest Judahite—trade:

A Megiddo stable (reconstruction according to Deborah Cantrell and Lawrence Belkin)