History of the Ancient Near East · Part 14 · Kingdoms of the Iron Age · B2–C1
Israel and Judah: Mesha, Tel Dan and the Omrides
Part 14 of History of the Ancient Near East: in the 9th century BCE, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah appear at last in their neighbours’ inscriptions: a king of Moab who boasts of defeating Israel, an Aramean king who claims to have killed two kings, and an Assyrian king who counts Ahab’s chariots. Concession (although, despite, whereas), non-defining relative clauses (Omri, whose name…) and the former / the latter, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight, Israel’s neighbours speak. And they do not always agree with the book of Kings.
Neighbours rarely agree with each other. I expect they will not agree with each other, either.
Quite right. But when three enemies mention the same king, we can be fairly sure he was there.
Israel, Judah and their neighbours, about 900–840 BCE
By the 9th century BCE there were two kingdoms of the Hebrew-speaking peoples: Israel in the north, with its capital at Samaria, and Judah in the south, with its capital at Jerusalem. Israel was larger and richer. Its strongest dynasty was founded by Omri, around 885 BCE, and continued by his son Ahab.
Three inscriptions from Israel’s neighbours mention these kingdoms. The Mesha Stele (about 840 BCE), found in 1868 in Jordan, is the victory stone of Mesha, king of Moab. The Kurkh Monolith of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III describes the battle of Qarqar in 853 BCE. The Tel Dan Stele, found in pieces in 1993 and 1994 in northern Israel, is an Aramaic inscription of a king of Damascus, probably Hazael.
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