The kingdoms of Israel and Judah
Two small Levantine states whose literature outlasts every empire that destroyed them.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 413 years
- Known to
- ± 50 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
Israel in the north and Judah in the south emerge as identifiable states in the early first millennium BCE. The scale of the united monarchy under David and Solomon is heavily disputed — the biblical account describes an empire, while the archaeology of tenth-century Jerusalem suggests a modest highland town, and the argument between maximalists and minimalists has run for decades. What is not disputed is that Israel was the larger and wealthier of the two.