Quick questions on The economy of Israel from Solomon to the fall of Samaria: HSC Ancient History

Israel's economy began with rain-fed agriculture. Unlike Egypt's Nile floods or Mesopotamia's twin rivers, the southern Levant had no major river for irrigation, so farming depended entirely on seasonal rainfall, favouring the Mediterranean triad of grain, olives (for oil) and grapes (for wine), especially in fertile lowland areas such as the Jezreel Valley.

Fortified administrative centres such as Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer combined defence with economic control, and were, for much of the twentieth century, read together as a single "Solomonic" building programme.

Yigael Yadin, excavating Hazor in the 1950s, identified a monumental gate there, a central passage flanked by three pairs of guard chambers, and argued from 1 Kings 9:15 ("the levy...

At Megiddo, excavators uncovered a huge circular pit, roughly 11 metres across, with a spiral stone stairway cut into its wall descending to the base, usually associated with the reign of Jeroboam II. A public granary of this scale represents a genuine state investment in storing and redistributing agricultural surplus, work that no single household or village could organise alone.

At both Megiddo and Hazor, excavators found a vertical shaft cut down through the mound connecting to a sloping tunnel reaching a spring or the water table outside the walls, concealed so the water source could not be seen or reached from outside. This let a besieged city survive without abandoning its stored grain and goods, protecting the whole economic system the fortifications were built to defend. Both systems are usually dated to the ninth century BC, most often associated with the Omride dynasty.