What is the Hebrew Bible?

The fullest continuous narrative for this entire period, giving named kings, dated regnal successions, and the prophetic critique of royal power (Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea). It forms part of what scholars call the Deuteronomistic History, compiled and edited, in the form we now have it, probably during or after the Babylonian exile (sixth century BC), centuries after the events of Solomon's reign. Its authors judge every king almost entirely by fidelity to centralised Yahweh worship, condemning the entire northern kingdom for the "sin of Jeroboam" and reading the fall of Samaria in 722 BC as divine punishment (2 Kings 17:7-23) rather than analysing it in purely political or military terms.

What is the Tel Dan Stele?

Discovered in fragments in 1993 and 1994 at Tel Dan and published by Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, this Aramaic inscription, probably erected by Hazael of Damascus in the mid to late ninth century BC, is the earliest known extra-biblical reference to "the House of David." Its limitation is that it is a fragmentary, boastful foreign royal inscription whose claim to have personally killed the kings of Israel and Judah conflicts with the Bible's attribution of those deaths to Jehu.

What is the Mesha Stele?

Discovered at Dhiban, Jordan, in 1868, this inscription by King Mesha of Moab independently confirms "the house of Omri's" domination of Moab and contains one of the only non-biblical, near-contemporary uses of the divine name Yahweh. Its limitation is that it is Mesha's own triumphal propaganda, crediting his god Chemosh and likely dramatising both the scale of earlier Israelite control and the completeness of Moab's liberation.

What are assyrian royal annals?

The Kurkh Monolith of Shalmaneser III records the 853 BC Battle of Qarqar and Ahab's contribution of 2,000 chariots, an episode entirely absent from the Bible; Tiglath-Pileser III's annals corroborate Menahem's tribute (c. 738 BC); Sargon II's annals claim credit for the fall of Samaria (722 BC) and the deportation of 27,290 people. These annals provide precious externally fixed dates that anchor Israelite chronology, but, as royal propaganda, may exaggerate numbers and, in Sargon II's case, may claim an achievement that belonged in part to his predecessor, Shalmaneser V, who began the siege before his death.

What is the Samaria Ostraca?

About 102 inked potsherd dockets, recording shipments of wine and oil, excavated by the Harvard expedition from 1908, usually associated with the reign of Jeroboam II though the exact date remains debated. They give an ideology-free glimpse of the northern kingdom's administrative geography (clan and place names) and economy, but are fragmentary and entirely silent on politics, religion or warfare.

What is archaeology at Megiddo, Hazor and Lachish?

These fortified sites, all mentioned in the biblical text, show substantial monumental building, including matching six-chambered gates once dated uniformly to Solomon's reign (1 Kings 9:15) by the excavator Yigael Yadin. Israel Finkelstein's "low chronology" instead redates much of this construction to the ninth-century BC Omride period, a debate central to how far the tenth-century United Monarchy can be considered historically verified. Lachish's later destruction layers also preserve rich evidence of Judahite fortification and, in a subsequent Assyrian campaign under Sennacherib in 701 BC (after the period of this dot point), the famous Lachish reliefs depicting an Assyrian siege in vivid detail.

§-Syllabus dot point

NSWAncient HistorySyllabus dot point

What was the geographical setting and historical context of ancient Israel from the United Monarchy under Solomon to the fall of Samaria in 722 BC, and what are the nature, range and limits of the sources historians use to reconstruct it?

The geographical setting and resources of ancient Israel; the historical context from the United Monarchy under Solomon, through the division of the kingdom into Israel (north, capital Samaria) and Judah (south) c. 930 BC and the Omride dynasty, to the Assyrian conquest and the fall of Samaria in 722 BC; and the nature, range and limits of the sources, including the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), archaeology (the Tel Dan Stele, the Mesha/Moabite Stele, the Samaria Ostraca, Lachish, Megiddo and Hazor) and Assyrian royal annals

A focused study-guide answer to the HSC Ancient History dot point on Israel's context: the geography and resources of the southern Levant, the United Monarchy under Solomon, the division into Israel and Judah, the Omride dynasty, the fall of Samaria in 722 BC, and the range and limits of the Hebrew Bible, archaeology and Assyrian annals.

Generated by Claude Opus 4.813 min answerUpdated 2026-07-01

Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed

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Quick answer

Ancient Israel and Judah occupied the resource-poor but strategically located southern Levant. The United Monarchy under Solomon (c. 970-931 BC) split c. 931-930 BC into Israel (north, capital eventually Samaria, founded by Omri c. 880s BC) and Judah (south, capital Jerusalem), with the Omride dynasty (Omri, then Ahab, c. 873-852 BC) reaching a ninth-century peak before Jehu's coup ended it c. 841 BC. Israel declined under growing Assyrian pressure and fell to Shalmaneser V and Sargon II in 722 BC. No single source reconstructs this period alone: the Hebrew Bible gives a later, theologically shaped narrative, the Tel Dan and Mesha stelae give hostile but independent neighbouring testimony, Assyrian royal annals give externally dated but propagandistic synchronisms, and the Samaria Ostraca and the fortified sites of Megiddo, Hazor and Lachish give fragmentary, ideology-free physical evidence, so historians such as Finkelstein, Mazar, Dever, Naaman and Liverani reconstruct the period by cross-checking all of them together.

What this dot point is asking

NESA wants you to describe the geographical setting and resources of ancient Israel, explain the historical context from the United Monarchy under Solomon through the division of the kingdom c. 930 BC and the Omride dynasty to the Assyrian conquest and the fall of Samaria in 722 BC, and evaluate the nature, range and limits of the sources, the Hebrew Bible, archaeology and Assyrian royal annals, used to reconstruct this period.

In plain English

Imagine a small family firm that briefly grows into a single big company under its most famous boss (Solomon), then splits in two the moment he dies, because his son refuses to ease up on the workforce. One half (Israel, in the north) is bigger and richer for a while, with a flashy new head office (Samaria) and a management team (the Omride dynasty) that marries into money from a wealthy trading neighbour, but it also picks constant fights with the accounts department (the prophets) over corruption and idol worship. The other half (Judah, in the south) is smaller and poorer but keeps the original family name on the door in the old head office (Jerusalem). Eventually the northern branch gets swallowed by a much bigger multinational (the Assyrian Empire) in a hostile takeover that ends with the branch closed, its staff scattered to other cities, and outsiders moved in to replace them.

Now imagine trying to write that company's history using only: the family's own in-house magazine, written and heavily edited generations later by people with strong opinions about which managers were "faithful" and which were not (the Hebrew Bible); a couple of gloating press releases from rival firms who each claim credit for beating the company down (the Tel Dan and Mesha stelae); a stack of old delivery dockets found in a filing cabinet (the Samaria Ostraca); and the takeover company's own annual report, which naturally makes its conquest sound as impressive as possible (the Assyrian royal annals). None of these is neutral, and only by reading them against each other can a historian get close to what actually happened.

The answer

The geographical setting and resources of ancient Israel

Israel and Judah occupied the southern Levant, the narrow land bridge connecting Egypt to the north and Mesopotamia and Anatolia to the north-east, a location that made the region strategically valuable and repeatedly fought over. The land divided into distinct zones: a coastal plain (the Sharon plain in the north, the Philistine plain in the south, largely outside Israelite control), a central hill country (the Samaria hills in the north and the Judean hills, containing Jerusalem, in the south), the fertile Jezreel Valley cutting across the north and linking the coast to the Jordan Valley, the Jordan Rift Valley (the Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the Earth's land surface), and the arid Negev desert to the south.

Unlike Egypt's Nile or the twin rivers of Mesopotamia, the region had no single great river to irrigate its farmland, so agriculture depended on unpredictable seasonal rainfall, favouring olives, grapes and grain grown in the hill terraces and valleys rather than a large, centrally managed irrigation surplus. Natural resources were limited: the region lacked good timber (Solomon relied on an alliance with Hiram, king of Tyre, for cedar and skilled craftsmen in exchange for grain and olive oil, 1 Kings 5) and had no natural deep-water harbour of its own, so a joint Israelite-Phoenician trading expedition to Ophir (1 Kings 9:26-28) depended on Phoenician ships and seamanship. Some copper was smelted in the Arabah valley at Timna; archaeologist Erez Ben-Yosef's radiocarbon work has dated intensive production there to around the tenth century BC, though whether this activity should be linked to a "Solomonic" kingdom or to the independent rise of Edom remains debated.

Two international trade and military routes crossed the land: the Via Maris ("the way of the sea"), running along the coast and through the strategic pass at Megiddo, and the King's Highway, running through Transjordan (Ammon, Moab, Edom) further east. Control of these routes brought Israel and Judah both revenue from passing trade and near-constant exposure to the armies of Egypt, Aram-Damascus and, later, Assyria, who all needed to move through or near this corridor.

From the United Monarchy to the division, c. 970-930 BC

Solomon (c. 970-931 BC) inherited a united kingdom from his father David and, according to 1 Kings 3-11, ruled a wealthy, internationally connected state. He built the Temple and a royal palace complex in Jerusalem using cedar, craftsmen and gold supplied through his alliance with Hiram, king of Tyre, in exchange for grain and olive oil (1 Kings 5), reorganised the kingdom into twelve administrative districts responsible for supplying the royal court in rotation (1 Kings 4), fortified Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer (1 Kings 9:15), and, according to the biblical narrative, received a state visit from the Queen of Sheba. Funding this programme through corvee labour and taxation bred resentment, particularly in the northern tribal territories.

On Solomon's death (c. 931 BC), the northern tribes asked his son Rehoboam, at an assembly at Shechem, to lighten the burden. Rehoboam refused, following the advice of his young companions over his father's experienced counsellors, and the ten northern tribes seceded under Jeroboam, a former Solomonic labour official, forming the separate kingdom of Israel; Rehoboam retained Jerusalem and the tribe of Judah in the south. Jeroboam I set up rival sanctuaries at Bethel and Dan, each housing a golden calf, to stop northern worshippers travelling to the Jerusalem Temple, a policy the biblical text repeatedly brands as "the sin of Jeroboam."

The Omride dynasty and Israel's ninth-century power

After a period of instability, Omri (r. c. 884-873 BC) founded a new dynasty and, according to 1 Kings 16:24, purchased the hill of Samaria from a man named Shemer for two talents of silver, building it as his new capital. His son Ahab (c. 873-852 BC) strengthened Israel's international standing by marrying Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, king of Tyre and Sidon, an alliance that brought Phoenician wealth and craftsmanship but also, according to the biblical prophetic tradition, promoted the worship of the Canaanite storm-god Baal alongside Yahweh, provoking fierce opposition from the prophet Elijah (the contest on Mount Carmel, 1 Kings 18) and, over Ahab's seizure of Naboth's vineyard, a prophetic condemnation of royal injustice.

Ahab's Israel was also a significant regional military power. In 853 BC, Ahab joined a coalition of Levantine kings, including Hadadezer of Damascus, against the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III at the Battle of Qarqar, an episode entirely absent from the Hebrew Bible but recorded in Shalmaneser's Kurkh Monolith, which credits "Ahab the Israelite" with 2,000 chariots, the largest contingent of any coalition member. Ahab was later killed fighting Aram-Damascus at Ramoth-Gilead (1 Kings 22). The Omride dynasty ended violently around 841 BC when the army commander Jehu, anointed in secret by a follower of the prophet Elisha, killed King Joram, Ahaziah of Judah and Jezebel, and exterminated the remaining Omride line and the priests of Baal (2 Kings 9-10).

From Jehu to the fall of Samaria, 841-722 BC

Jehu's new dynasty ruled Israel through a further century, including a peak under Jeroboam II (c. 786-746 BC), a period of territorial expansion and prosperity that the prophets Amos and Hosea condemned for widening inequality and social injustice, and to which the administrative dockets known as the Samaria Ostraca are usually, though not certainly, dated.

After Jeroboam II, the northern kingdom slid rapidly into instability: several kings were assassinated in quick succession, and Menahem paid a heavy tribute (1,000 talents of silver) to the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III, called "Pul" in the Bible, around 738 BC, to secure his throne (2 Kings 15:19-20), a payment also recorded in Tiglath-Pileser's own annals. Menahem's successor Pekah allied with Rezin of Aram-Damascus against Judah (the Syro-Ephraimite War, c. 734-732 BC); Assyria intervened, annexing Galilee and Gilead as provinces and deporting part of their population. Pekah was assassinated and replaced by Hoshea, Israel's last king, who initially submitted to Assyria but later stopped paying tribute and appealed to Egypt for support.

In response, Shalmaneser V besieged Samaria from around 725 BC; the city fell in 722 BC, though Shalmaneser V died around this time and his successor, Sargon II, claimed the conquest and its aftermath in his own annals, stating that 27,290 people were deported. 2 Kings 17 gives the biblical account of the fall, describing the exile of Israelites to Halah, the Habor river region of Gozan, and the cities of the Medes, and the resettlement of the depopulated territory with peoples from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim, whose descendants intermarried with the remaining Israelite population to become the later Samaritans.

The nature, range and limits of the sources

No single source type can reconstruct this period alone: each carries a different bias, and a strong answer names the type, its value and its limitation together.

The Hebrew Bible (1 Kings-2 Kings): The fullest continuous narrative for this entire period, giving named kings, dated regnal successions, and the prophetic critique of royal power (Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea). It forms part of what scholars call the Deuteronomistic History, compiled and edited, in the form we now have it, probably during or after the Babylonian exile (sixth century BC), centuries after the events of Solomon's reign. Its authors judge every king almost entirely by fidelity to centralised Yahweh worship, condemning the entire northern kingdom for the "sin of Jeroboam" and reading the fall of Samaria in 722 BC as divine punishment (2 Kings 17:7-23) rather than analysing it in purely political or military terms.
The Tel Dan Stele: Discovered in fragments in 1993 and 1994 at Tel Dan and published by Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, this Aramaic inscription, probably erected by Hazael of Damascus in the mid to late ninth century BC, is the earliest known extra-biblical reference to "the House of David." Its limitation is that it is a fragmentary, boastful foreign royal inscription whose claim to have personally killed the kings of Israel and Judah conflicts with the Bible's attribution of those deaths to Jehu.
The Mesha Stele (Moabite Stone): Discovered at Dhiban, Jordan, in 1868, this inscription by King Mesha of Moab independently confirms "the house of Omri's" domination of Moab and contains one of the only non-biblical, near-contemporary uses of the divine name Yahweh. Its limitation is that it is Mesha's own triumphal propaganda, crediting his god Chemosh and likely dramatising both the scale of earlier Israelite control and the completeness of Moab's liberation.
Assyrian royal annals: The Kurkh Monolith of Shalmaneser III records the 853 BC Battle of Qarqar and Ahab's contribution of 2,000 chariots, an episode entirely absent from the Bible; Tiglath-Pileser III's annals corroborate Menahem's tribute (c. 738 BC); Sargon II's annals claim credit for the fall of Samaria (722 BC) and the deportation of 27,290 people. These annals provide precious externally fixed dates that anchor Israelite chronology, but, as royal propaganda, may exaggerate numbers and, in Sargon II's case, may claim an achievement that belonged in part to his predecessor, Shalmaneser V, who began the siege before his death.
The Samaria Ostraca: About 102 inked potsherd dockets, recording shipments of wine and oil, excavated by the Harvard expedition from 1908, usually associated with the reign of Jeroboam II though the exact date remains debated. They give an ideology-free glimpse of the northern kingdom's administrative geography (clan and place names) and economy, but are fragmentary and entirely silent on politics, religion or warfare.
Archaeology at Megiddo, Hazor and Lachish: These fortified sites, all mentioned in the biblical text, show substantial monumental building, including matching six-chambered gates once dated uniformly to Solomon's reign (1 Kings 9:15) by the excavator Yigael Yadin. Israel Finkelstein's "low chronology" instead redates much of this construction to the ninth-century BC Omride period, a debate central to how far the tenth-century United Monarchy can be considered historically verified. Lachish's later destruction layers also preserve rich evidence of Judahite fortification and, in a subsequent Assyrian campaign under Sennacherib in 701 BC (after the period of this dot point), the famous Lachish reliefs depicting an Assyrian siege in vivid detail.

Modern historiography

Israel Finkelstein (co-author with Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed, 2001) is the leading proponent of the "low chronology," redating much of the monumental architecture traditionally credited to Solomon to the ninth-century BC Omride dynasty, and arguing that the tenth-century United Monarchy was a modest hill-country polity rather than the wealthy empire 1 Kings describes. Amihai Mazar has proposed a "modified conventional chronology" defending a version of the traditional dating and a historically real, if smaller-scale, United Monarchy. William Dever (Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?, 2003) is critical of purely text-driven "biblical archaeology" but argues the archaeological record, including sites such as Khirbet Qeiyafa, supports a genuine early Israelite/Judahite state. Nadav Naaman has written extensively on the Tel Dan Stele and the chronological problems of reconciling Israelite, Aramean and Assyrian evidence. Mario Liverani (Israel's History and the History of Israel, 2005) argues for a rigorously critical historiography that treats the biblical narrative as a literary and theological composition to be analysed like any other ancient text, not privileged above external evidence.

Model exam responses

1. Source-analysis response (usefulness and reliability of the Tel Dan Stele). "The Tel Dan Stele is highly useful for a historian investigating the kingdom of Judah because it is the earliest known reference outside the Bible to 'the House of David,' independently confirming that a Davidic dynasty existed and was recognised by name by a hostile foreign king within roughly a century of David's traditional reign. Its reliability, however, is limited because it is a fragmentary, triumphal inscription almost certainly erected by an Aramean king, probably Hazael of Damascus, to celebrate his own victories, and its claim to have personally killed the kings of Israel and Judah directly conflicts with 2 Kings 9, which credits those killings to the usurper Jehu. A historian should therefore treat the stele's dynastic name and approximate date as trustworthy while treating its narrative of who specifically killed whom as contested and requiring corroboration."

Marker's note: markers reward a source-specific usefulness claim, a limitation grounded in the source's fragmentary, propagandistic nature rather than a generic "it may be biased," and an explicit comparison with the conflicting biblical account.

2. Essay paragraph (the Omride dynasty and the limits of the biblical record, from the sources essay above). "The Tel Dan and Mesha stelae are at once the most valuable independent checks on the biblical narrative and a clear warning against treating any single royal inscription as neutral history. The Tel Dan Stele, an Aramaic victory monument probably erected by Hazael of Damascus in the mid to late ninth century BC and recovered only in 1993 and 1994, supplies the earliest evidence outside the Bible that a 'House of David' existed, exactly as the Mesha Stele, found in 1868, independently names 'the house of Omri' as the ruling power over Moab. Yet both inscriptions serve their own kings' glory, and the Tel Dan Stele's claim to have killed the kings of Israel and Judah directly contradicts 2 Kings 9, which credits those same killings to Jehu. As Nadav Naaman argues, the contradiction shows that a foreign king's boast and an Israelite court history can each edit the same violent transition to flatter a different audience, not that either source is worthless."

Marker's note: this paragraph scores because it names two specific sources with their discovery dates, identifies a precise point of factual conflict, and integrates a named historian (Naaman) as part of the argument, not decoration.

3. Short-answer response (outline). "The united kingdom under Solomon (c. 970-931 BC) divided c. 931-930 BC when Rehoboam refused to lighten the labour and tax burden his father had imposed, prompting the ten northern tribes to secede under Jeroboam I. The northern kingdom of Israel, with its capital eventually at Samaria (founded by Omri in the 880s BC), reached a regional peak under the Omride dynasty, particularly Ahab (c. 873-852 BC), before Jehu's coup ended that dynasty around 841 BC. Israel's final century saw growing Assyrian pressure, culminating in the fall of Samaria in 722 BC and the deportation of much of its population."

Marker's note: an outline earns full marks with correctly sequenced, dated features across the United Monarchy, the division, the Omrides and the fall of Samaria; it loses marks if it drifts into unrequested source evaluation.

Command words and using a source

Command words: "Describe"/"outline" want located, sequenced features (the geography, the division, the Omride dynasty, the fall of Samaria) with at least one precise date; "explain" wants a causal chain, for instance why Rehoboam's refusal produced the division, or why Assyrian pressure culminated in 722 BC; "assess"/"to what extent" demand a sustained judgement, and on this dot point the strongest move is to test the biblical narrative against independent archaeological or epigraphic evidence rather than simply summarising the story.
Using a source on this topic: Work through CONTENT (what does it actually claim), RELIABILITY (who produced it, when, and for what purpose, the Bible is a later theological compilation, the Tel Dan and Mesha stelae are hostile foreign royal boasts, Assyrian annals are imperial propaganda, the Samaria Ostraca are bureaucratic and purpose-built for record-keeping, not narrative), USEFULNESS (what specific question it can answer, chronology, dynastic names, administrative geography, military scale), and PERSPECTIVE (an Israelite/Judahite theological narrative, an Aramean or Moabite royal boast, and an Assyrian imperial annal each frame the same events completely differently).
Weaving historiography: Use a historian to do work in the argument: "Finkelstein's low chronology, redating the 'Solomonic' gates to the Omride period, means the scale of the United Monarchy the Bible describes cannot be taken as archaeologically confirmed" builds an argument, rather than dropping a name at the end of a paragraph.

Common exam traps

Treating the Hebrew Bible as a neutral chronicle. It is a later, theologically edited narrative (the Deuteronomistic History) that judges kings by religious fidelity, not a contemporary administrative record; use it critically, alongside archaeology and external inscriptions.

Confusing the Tel Dan and Mesha stelae's claims with the biblical account without noting the conflict. The Tel Dan Stele's claim to have killed the kings of Israel and Judah contradicts 2 Kings 9's attribution of those killings to Jehu; a strong answer names this tension rather than merging the two accounts.

Assuming "Solomonic" archaeology is securely dated. The six-chambered gates at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer are central to the Finkelstein/Mazar-Dever chronology debate; do not present their date to Solomon as settled fact.

Crediting Sargon II alone with the fall of Samaria. Shalmaneser V began the siege (from c. 725 BC) and died before, or around the time, the city fell in 722 BC; Sargon II's annals claim the conquest and deportation, but the credit is historically contested.

Practice questions

Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.

foundation4 marksOutline the geographical setting and natural resources of ancient Israel and Judah.

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A 4-mark "outline" wants several correct, located features with brief development. Markers award roughly one mark per developed point.

Location and terrain: Israel and Judah occupied the southern Levant, a narrow land bridge between Egypt and Mesopotamia, divided into a coastal plain (held largely by the Philistines in the south), a central hill country (the Samaria hills in the north, the Judean hills, with Jerusalem, in the south), the Jordan Rift Valley (the Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea), and the arid Negev to the south.
Rain-fed agriculture: Unlike Egypt's Nile or Mesopotamia's twin rivers, the region had no major river for irrigation, so farming depended on seasonal rainfall, favouring olives, grapes and grain in the valleys (notably the fertile Jezreel Valley) over large-scale surplus production.
Limited raw materials: Israel lacked good timber and a natural deep-water harbour, so Solomon depended on an alliance with Hiram of Tyre for cedar, craftsmen and access to Phoenician shipping (1 Kings 5); some copper was worked in the Arabah (Timna), though its scale and date are debated.
Strategic trade routes: Two major routes crossed the region: the coastal Via Maris (linking Egypt to Mesopotamia via Megiddo) and the King's Highway east of the Jordan (linking Arabia to Damascus), which made the kingdoms both a valuable corridor and a frequent battleground.

Markers reward the terrain zones, the rain-fed agriculture point, at least one named resource limitation, and the trade-route point.

foundation4 marksOutline the sequence of events by which the united kingdom under Solomon divided into Israel and Judah, c. 931-930 BC.

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A 4-mark "outline" needs a correctly sequenced chain of events with dates.

Solomon's burdens: Solomon (c. 970-931 BC) funded his building programme (the Jerusalem Temple, his palace, fortified cities) and court through forced labour (corvee) and heavy taxation organised across twelve administrative districts (1 Kings 4), which bred resentment, especially among the northern tribes.
The succession dispute: On Solomon's death (c. 931 BC), his son Rehoboam met the northern tribal assembly at Shechem, where they asked him to lighten the burden his father had imposed.
Rehoboam's refusal: Rejecting his older advisers and following his young companions, Rehoboam threatened to make the burden heavier still (1 Kings 12), provoking the ten northern tribes to secede under Jeroboam, a former Solomonic official.
The two kingdoms: Judah (south), retaining the Davidic dynasty and Jerusalem, and Israel (north), under Jeroboam I, split into separate kingdoms c. 931-930 BC; Jeroboam I established rival cult centres at Bethel and Dan to stop northern pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem.

Markers reward the labour/tax grievance, the Shechem meeting, Rehoboam's refusal, and the resulting two-kingdom split with Jeroboam named.

foundation3 marksWhy is the Tel Dan Stele significant for historians studying the kingdom of Israel and Judah?

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A 3-mark "why" question needs a clear statement of significance, not a description of its contents alone.

What it is: A basalt monumental inscription in Aramaic, discovered in fragments at Tel Dan in 1993 and 1994 and published by Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, erected by an Aramean king (usually identified as Hazael of Damascus) around the mid to late ninth century BC, boasting of victories over the kings of Israel and of "the House of David" (bytdwd).
Why it matters: It is the earliest known extra-biblical reference to "the House of David," providing independent, non-Israelite confirmation that a Davidic dynasty existed and was recognised by name by a hostile neighbouring king within about a century of David's traditional reign.
Its limit: As a boastful royal victory inscription by an enemy king, it cannot be read as neutral, and the fragmentary text leaves the precise events, and even the identity of the Israelite and Judahite kings it names, open to scholarly debate.

Markers reward identifying the "House of David" phrase, its status as the earliest extra-biblical evidence for that dynasty, and the propaganda/fragmentary caveat.

core6 marksSource A: an ExamExplained reconstruction in the manner of Shalmaneser III's Kurkh Monolith, describing the Assyrian king's account of the 853 BC Battle of Qarqar, in which he lists a coalition of twelve kings opposing him and states that 'Ahab the Israelite' supplied 2,000 chariots and 10,000 foot soldiers, the largest chariot contingent of any coalition member. Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain what this evidence reveals about the kingdom of Israel under Ahab, and identify one limitation of using Assyrian royal annals as evidence.

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A 6-mark "explain with a source" needs the source's content USED, own knowledge added, and an explicit limitation.

Use the source: Source A shows Ahab's Israel (c. 873-852 BC) commanding the largest chariot force of any state in a twelve-king western coalition, implying a well-resourced, militarily significant kingdom capable of contributing more chariots than even the Aramean king Hadadezer of Damascus.
Own knowledge: This corroborates the Bible's picture of Omride Israel (2 Kings, 1 Kings 16-22) as prosperous and militarily active, engaged in wars with Aram-Damascus over Ramoth-Gilead, and matches archaeological evidence for Omride building activity at Samaria, Megiddo, Hazor and Jezreel. Notably, the Qarqar battle itself is absent from the Hebrew Bible entirely, which is otherwise the main narrative source for Ahab's reign.
Limitation: Assyrian royal annals were composed to glorify the king's campaigns, so numbers (chariots, troop counts) may be exaggerated or rounded for propaganda effect, and because Shalmaneser III claims a victory that did not clearly stop the coalition, the annal's version of the battle's outcome should be treated with caution even where its list of participants is plausible.

Markers reward specific use of the source's figures, the corroboration/silence point about the Bible, and a limitation grounded in the genre of royal annals rather than a generic "it may be biased."

core6 marksSOURCE ANALYSIS. Source B (owned paraphrase): The Mesha Stele (Moabite Stone), erected by King Mesha of Moab and discovered at Dhiban, Jordan, in 1868, records that 'Omri, king of Israel' had oppressed Moab for many years and that his son continued to do so, but that Mesha, with the help of the god Chemosh, threw off 'the house of Omri' and recaptured Moabite territory. Assess the usefulness and reliability of Source B for a historian investigating the extent of Omride power in the ninth century BC.

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A 6-mark source-analysis task needs balanced usefulness AND reliability, anchored in origin/motive/audience, plus own knowledge.

Origin, motive, audience: The stele is Mesha's own triumphal inscription, probably from the mid-ninth century BC, composed for a Moabite audience to celebrate his god Chemosh's deliverance of Moab from Israelite control, the Moabite mirror image of an Assyrian victory annal.
Usefulness: It is genuinely useful as rare independent, non-Israelite evidence that "the house of Omri" (a dynastic label neighbouring states used for the kingdom of Israel, exactly as Assyrian sources also do) controlled Moab for a substantial period, corroborating the biblical claim (2 Kings 3) of Moabite subjugation and later revolt, and it also contains, alongside the Tel Dan Stele, one of the only near-contemporary non-biblical uses of the divine name Yahweh.
Reliability: Reliability is limited because it is Mesha's own propaganda, written to credit Chemosh and glorify his reign, so it naturally emphasises Moabite success and may compress or exaggerate the scale of the earlier Israelite domination it describes; the stele's own account of the revolt's precise date and course cannot be independently checked.
Corroboration: Amihai Mazar treats the Mesha Stele as strong confirmation that Omride Israel briefly controlled substantial territory east of the Jordan, while Nadav Naaman cautions that Moabite and Israelite chronologies still cannot be reconciled in fine detail from the stele alone.

Markers reward origin/motive/audience analysis, BALANCED usefulness and limitation, the Yahweh/"house of Omri" detail, and reference to scholarly caution.

core5 marksExplain how both biblical and non-biblical evidence corroborate the fall of the Omride dynasty in Israel, c. 841 BC.

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A 5-mark "explain" needs a causal/corroborative chain, not narration.

The biblical account: 2 Kings 9-10 describes the army commander Jehu, anointed in secret by a prophet of Elisha, launching a violent coup: he kills King Joram (son of Ahab), Ahaziah of Judah, and Jezebel, then exterminates the remaining royal house of Ahab and the priests of Baal.
Assyrian corroboration: Shalmaneser III's Black Obelisk (c. 841-840 BC) depicts an Israelite king bowing before the Assyrian king and paying tribute, labelled "Jehu, son of Omri," even though Jehu was not biologically an Omride but a usurper; the label shows Assyria still identifying Israel by its previous dynasty's name.
Aramean corroboration: The Tel Dan Stele's Aramean author claims to have killed a king of Israel and a king of "the House of David" (usually read as Joram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah), a claim that conflicts with the Bible's own attribution of both deaths to Jehu.
The tension: This creates a genuine historiographical problem: the Bible credits Jehu alone, while the Tel Dan Stele's Aramean author claims the killings for himself, so historians such as Nadav Naaman conclude that either Hazael's inscription exaggerates his own role, or that both actors participated in the same violent transition and each source claims sole credit for its own audience.

Markers reward the biblical coup narrative, both the Black Obelisk and Tel Dan corroborations, and an explicit statement of the tension between the two non-biblical sources.

exam25 marksESSAY. Assess the value and limitations of the Hebrew Bible, the Tel Dan and Mesha stelae, the Samaria Ostraca, and Assyrian royal annals as sources for reconstructing the history of Israel and Judah from Solomon to the fall of Samaria.

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A band-6 essay assesses EACH named source on both value and limitation, uses precise evidence, and weaves historiography. This is a PLAN plus a model paragraph.

Thesis: These four source types pull in different directions: a much later, theologically shaped Israelite narrative (the Hebrew Bible), hostile neighbouring royal monuments (Tel Dan, Mesha), mute local administrative records (the Samaria Ostraca), and self-glorifying Assyrian imperial annals. None alone reconstructs the period; only triangulated together do they compensate for each other's silences and biases.
Argument line 1: the Hebrew Bible: VALUE - the fullest continuous narrative, from Solomon's building programme and the division c. 931-930 BC through the Omride dynasty to the fall of Samaria in 722 BC (1 Kings 1 to 2 Kings 17), preserving named kings, dated regnal successions and the prophetic tradition (Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea). LIMITATION - the Books of Kings were compiled and edited as the Deuteronomistic History, probably reaching final form during or after the Babylonian exile, centuries after most events described, judging every king almost solely by fidelity to centralised Yahweh worship, and condemning every northern king for "the sin of Jeroboam," a theological framework rather than a neutral chronicle.
Argument line 2: the Tel Dan and Mesha stelae: VALUE - the Tel Dan Stele (discovered 1993-94, published by Biran and Naveh) supplies the earliest extra-biblical reference to "the House of David," and the Mesha Stele (discovered 1868) independently confirms "the House of Omri's" domination of Moab and uses the divine name Yahweh outside the Bible. LIMITATION - both are triumphal royal inscriptions by hostile foreign kings (Hazael of Damascus; Mesha of Moab), composed to glorify their own gods and victories, fragmentary in the Tel Dan Stele's case, and their claims (for instance over who killed Joram and Ahaziah c. 841 BC) directly conflict with the biblical account.
Argument line 3: the Samaria Ostraca and Assyrian royal annals: VALUE - the roughly 102 Samaria Ostraca (potsherd dockets recording wine and oil shipments, found from 1908) give an ideology-free glimpse of the northern kingdom's administrative geography and economy, probably under Jeroboam II; Assyrian annals (the Kurkh Monolith on Qarqar, 853 BC; Tiglath-Pileser III's annals naming Menahem's tribute, c. 738 BC; Sargon II's claim to have deported 27,290 people from Samaria in 722 BC) supply externally dated synchronisms that anchor Israelite chronology. LIMITATION - the ostraca are fragmentary and silent on politics or religion, and Assyrian annals are royal propaganda that can inflate numbers and, in Sargon II's case, may claim credit properly belonging to his predecessor Shalmaneser V, who began the siege of Samaria before his death.
Model paragraph (argument line 2): The Tel Dan and Mesha stelae are at once the most valuable independent checks on the biblical narrative and a clear warning against treating any single royal inscription as neutral history. The Tel Dan Stele, an Aramaic victory monument probably erected by Hazael of Damascus in the later ninth century BC, supplies the earliest evidence outside the Bible that a "House of David" existed and was named as such by a hostile neighbour, just as the Mesha Stele independently names "the house of Omri" as the ruling power over Moab. Yet both inscriptions serve their own kings' glory: Mesha credits his god Chemosh for Moab's liberation and likely compresses or dramatises the length and completeness of earlier Israelite control, while the Tel Dan Stele's claim to have killed the kings of Israel and Judah directly contradicts 2 Kings 9, which credits those same killings to the usurper Jehu. As Naaman argues, the contradiction makes neither source worthless: a foreign king's boast and an Israelite court history can each edit the same violent transition to flatter a different audience. A historian therefore extracts the dynastic names and approximate dates from these stelae while treating their narrative of who did what, and to whom, as contested.
Conclusion: Each source type is valuable but partial: the Bible for continuous narrative despite its late, theological compilation; the Tel Dan and Mesha stelae for independent confirmation of the two dynasties despite their own propaganda; the Samaria Ostraca and Assyrian annals for administrative and chronological anchoring despite their silence on motive or their imperial exaggeration. Modern reconstructions (Finkelstein, Mazar, Naaman) proceed by cross-checking all of these rather than trusting any one type alone.

Marker's note: band 6 responses assess each named source on BOTH value and limitation with specific dated evidence, name at least one modern historian to show engagement with historiography, and reach an overall judgement about triangulating sources rather than treating one source as simply reliable or unreliable.

exam20 marksESSAY. To what extent does archaeological and epigraphic evidence support the Hebrew Bible's picture of a powerful, unified kingdom under Solomon?

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A band-6 response sustains a judgement on "to what extent" and weighs a genuine scholarly debate.

Thesis: Archaeology confirms that a Jerusalem-based kingdom existed and that monumental building took place at several sites the Bible associates with Solomon, but the scale, wealth and centralisation the biblical text describes are not securely confirmed by the material record, and a significant body of modern scholarship argues the archaeology fits a smaller, regional United Monarchy at most.
Argument line 1: what the biblical text claims: 1 Kings 3-11 describes Solomon (c. 970-931 BC) as ruling a wealthy, internationally connected kingdom stretching from the Euphrates to Egypt's border, building the Jerusalem Temple and his palace with Phoenician cedar and craftsmen supplied by Hiram of Tyre (1 Kings 5), fortifying Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer with matching six-chambered gates (1 Kings 9:15), and receiving tribute and a state visit from the Queen of Sheba.
Argument line 2: the "low chronology" challenge: Israel Finkelstein, using ceramic and radiocarbon evidence, argues the monumental six-chambered gates and associated structures at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, long dated to Solomon's reign by Yigael Yadin, in fact belong a century later, to the Omride dynasty (ninth century BC), and that Jerusalem itself shows little archaeological evidence of a large, wealthy tenth-century BC capital, making the biblical Solomon's empire, in Finkelstein and Silberman's phrase, largely a later literary construction reflecting the ambitions of a much smaller kingdom.
Argument line 3: the case for a real, if modest, tenth-century kingdom: Amihai Mazar's "modified conventional chronology" and William Dever argue the ceramic dating gap Finkelstein relies on is neither as large nor as certain as claimed, and point to genuine tenth-century BC evidence, including the fortified site at Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Elah Valley (excavated from 2007, with an inscribed ostracon and radiocarbon dates clustering around the early tenth century BC) and continuing excavation in the City of David, as consistent with a functioning, if regionally modest, Judahite-Israelite state under David and Solomon, even if its "empire" was smaller than 1 Kings suggests.
Model paragraph (argument line 2): The clearest challenge to the Bible's Solomon comes from stratigraphy rather than scepticism about the text alone. Yigael Yadin had dated the near-identical six-chambered gates at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer to a single royal building programme, matching 1 Kings 9:15's claim that Solomon fortified exactly these three cities. Israel Finkelstein's low chronology instead lowers the pottery horizon associated with these gates by roughly a century, reassigning them to the Omride dynasty, the same dynasty independently attested as prosperous by the Mesha Stele and the Kurkh Monolith's report of Ahab's 2,000 chariots at Qarqar in 853 BC. If Finkelstein is correct, the "Solomonic" gates are Omride, and the tenth-century United Monarchy the Bible describes shrinks from an international empire to a small hill-country chiefdom, a conclusion Amihai Mazar and William Dever dispute but have not fully overturned.
Conclusion: To a limited extent: archaeology confirms a real polity centred on Jerusalem in this period and genuine monumental building somewhere in the tenth or ninth century BC, but whether that building belongs to Solomon or the later Omrides, and whether Solomon's kingdom matched the Bible's description of its wealth and reach, remains a live and unresolved scholarly debate. Judgement sustained.

Marker's note: band 6 answers name specific sites and dating methods, present BOTH sides of the Finkelstein/Mazar-Dever debate with named historians as argument rather than decoration, and reach a limiting verdict rather than simply asserting the Bible is "right" or "wrong."