So during the early Iron Age, roughly from 1200 to 1000 BC, the central hill country in the regions of Efraim and Judah witnessed this shooting up of about 200 new villages, 200 I say now, just varies in numbers according to who's counting. These are very small places though, its about 50 inhabitants per place. They lack any public community buildings, anything where people can come together for any administrative efforts, we cannot find really any signs of defense systems or military fortifications. And we can't even tell to what extent these territories had any larger political administration, or collective life at all. Perhaps they could afford to live relatively autonomously, because and independently from one another, I guess because they didn't really have any enemies from beyond they had peaceful relations with their neighbors. But by the end of the early Iron Age, in the tenth and especially the ninth century, the archeological record showed signs of significant changes. The size of the population appears to have grown significantly. We can also witnessed the rise in prosperity driven by more diversed modes of producing olive oil and wine. Olive oil and wine are really very important goods that could be accumulated in large quantities and then traded for other precious items. And this process led to greater social stratification, competition, political centralization and eventually, the emergence of what we would call monarchic states or kingdoms. And at the beginning, as I already noted, we reckon with many different competing polities. I've noted this in the previous segment. It's a very complex array of kings who are jockeying for power, like in the Amana age, and you can observe some of this complexity in the chapters, in the chapters of the Bible, book of Kings that describe the situation in Israel directly after the splitting of the kingdom of Israel from Judah. You see all these different cities with their rulers who go out and fight each other and so forth. And that I think really represents the complexity of the forces that slowly emerge and coalesce into one larger kingdom. Once again to reiterate, the succession of Saul, David, to Solomon and the split of the kingdom is the work of a historical construction in order to distinguish between Israel and Judah and the relationship between Israel and Judah, which was a very important one at a later time. But it is something that is retrojected back on the past and it really does not represent accurately probably the forces that really gave shape to the first kingdoms of Israel and Judah. At the beginning as I already noted, we must reckon with many different competing policies of a wide array of kings who are jockeying for power, and over time, they coalesce and consolidate both through military force and peaceful political negotiations into larger unified states. A larger kingdom involving Israel in the north probably earlier than it did for Judah in the south and the reason why is because Judah was quite a bit less developed and poorer than the central region of Efraim, which became the home of the kingdom of Israel. Judah had just a tenth of the population of the north and the north had much larger settlements. And for much of this time really Judah is as anthropologists called a chiefdom, not a kingdom. Chiefdom is something that is less complex from an administrative perspective than a kingdom. And so it takes a lot longer for Judah to develop into the complex political administrative polity that Israel was. In 930 BC, this is an important date for the early monarchy, the Egyptian ruler, his name is Shishak in some sources or Sheshonq in other sources, but most likely, he's the same figure. He makes this campaign up into the central hill country. In the central hill country of the southern Levant, he mentions all of these great places that he conquers or that paid him tribute on his military tribute or military tour. And he also left the monumental Stella you know, of his triumph that he had made of Megiddo. We found that in archaeological excavations there. And we read this long account of all the places he encountered on his way in his, on his military tour. What's conspicuously missing is any reference to Jerusalem, or any military resistance from a place within Judah. According to the Bible, the main objective of this king's campaign was to seize the wealth that Solomon had amassed in Jerusalem, and he did it by seizing it directly from Jeroboam, Jeroboam Solomon's son. Now some scholars try to harmonize the biblical account with the Egyptian sources, but it's very difficult to do. if there were any place or power in the region, the Egyptian scribes would have most likely mentioned it. What we have in the biblical texts is an attempt I think by biblical authors from Jerusalem to attempt to rectify a problem in their sources. For them, Jerusalem must have been the most important city in the Southern Levant, so Shishak, the Egyptian king made a campaign into the region, he must have set his sights on Jerusalem and all the wealth that Solomon had accumulated there, and his actions at that time then would explain later why all the wealth that Solomon prudently collected in Jerusalem was no longer there. And it's a very clever move by biblical authors so they can explain that yes Solomon had created a great capital in Jerusalem and great wealth in the palace and temple. It's no longer there, why? Because Sheshack and he came up and his campaign within the Southern Levant took it all
