deserts, tribes and empires 23
which can be correlated with external sources, biblical history takes on
a much clearer definition. The united monarchy over which Saul, David
and Solomon presided lasted from c. 1025 to c. 928 bce. Once divided
into two kingdoms, the kingdom of Israel in the north was ruled by
twenty kings (some as co- regents) until the Assyrian conquest and its
total eclipse with the capture of Samaria in 722 bce. Forcibly trans-
planted to northern Mesopotamia and further east in accordance with
the standard practice of the Assyrian state to transfer defeated popula-
tions to regions far from their origins, the ten tribes were lost to history.
The southern kingdom of Judah survived intact in the shadow of the
Assyrian state through the seventh century bce, and towards the end of
the century King Josiah, who ruled from 639 bce, took advantage of
the decline of the Assyrian state under attack from Medes and Babylo-
nians to expand his territory north into regions formerly part of the
kingdom of Israel. The death of Josiah in the battle of Megiddo in 609
bce marked the end of this last period of prosperity for Judah. Squeezed
between the imperial ambitions of Babylonia and Egypt and riven by
internal divisions, the kingdom, including Jerusalem and the Temple,
was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 bce.
Unlike those taken into captivity from the northern kingdom nearly
a century and a half earlier, those exiled from Judah did not lose their
national identity. Both those who fled to Egypt and the large numbers
forcibly transported to Babylonia retained an attachment to their home-
land. It helped that neither the Babylonians nor the Egyptians interfered
with the religious and social life of the Jewish communities in their
midst. As a result, when the Persian king Cyrus conquered Babylon in
539 bce and gave permission to the exiled Jews to return from Babylon
to Judah, many declined to uproot themselves.
Those who did return to Jerusalem were thus few at first, and it was
only in c. 515 bce that the Temple was completed. Even then the restored
community was far from the national centre it had been seventy years
before. It was not until the mid- fifth century bce that a really distinctive
Jewish polity re- emerged. According to the biblical books of Ezra and
Nehemiah, Ezra was sent in 458 bce, along with a band of fellow Jews
from Babylon, with a mandate from the Persian king Artaxerxes I to
impose the law of the Torah on the community in Jerusalem. Nehemiah,
the cupbearer of Artaxerxes, was appointed governor of Judah from 444
to 432 bce and led a drive to repopulate the city of Jerusalem with Jews.
The Persian state was content to allow the Jews of the province they
called ‘Yehud’ to enjoy a good deal of self- government.