And Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horsemen, whom he stationed in the chariot cities and with the king in Jerusalem. (1 Kings 10:26; see also 1 Kings 9:19, 22)
In the 1920s, archaeologists mistakenly believed that the actual remains of Solomon’s stables had been found at the great northern city of Megiddo. An expedition of the University of Chicago uncovered a series of elaborate pillared buildings, fitted with stalls and feeding troughs, that were identified as the stables of Solomon. Later research at Megiddo has disproved the Solomonic date of the buildings. It is now clear that they were constructed in the time of great prosperity in the northern kingdom in the first half of the eighth century BCE, under Jeroboam II. Though some specialists continue to question whether these structures really were stables, the American scholar Deborah Cantrell has convincingly proved that they were indeed used for horses. In other parts of the ancient Near East, similar structures have been uncovered. At Bastam in northern Iran, in the territory of ancient Urartu, then famous for its cavalry force, chemical investigation of the soil in a similar building revealed evidence for animal urine, further confirming the use of this type of structure as a stable. And near Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, stone troughs similar to those at Megiddo were found bearing inscriptions explicitly identifying them as horse troughs.
Indeed the kingdom of Israel was well known for its equestrian skills. Assyrian texts testify to the special role of Israelite charioteers in the Assyrian royal army after the conquest of the north. The “horse lists” from Fort Shalmaneser dating to the days of Sargon II mention seven units, one of which—the second largest in size—consisted of chariot officers from Samaria. This Israelite force is the only one outside Assyria proper that is mentioned as a national unit, under its own city name. These Israelite charioteers were treated with special favor, with only a moderate tax imposed on them—similar to that levied on native Assyrians. The royal inscriptions of Sargon II mention a group of deportees with the same professional talent: “I formed a unit of 50 [200 in a parallel text] chariots from them, and I allowed the rest to pursue their own skills.” The association of the kingdom of Israel with horses may even have been more extensive than its own chariotry and cavalry forces. Megiddo’s complexes of pillared buildings equipped with stalls for hundreds of horses may actually represent an ambitious and successful Israelite involvement in the international horse trade.
What types of horses were traded in this period? Among all the warhorses so highly prized by the Assyrians, none was more sought after than the famous thoroughbreds from the region of Kush, south of Egypt, along the upper Nile. These Kushite horses were considered the best for chariots and are mentioned in Assyrian texts—as gifts or purchases—from the days of Tiglath-pileser III to Ashurbanipal. Starting in the late eighth century BCE, when Assyrian commercial centers had been established in Philistia, along the southern coastal plain, the Assyrians obtained their Kushite horses by direct trade with Egypt. A few decades later Egypt was at least nominally conquered by Assyria, and the great Assyrian kings of the seventh century BCE—Esarheddon and Ashurbanipal—obtained their Egyptian horses not through trade but through the imposition of an annual horse tribute. However, in the era before official Assyrian presence in the cities of Philistia and later in Egypt, the long-distance horse trade between Egypt and Assyria—so vital for military purposes—would have been indirect.
Here we may have the link between the Megiddo stables, the Assyrian records, and the Solomonic tradition. Throughout most of the eighth century BCE, it seems probable that the northern kingdom of Israel gained great prosperity by being the main importer and intermediary between the famed Egyptian—and especially Kushite or Nubian—horses and Assyria. The horses were bred and trained at the stable complex at Megiddo, the largest known anywhere in the ancient Near East, and were then sold to Assyria and possibly to other clients during the reign of Jeroboam II. By the time of Manasseh there is no evidence of horse trading in Judah. Yet a memory of the profitable equine trade of the northern kingdom would have had positive value. It played a conspicuous role in enhancing the glamour and wealth of King Solomon. The anachronistic description of Solomon’s dealings with horses suggests that it was based on vaguely remembered details of the eighth-century Israelite—and possibly more modest Judahite—trade:
A Megiddo stable (reconstruction according to Deborah Cantrell and Lawrence Belkin)
And Solomon’s import of horses was from Egypt and Kue, and the king’s traders received them from Kue at a price. A chariot could be imported from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty; and so through the king’s traders they were exported to all the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Syria. (1 Kings 10:28–29)
The mention of the marketing connections—acquired from Egypt and sold to northern kingdoms—may reflect a memory of the situation at Megiddo in the eighth century BCE, when horses were an enormous source of wealth and prestige.* Yet the specific details of the price, denominated in silver, as was the practice in the seventh-century Assyrian globalized economy, must be a reflection of the time of Manasseh.
At least in some circles in Jerusalem, the incorporation of that memory into the Solomonic tradition was another way to persuade the people of the kingdom of Judah that trade with Assyria was both economically beneficial and deeply seated in the traditions of the kingdoms of both Judah and Israel. The inflated numbers of horses, stalls, and chariots mentioned in the biblical verses can now be seen as legendary elements of a literary creation aimed to impress the reader or listener, rather than provide an accurate historical account.
CARAVANS, CAMELS, AND THE QUEEN OF SHEBA
According to the Bible, Solomon was the greatest of traders in other commodities as well. The description of his reign is filled with references to precious trade items from exotic lands. Solomon and King Hiram of Tyre built ships at “Ezion-geber, which is near Eloth on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom,” and sailed from there to a place named Ophir in order to bring gold (1 Kings 9:26–28; also 10:11). Ezion-geber is located at the site of Tell el-Kheleifeh, on the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba. The identification of Ophir is less certain. Some scholars have suggested that it is no more than a legend—a Near Eastern equivalent of the mythical Eldorado. But in the table of Nations in Genesis 10:28–29 it appears together with Sheba, which should no doubt be located in southern Arabia. And none of Solomon’s trading adventures is more famous than the queen of Sheba’s state visit to Jerusalem with camels carrying spices, gold, and precious stones.
A cornucopia of precious spices, ivory, and incense, flowing northward from the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, was eagerly sought by the kings, temples, and royal houses of the Mediterranean world. The outlets of the Arabian trade routes were controlled by the cities of Philistia, but the caravans shifted from one desert road to another according to changing political, economic, and security conditions. In the early eighth century BCE, the preferred route seems to have been from Arabia to the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, and from there to Gaza through northeastern Sinai. Assyrian records frequently refer to the various Arab peoples who inhabited the southern deserts and actively participated in the trade. It seems that the kingdom of Israel was also involved in the desert commerce. At the site of Kuntillet Ajrud on the caravan route between Aqaba and Gaza, a shrine was unearthed with a rich range of artifacts, drawings, and inscriptions, indicating the active cultural interchange in this remote and isolated place where wayfarers and commercial agents from Phoenicia, Israel, and Arabia stopped briefly in the course of their journeys, invoking their various gods to watch over them as they passed through the dangerous and unprotected desert routes.
As far as we can tell, however, the tiny, landlocked kingdom of Judah played no significant role in this early phase of the Arabian trade.
Things seem to have changed dramatically in the late eighth century BCE whe
n the Assyrians moved decisively to exert their control. With their growing interest in the Arabian trade, the Assyrians diverted the main trade route to Edom and southern Judah, where its security could be more carefully monitored. The Assyrian method of controlling trade in the remote parts of the deserts was to forge agreements with the leaders of the Arab groups through whose territory the caravans passed. But in areas closer to the settled lands and the seaports, security of the routes could not be left to casual diplomacy. There the Assyrians established a system of strong forts and administrative centers, such as En Hazeva, southwest of the Dead Sea; Buseira, the capital of Edom, near Petra in Jordan; and Tell el-Kheleifeh, at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba. Judahite and Edomite personnel may have been deployed in those forts under Assyrian command. Finally, along the Mediterranean coast the Assyrians established several harbor emporia, from which the Arabian goods were shipped with the help of Phoenician intermediaries. Tiglath-pileser III counted Gaza “as a customhouse of Assyria” and Sargon II declares that he opened the border of Egypt to trade, mingled Assyrians and Egyptians, and encouraged mutual trade—no doubt referring also to the Arabian commodities. The archaeological remains of such trading emporia have been uncovered on the Mediterranean coast near Ashdod and to the south of Gaza.
Thus the growing activity in the Beer-sheba Valley expanded dramatically during Manasseh’s reign. Together with the intensified settlement and agricultural production in this marginal region, the kingdom more actively participated and benefited from the thriving trade in the south under Assyrian domination. The regions along the caravan route, from the highlands of Edom through the Beer-sheba Valley, to the Assyrian-controlled coastal trading centers, experienced an unprecedented economic and demographic expansion during the seventh century BCE. In the Edomite highlands, many new settlements were founded and the built-up area in the towns of the Beer-sheba Valley more than doubled within just a few decades. The influence of Assyrian supervision could be felt far down the trade route, with the presence of characteristic Assyrian palace vessels or their imitations at almost every site excavated along its course.
Rich archaeological finds have confirmed the source of this commerce: south Arabian inscriptions and Hijazi artifacts have been found at several sites in the region, including Jerusalem. The mode of transport has also become clear with an analysis of the animal bones at the excavation of one of the most elaborate of the Assyrian trade stations, Tell Jemmeh, inland of Gaza. The remains of domesticated camels—while rare in previous eras—dramatically increase in the seventh century BCE, and the bones are almost exclusively of mature animals, which suggests that they were from traveling beasts of burden, not locally raised herds (among which the bones of young animals would also be found).
Controlling the termini of the Arabian trade routes and dominating the vassal states of Transjordan and Judah, the Assyrians no doubt took the lion’s share of the trade revenues. But the sheer value of the precious goods shipped northward ensured that even Assyria’s junior partners would also prosper from their involvement in the trade. Edom, an arid and once remote land, was strategically important to the Assyrians as a buffer zone against hostile desert tribes. Assyrian control centers were established there to ensure the security of the commerce and strengthen this semi-independent frontier state.
Judah likewise benefited from the prosperity in the towns and way stations of the Beer-sheba Valley—and there is some evidence that at least some of the trade was diverted to Jerusalem itself. Three ostraca with south Arabian script uncovered in the excavations of the City of David in Jerusalem were carved on local Judahite pottery, which suggests that at least a small community of Arabians had taken up residence there. A chance find of a seventh-century Hebrew seal bearing what is presumably a south Arabian name—and the hypothesis that King Manasseh’s wife Meshullemeth, the daughter of Haruz of Jotbah (2 Kings 21:19), was an Arabian woman—strengthens the assumption that Manasseh was eager to expand his commercial interests in the south.
This was an increasingly vital economic strategy for Judah; evidence of its importance can be detected in the biblical story of the queen of Sheba’s state visit to Jerusalem accompanied by a large caravan bearing precious trade goods. By Manasseh’s time, the remote kingdom of Sheba, in the area of modern Yemen, was famous for its aromatics, which were brought by camel caravans to the Levant. It is mentioned in Assyrian sources of the late eighth century BCE, in the days of Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon II, and Sennacherib. Though recent archaeological research has apparently revealed earlier Iron Age remains in Yemen, it is clear that the Sabaean kingdom began to flourish only from the eighth century BCE onward. Little wonder that visions of Arabia assumed such great importance in the traditions of Judah.*
The fact that the book of Kings speaks about the visit of a queen (rather than a king) lends an additional note of credibility, for Assyrian records of the late eighth and early seventh centuries BCE (untilc. 690 BCE) attest to the phenomenon of Arabian queens.
The biblical thousand-and-one-nights story of Solomon and Sheba is thus an anachronistic seventh-century set piece meant to legitimize the participation of Judah in the lucrative Arabian trade.
WHO BUILT THE TEMPLE?
Solomon is of course remembered as the builder of the great Temple in Jerusalem, but as we have noted, archaeology is completely mute regarding its early history. There is no doubt that the First Temple was built on the highest, northern sector of the ridge of the City of David. But this area—the Haram el-Sharif in Arabic—now houses two of the most sacred monuments of Islam, the el-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, and for religious reasons it has not been possible to conduct any extensive archaeological excavations there.
Even if it were possible to excavate beneath the Dome of the Rock, it is doubtful that any significant Iron Age remains would be found. In the first century BCE, the Temple Mount was the scene of one of the greatest building operations in the history of the Holy Land, when King Herod the Great erected the huge platform that still exists today (on which the el-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock stand). It was built as a typical Roman podium: the entire original hill was enclosed within huge supporting walls—including the Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall in Jewish tradition—and the area inside was leveled, filled, or constructed with support arcades and vaults. There is little possibility that Iron Age remains would have survived these immense operations.
Thus with no archaeological remains, we are forced to go back to the text. There can hardly be a doubt that the detailed description of the Temple in 1 Kings 6–7 was written by an author who had an intimate knowledge of the First Temple before it was destroyed by the Babylonians in the early sixth century BCE. But did Solomon build the original Temple? As the son of a local chief of a small, isolated highland polity, he would not have had access to resources to do much more than erect or renovate a modest local dynastic shrine of a type well known in the ancient Near East.
A more monumental Temple—of the kind described in the Bible—could only have been built by one of the later Davidic monarchs, at a time when Judah grew into a more complex state, with more significant manpower, economic resources, and construction skills. We simply do not know who built the first elaborate Temple in Jerusalem, which by the time of Hezekiah had already accumulated considerable wealth and expensive furnishings (of which it was stripped to provide tribute to Assyria—2 Kings 18:15–16). It is possible that the description in 2 Kings 12 of the extensive renovation of the Temple in the days of King Jehoash (c. 836–798 BCE) is significant. This was, as we have seen, a time when Judah was coming of age, after a period of intense interaction with the Omride dynasty of the north. Could the “repairs” on the House of the Lord mentioned in this biblical passage represent, in fact, the construction of the more impressive Jerusalem Temple that was still standing in the time of the compilation of the Solomonic narrative?
With no material remains, and no contemporary sources, any discussion of the architec
tural history of the Temple must remain pure speculation. The best (and perhaps only) support for a Solomonic origin of the Temple is the centrality of the Temple in Solomon’s later image. Just as David was remembered as the founder of the Judahite dynasty, Solomon was remembered as the patron of Jerusalem’s local cult place, which could have been little more than a rustic shrine in the tenth century BCE. Over the centuries, with the growth of Jerusalem and the development of its institutions, it became more impressive. Had Judahite popular tradition identified another Davidic king as the original builder, the credit given to Solomon for this achievement would have lacked even the most basic credibility.
KING SOLOMON’S MINES?
The biblical description of Solomon’s building of the Temple—like the rest of the elaborated tradition—is also filled with chronological clues. King Hiram of Tyre is a case in point. Though he is mentioned several times in the book of Kings as the supplier of cedars of Lebanon for its construction and a trade partner of Solomon in various overseas expeditions, the existence of a historical figure by that name in the tenth century BCE cannot be verified from any contemporary or even later text.
The only certain historical Iron Age Hiram of Tyre was a king named Hirummu, who appears twice in the annals of the great Assyrian monarch Tiglath-pileser III in the 730s BCE as paying tribute to Assyria. He is mentioned together with Menahem king of Israel and Rezin king of Damascus. Scholars have labeled him Hiram II, to differentiate from (the hypothesized) Hiram I of the days of Solomon, but it is probable that the eighth-century Hiram traded with the northern kingdom, and that his name and deeds were used in order to praise Solomon as a great monarch—in yet another legendary assimilation of the fabled prosperity of the north.* The mention of ships of Solomon and Hiram sailing together to Tarshish (1 Kings 10:22)—probably Tarsus in southeastern Turkey—may reflect the trade cooperation of the northern kingdom with Tyre and the Phoenicians in the eighth century.
David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition Page 15
