Age of Salomon. Interpretation of The Archaeological Remains.

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to present the age of the United Monarchy during the time of king Solomon’s reign from the biblical and archaeological point of view. The material is divided into two general parts concerning the king’s building activity in Jerusalem and outside the city, in the whole country. In the conclusions we try to summarize the Age of Solomon and shortly discuss the chronological problems in the interpretation of the remains using also the recently proposed by Finkelstein so called ‘Low Chronology’.

Solomonic Buildings in Jerusalem

The king’s building projects in Jerusalem include repair and probably expansion of the city walls, further work on the Millo, then a royal palace complex with the temple of Yahweh, and several shrines for certain other gods. Descriptions of these building works we can find in the Bible in the following texts: 1 Kgs 3:1; 7:1-8; 9:15, 24; 11:7-8, 27.

The Temple

The detailed biblical descriptions (mainly 1 Kgs 5:16-6:38 and 2 Chr 4) enable us to reconstruct the plan and ornamentation of the temple located on the peak of the ridge of the City of David.

The temple was a rectangular structure, measuring 50x100 cubits. In the construction was most probably utilized the long or royal cubit of 52.5 cm. That means the approximately measuring of the temple was 25 x 50 m. It was the largest among the Canaanite or Phoenician temples known up to date to archaeologists. Also its height was exceptional: 30 cubits (ca. 15 m). The thick of the casamate walls reached 12 cubits (ca. 6 m) and it was comparable to the thick of the Middle Bronze Age (17th-16th centuries BC) the earliest yet found in Palestine tripartite temple at Shechem (fig.17). The interior part of the Solomonic temple had a porch (ulam), a sanctuary (hechal), and the Holy of Holies (debir), with the entrance to each room on the central axis. Around this tripartite division were three stories of auxiliary chambers which probably served as treasury (fig. 9.4).

This kind of plan of the temple is obviously rooted in the whole religious architecture of the second millennium BC in Canaan and northern Syria. It appears to have been typical of the day and eclectic. This is what one would really expect, because it was constructed and decorated by Phoenician craftsmen. The clear prototypes of the Salomonic temple are the Middle Bronze Age temples at Ebla (fig. 9.5A), Megiddo and Shechem. Also the Late Bronze Age temple at Tel Mumbakat, and the ninth-eighth century BC edifice at Tell Tayinat, both in north Syria, had similar structure (fig. 9.5BC). The Phoenician-style ‘ashlar’ masonry, probably laid in alternate header and stretcher fashion (1 Kgs 5:17; 7:9-12) can be seen in the Solomonic gates at Megiddo and Hazor, and in Tell Tayinat temple. The extensive use of very precious cedarwood from Lebanon in the Salomon’s temple (1 Kgs 6:15-18) recalls its use in Canaanite and Philistine temples in Lachish and Tell Qasile. Also the sacrificial altar and a huge bronze basin called ‘molten sea’, supported by twelve bull figures, can be actually reconstructed on the basis of finds and depictions from Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Palestine. The two columns Jachin and Boaz which stood at the temple’s facade (1 Kgs 7:15-22), probably without any constructional role, are reflected in many Syro-Anatolian temples of the Late Bronze - Iron Age (e.g. Tell Tayinat) and recall two column bases from the Late Bronze Age (ca. 15th-14th centuries BC) temple at Hazor (in Area H; fig. 72), without any constructional function as well. The same can we say about the columns which appear on the facade of a pottery modelshrine from Tell el-Far‘ah (fig. 9.6). The olive-wood cherubim of the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies were probably sphinxlike beings, with the body of a lion or bull, the wings of an eagle, and the head of a man (fig. 11.26; 20). This kind of artistic depiction is a well-known motif in Canaanite, Phoenician, and Syrian art of the Bronze and Iron ages. Even other decorative elements of Salomon’s temple like the networks, palmettes, fringes, chains (1 Kgs 6:18, 29; 7:15-22), find their parallels in other material cultures, e.g. on Phoenician depictions, especially on carved ivories of the ninth and eighth centuries BC from Nimrud, Samaria, Hazor (fig. 18).

Salomon’s palace complex

The palace is described in 1 Kgs 7:1-11. It included several units: ‘The House of the Forest of Lebanon’, ‘The Hall of Pillars’, ‘The Hall of the Throne’, where Solomon was used to pronounce judgment, than his own ‘Dwelling House’ and ‘The Other Court’. Contemporary or slightly later - according to the archaeologists - are palaces discovered in northern Syria and in Megiddo (fig. 9.9B), all of them called bit-hilani (an Akkadian term based on the Hittite reference to palace having a colonnaded entrance porch /fig. 9.5C/; especially, a pattern example found at Sinjirli in southern Turkey). Following the interpretation of D. Ussishkin (1973: 78-105) all different elements of Solomon’s palace complex could reflect the structure of such a bit-hilani, e.g. ‘The Hall of Pillars’ would be the entrance porch with its ornamented columns. The porch gave access to the throne room: a broad hall with the throne at one of the narrow ends. Behind the hall there were dwelling rooms, which could be arranged around an inner courtyard like the ‘other court’ of Solomon’s palace complex.

Also the palace built for Pharaoh’s daughter, the wife of king Solomon, may have been a separately standing bit-hilani. The examples of such clusters of palaces are found in other Iron Age royal cities, for instance in Sinjirli, capital of the kingdom of Sama’l. The paralleled house to ‘The House of the Forest of Libanon’, described as separate building with four rows of cedarwood columns, was discovered in eastern Anatolia in the kingdom of Urartu, as pillared halls, and at Kition on Cyprus, as the ninth century BC four-rows-of-pillars Phoenician temple (Karageorghis 1976:107-117). All these architectural and decorative similarities between the Solomon’s royal buildings and non-Israelite Syrian and Phoenician structures are explainable by king’s use of “Phoenician architects and craftsmen sent from Tyre who probably brought with them the traditions of Canaanite art and architecture” (Mazar 1992:379).

The Bible describes the palace as having been built of stones “sawed with saws, back and front”, “stones of eight and ten cubits” (1 Kgs 7:9-10). The courtyard is described as constructed of “three courses of hewn stone round about, and a course of cedar beams” (1 Kgs 7:12). All these details conform - according to the opinions of some archaeologists - to the style of ‘Solomonic ashlar masonry’ known from Megiddo (Mazar 1992:472).

In addition to the temple and the palace complex Solomon built the wall of Jerusalem and the Millo, what is related in 1 Kgs 9:15. The Millo was probably an artificial filling of a depression in the saddle between the City of David and the Temple Mount.

The basic plan of the whole 10th century Acropolis in Jerusalem can be reconstructed on the base of the 9th-8th century complexes at Tell Halaf (ancient Gozan) in Mesopotamia, at Karatepe in Anatolia, and at Tell Tayinat in Syria. The most complete example is Hilani III and Palaces J-K at Sinjirli, the capital of the kings of Kilamua and Bar-Rakkib (fig. 21). Here we can see all the elements of Solomon’s royal quarter in Jerusalem.

Solomonic Buildings outside Jerusalem

According to 1 Kgs 9:15-19 king Solomo built Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, Lower Beth-Horon, Baalath, Tamar (or Tadmor that means Palmyra) in the wilderness (the Syrian Desert), all the garrison towns, the towns for chariots and horses and “all it pleased Solomon to build... in Lebanon and in all the countries subject to him”. The excavations at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer uncovered an urban architecture, which in the opinion of some archaeologist can be generally ascribed to the Solomonic centralized, royally sponsored building program.

Hazor

‘Solomonic Hazor’ represented in Stratum X occupied only the western half of the Canaanite Upper City, than means about 8 acres. The city was probably surrounded by a casemate wall (only small part of it was discovered) with the main entrance through the six-chamber (or four-entry) gate, similar to that in Megiddo, but built of uncut fieldstones. Nothing more was found, what could be ascribed to the Solomonic city. Generally then, the description in the Bible and the fragments of the casemate wall and the four-entry gate fit to one another but it is very strange that only this remained from the whole city.

Megiddo

Megiddo was an administration center for at least Jezreel and Beth-Shean valleys - the ‘grain barns’ of the Solomon’s kingdom. Following the opinion of Y. Yadin (1970), Stratum IVB-VA should be identified as the Solomonic city including two palaces (6000 and 1723) and other building of the public nature (fig. 9.8 and 9.9). The city was to be surrounded by a casemate wall which Yadin identified along the northern edge of the mound and connected with a monumental, ashlar-built four-entry gate, 17.8 x 20.0 m in size (originally attributed to Stratum IV). The Yadin’s conjecture is based both on the archaeological discoveries and on the biblical accounts. The excavations in Hazor and Gezer showed casemate walls in relation to similar six chamber (four-entry) gates at Solomonic levels (fig. 9.10) and in the text of 1 Kgs 9:15 is said that the king built cities in Hazor, Gezer and Megiddo. So the Yadin’s conclusions were quite simple: the casemate wall and the four-entry gate in Megiddo belong to the same Stratum and are clear sign of Solomonic architectural activity. However the main problem is that the excavators did not find any clue of casemate wall near the gate. In the following century (the time of Ahab - Stratum IVA according to Yadin), a solid ‘offsets/insets wall’ and a large complex of ‘stables’ were constructed and the six-chamber gate was replaced by a four-chamber one.

Different opinion present Aharoni  and Herzog (1984). According to them the ‘offsets/insets’ wall was the first and only wall related to the six-chamber gate and the gate and the wall were constructed as one unit in the time of Solomon (Stratum IV in their counting). So then palaces 6000 and 1723 as earlier come from Davidic period (Stratum V). The Solomonic city had then the six-chamber gate, ‘offsets/insets wall’ and ‘stables’ (or storehouses).

The northern palace (6000) with its eight rooms arranged around a central court (fig. 14) is similar in plan to the bit-hilani in northern Syria, especially to the palaces found at Sinjirli (ancient Sam‘al) now in southern Turkey (fig. 9.9B; 13). It was 21 x 28 m, “built of fine ashlar masonry laid in header-stretcher fashion with field stones in the in-between stretches” (Dever 1982:292). The southern palace (1723), maybe the district governor’s residence, had more elaborated plan (fig. 9.9A). The main structure was 20 x 22 m and had a dozen rooms surrounding a central court. It was made of ashlar and rubble-filled masonry similar to that of the Solomonic gate. It stood at the back of a large square courtyard 60 x 60 m surrounded by a wall made of ashlar stones and field stones. This building technique is well known in later Israelite and Phoenician architecture. A four-chamber gate of the square courtyard was decorated with stone capitals carved in the characteristic for the Iron Age Israelite royal architecture Proto-Aeolic (or Proto-Ionic) style (fig. 10.13; 19).

Gezer

The four-entry gate of this city (Stratum VIII) was constructed of large fieldstones. The ashlars were used only for parts of its facade (Dever 1986). The casemate wall, similar to that at Hazor, flanked the gate but probably did not surround the entire city. The city had the ‘Outer Wall’ and the ‘Inner Wall’ (fig. 9.12). According to Dever, the solid ‘Outer Wall’ with its towers was founded in the Late Bronze Age and then rebuilt by Solomon, but in the opinion of Mazar (1992:387) this wall was added to the Solomonic fortifications in the time of the Divided Monarchy. The ‘Outer Wall’ had a gate constructed of fine ashlar masonry and related to it. West to this gate was found large public building, interpreted as an administrative center from the Solomonic period. The whole fortifications system in Gezer was in use until the Assyrian conquest. 

The city gates in Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer were considered by Yadin as hallmarks of a centralized, royal building activity attributable to Solomon. The evidence was both in the archaeological excavations and in the 1 Kgs 9:15-18. These three monumental gates and two other examples found at Lachish and Ashdod (fig. 9.10) were rectangular six-chamber and four-gate structures. The facades of the gates included projecting towers, their central passage was 4.20 m in width. Also other dimensions of these three gate are almost the same (fig. 11A). Only one of these gates (in Megiddo) was completely built of high-quality ashlar stones. According to Dothan (1972:244) the Ashdod gate may be 11th century BC in date. It suggests a Philistine origin for these so-called Solomonic city gates.

In regard to the four cities mentioned in the I Kings it should be said that none of these were entirely founded by Solomon. In each case he was building on, or refortifying, a place that had been occupied earlier.

Settlements in the Negev

In the Negev area were found about 40-50 settlements which come according to some archaeologists from the United Monarchy period. Among these for a short period of time inhabited settlements were ‘fortresses’ (fortified enclosures) and small isolated farmsteads founded mostly on hills but close to water sources and oasis. Most of the ‘fortresses’ were 25-70 m in diameter, they were “circular, oval, rectangular, or amorphic in shape and followed the contours of the hill on which they were established” (fig. 9.14). Their plan was usually the same: a row of casemate rooms which surrounded a large central courtyard. There was only one narrow entrance to the ‘fortress’. All dwellings were located outside the ‘fortresses’, adjacent to them or independent of them, sometimes scattered at a considerable distance from one another. Their plan seldom was connected with the fully developed ‘four-room house’ plan but generally utilized the principle of a courtyard divided by pillars.

The significance and precise date of these settlements are debated issues. Some scholars ascribe them to the Israelites, some to the desert nomads, or pastoral Bedouins (Finkelstein). R. Cohen (1979) dates the settlements to the time of David and Solomon. He argues, that these sites reflect a general policy of the kingdom to control the Negev and its inhabitants in order to secure the important commercial routes crossing the Negev. The southern limit of these settlements corresponds to the description of the southern border of Judah in Jos. 15:2-3: “... south of Scorpion pass, continued on to Zin, and went over to the south of Kadesh Barnea. Then it ran past  Hezron...”. Probably it was also the southern border in the United Monarchy. Among the ‘fortresses’ is known now Tel Beer-sheba, which Stratum V should come from the time of Solomon or according to Mazar after the division of the Monarchy. It was a well-planned 3-acre town defended by a wall buttressed by a solid earth rampart (fig. 8). In Arad was a square fortress surrounded by casemate wall in Stratum XI (Aharoni’s Solomonic period, but Mazar dates to the ninth century BC).

At the southmost border of the kingdom was built by Solomon Ezion-Geber, the commercial port according to the relations of 1 Kgs 9:26-28; 10:1-13 and in the opinions of the archaeologists - a royal fortress surrounded by a casemate wall with a central administration four-room building, recalling the central Negev sites from the tenth century BC.

The Negev settlements were probably destroyed during Pharaoh Shishak’s military campaign five years after the death of Solomon. On the walls of the temple of Amun at Karnak there is a list including almost seventy place-names in the Negev. The Egyptian prefix hgr which appears before some names is probably the transcription of the Hebrew word hagar, ‘enclosure’, and may have denoted the casemate ‘fortresses’ of the Negev.

Fortifications

In addition to the main fortifications found at Hazor, Gezer, and Megiddo there were also found the sparse ones (in the form of casemate walls) in Yoqneam, and perhaps in Tell Beit Mirsim, Tell en-Nasbeh, and Beth-Shemesh. From the same period of time come the casemate walls from the Negev ‘fortresses’ where they were very common. According to Finkelstein (1988:263), a possible origin of the casemate walls in Israel should be sought in ‘enclosed settlements’ arranged around a central courtyard, such as at ‘Izbet Sartah. But in the Mazar’s opinion (1992:388), the casemate wall “may have developed from Iron Age I Israelite settlements in which the rear rooms of pillared houses created the outer defense ring of the settlement”. This kind of ‘defense wall without defense wall’ was in the Solomonic time probably in Tell Qasile Stratum VIII, Tel Batash Stratum IV, Lachish Stratum V, and Megiddo Stratum IVB-VA.

Town planning

It appears that in the initial phase of Israelite settlement large areas of the earlier big cities remained unsettled. The good example of it can be Hazor which in the Canaanite period consisted of the Lower City (700 x 1000 m) and the Upper City (200 x 600 m). After the destruction in the second half of the 13th century BC only the Upper City was used. In the Solomonic period only the western part of the Upper City was resettled.

The second example may be Lachish. It was reinhabited in the tenth century BC on a limited scale and without any fortifications. The large palace-fort which stood on a square stone platform, 32 x 32 m in size, was attributed by excavators to the Solomonic period, but according to different archaeologists it may belong either to the Davidic period or to the Rehoboam time (Mazar 1992:389).

Tirzah (Tell el-Far‘ah) is the only example of a developed town which was well planned and densely occupied in this period. It was built on the orthogonal plan with the repeated appearance of four-room houses.

Conclusions

The whole archaeology of the United Monarchy was born - according to Finkelstein - in Megiddo and remained focused on that place for over fifty years. The dating of that period was based on two main points: the first was the method of construction from the Stratum IV, which seemed to the excavators identical or similar to the description of the building construction in Jerusalem in the time of king Solomon in 1 Kgs 7:12. The second point was the connection which the archaeologists established between the biblical texts mention the Solomonic cities for horsemen and chariots in 1 Kgs 9:19, the reference to the king’s building activity at Megiddo in 1 Kgs 9:15 and the sets of pillared buildings uncovered in Megiddo. In the relation of Guy (1931:44-48), “if we ask ourselves who, at Megiddo, shortly after the defeat of the Philistines by King David, built with the help of skilled foreign masons a city with many stables? I believe that we shall find our answer in the Bible... if one reads the history of Solomon, whether in Kings or in Chronicles, one is stuck by the frequency with which chariots and horses crop up”. Later corrections of the Megiddo stratigraphy and chronology place the pillared buildings (stables or storage houses?) in the ninth century (Yadin 1970), but the general idea that Megiddo of king Solomon must be associated with Stratum IV has prevailed. Lowering the date of the pillared buildings, Yadin replaced ‘stables’ argument with a four-entry-gates debate. Now it became the most important hallmark of the United Monarchy archaeology. “Our decision to attribute that layer to Solomon was based primarily on the 1 Kings passage, the stratigraphy and the pottery. But when in addition we found in that stratum a six-chambered, two-towered gate connected to a casemate wall identical in plan and measurement with the gate at Megiddo, we felt sure we had successfully identified Solomon’s city” (Yadin 1970:67). Although Yadin mentions stratigraphy and chronology, the fact is that the identification of Megiddo was based solely on the biblical text: “Indeed, it seems that there is no example in the history of archaeology where a passage helped so much in identifying and dating structures in several of the most important tells in the Holy Land as has 1 Kings 9:15”. Later also attribution of the four-entry gates to the Solomonic period has been challenged (Ussishkin 1980). Now it appears - according to the proposal of Finkelstein (1996) - that the datation of other archaeological sites and monuments previously dated to the second half of the tenth century should be lowered in the early ninth century BC as well. For instance, at Beer-sheba, the United Monarchy should be represented by the enclosed settlement of Stratum VII rather than by the fortified city in Stratum V; in Arad - by Stratum XII rather than by the stronghold in Stratum XI. Both fortifications come from ninth century BC. In Megiddo ‘Solomonic’ Stratum VA-IVB should also be pushed into the ninth century BC. Consequently, the palaces 6000 and 1723 with their ashlar construction are from the days of Omride dynasty, and the four-entry gate, the water system and the pillared buildings from the late ninth-early eighth century. In Gezer the whole Stratum VIII with the four-entry gate should also belong to the ninth century. In the light of this new Low Chronology the area to the south of Jerusalem was relatively empty until the eighth century BC. The total built-up area in the central hill country in the tenth century can be estimated at ca. 220 ha (160 ha in Philistia south of the river Yarkon). In the entire central hill country lived probably ca. 44.000 people (32.000 in Philistia). In the Judean Hills there were only 11 built-up hectares (2200 people), but 210 ha in the area between Jerusalem and the Jezreel Valley (42000 inhabitants). That means that the density per sq. km in the north was six or seven times that of the south (Yadin 1996:184-185).

If the Finkelstein Low Chronology is accepted it will mean that the United Monarchy is left without any monumental buildings, ashlar masonry and Proto-Ionic capitals. “The kingdom of David and Solomon could have been... an early state in a stage of territorial expansion, but with no monumental construction and advanced administration” (Finkelstein 1996:185). In such a case the northern kingdom of Israel would emerge as the first real state in Iron Age Palestine. Also the illogical gap in the prevailing chronology introducing a strange break between the beginning of monumental building activity in tenth century and the evidence of advanced public administration (e.g. inscribed seals and seal impressions) in late-ninth/eighth century suddenly disappears. All comes from the same period of time. This new point of view resolves also another difficulty: the previous chronology dated the bit hilani palaces in Megiddo at least one century earlier than their supposed prototypes in north Syria. The alternative chronology ascribes the monuments of the two regions to the same time.

The problem which emerges from the accepting of this very fascinating Low Chronology is the biblical evidence. How to interpret the texts, mainly from the Books of Kings, which glorify Solomon and ascribe to him vast building activity? Why the biblical author did not say that the real architects of the building program were kings of the northern Divided Monarchy? I think that we can find some reasons which can explain this phenomenon. First, from the allusions in the biblical texts (cf. for example the Solomon’s prayer in the temple in 1 Kgs 8:46-50) and from the scientific commentaries to the Bible we know that the author (the authors) formulated these passages in the time of Exile (6th century BC), that means long after Solomon’s day, and that they wanted to explain how it had come to the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem, exile of many of its people, the destruction of the Temple, and the complete destruction of the state. So they saw the time of the Divided Monarchy as a time of unfaithfulness to God, consequences of which were division of the state and then its destruction. From this theological point of view of the exilic community everything what was connected with the Divided Monarchy, even architecture, was recognized as something moral wicked. But how to explain the magnificent architecture, which splendor could say about God’s blessing rather than punishment, and connect it with unfaithfulness of people? The solution was to ascribe these monumental buildings to the previous period of time, to the Davidic or Solomonic monarchy. It was easy to do this because nobody already, even the author, did remember exactly when what was built, after so long period of time (ninth century - six century). In this way the United Monarchy emerges as ideal, blameless, and the Divided Monarchy is stripped of its glory and splendor because of its moral wickedness. So the theological idea of the author(s) finds in the Books of Kings very good presentation. Because of that - in my opinion - we could not rely so much on the historical and especially chronological informations founded in the Bible - all of them are subordinated to the theological purposes of the Book. Therefore also the passages saying about the Solomonic building activity we should interpret in a proper more critical way.

Abbreviations

BA Biblical Archaeologist

BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research

IEJ Israel Exploration Journal, Jerusalem

Bibliography

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