God was said to have granted Solomon power over all living creatures and mastery of the elements. The Jewish Bible, the Tanakh, and the Islamic sacred scripture, the Koran, both cite his miraculous ability to speak the language of the birds and ants, and to control the winds. He was said to have a magic carpet and a magic ring, the Seal of Solomon, which gave him power over demons. In the Persian and Arabic stories that, in a later millennium, made up The Arabian Nights, Solomon is the wizard who imprisoned the djinn (genies) in jars and cast them into the sea.
There was, though, a price to pay: Solomon suffered “imperial over-stretch”: exorbitant taxes oppressed the Hebrews. When the king died, his united realm fragmented into two rival kingdoms, Israel and Judah—this was, the Bible has it, God’s punishment for Solomon’s breaking of his covenant.
The main sources for David and Solomon are the biblical Books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. There is archaeological proof that David existed, though it is doubtful whether Jerusalem was the glorious capital described in the Bible and whether the Davidic kingdom was an empire extending from the Egyptian border to Damascus. Archaeologists now believe the city was small and the kingdom was more of a tribal federation. On the other hand, 10th century traces have been found in the City of David in Jerusalem, which, thanks to its recently discovered Canaanite remains, was clearly a substantial stronghold. The lack of traces in itself is not decisive—after all the Maccabean kingdom a thousand years later, which covered similar territory to that of David, also left remarkably few traces. The court history of David in the Bible does read like a realistic firsthand account of a king in decline. And the Tel Dan stele, discovered in 1993/4, proves that David was a historical character, using the name “House of David” to describe the Kingdom of Judah ruled by David’s royal descendants.
As for Solomon, there is no archaeological proof of his personal existence. Unlike the rounded portrait of his father, Solomon appears as the legend of an ideal Oriental emperor. There is certainly wishful thinking and perhaps projection in the splendor of his court and brilliance of his life, and it is likely the biblical writers, forming their text four hundred years later, were describing their own Jerusalem, their own Temple, ambitions and nostalgia, in their Solomonic portrait. Little has been found of his Temple in Jerusalem but its biblical description is totally plausible in size and style—typical of temples discovered all over the Middle East. His gold and ivory wealth is credible too—artifacts have been discovered in other Israelite palaces such as those at Samaria. His famous mines resemble ancient 10th century mines recently discovered in Jordan. The size of his army is feasible—a king of Israel fielded 2000 chariots a century later. As for his fortress cities of Megiddo, Gezer and Hazor, the ruins there were initially assigned to Solomon’s period but there is now debate as to whether they actually belong to the Kings of Israel a century later. However, new analysis of the stables there suggest that they may be his after all. As for the Temple, it certainly existed within a few years of his death, because Egyptian inscriptions confirm that the Pharaoh Sheshonq invaded Judaea and was paid off with the gold of the Jerusalem Temple. If Solomon’s magnificence is exaggerated, it is likely he did build the Temple.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR II
c. 630–562BC
Then was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury … And he commanded the most mighty men that were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.
Daniel 3:19–20
Nebuchadnezzar was the Lion of Babylon and the Destroyer of Nations. Ruler of the great neo-Babylonian empire from 605 until 562 BC, he was the embodiment of the warrior-king. The Bible records that Nebuchadnezzar was the instrument of God’s vengeance on the errant people of Judaea—a destiny he appears to have embraced with relish.
Born sometime after 630 BC, Nebuchadnezzar was the eldest son of King Nabopolassar (ruled 626–605 BC), the founder of the Chaldean dynasty in Babylon. Nabopolassar had successfully thrown off the yoke of the Assyrian empire to the north, and had even sacked the great city of Nineveh. Boasting of his triumphs, he had spoken of how he had “slaughtered the land of Assyria” and “turned the hostile land into heaps of ruin.”
The young Nebuchadnezzar was involved in his father’s military conquests from an early age, and in 605 he oversaw the defeat of Egyptian forces at Carchemish, a victory that helped make the Babylonians the masters of Syria. Nabopolassar died later that year, and Nebuchadnezzar mounted the throne but immediately faced rebellions around his entire empire—which he crushed with remarkable energy and acumen.
Nebuchadnezzar set about expanding his dominions westward; a marriage alliance with the Median empire to the east had ensured there would be no trouble from that quarter. Between 604 and 601 various local states—including the Jewish kingdom of Judah—submitted to his authority, and Nebuchadnezzar declared his determination to have “no opponent from horizon to sky.” Buoyed by his success, in 601 Nebuchadnezzar decided to take on his greatest rivals, sending his armies into Egypt. But they were repulsed, and this defeat provoked a series of rebellions amongst Nebuchadnezzar’s previously quiescent vassals—most notably Judah.
Nebuchadnezzar returned to his Babylonian homeland, plotting his revenge. After a brief hiatus, he stormed westward once again, carrying almost all before him. In 597 the kingdom of Judah submitted. Nebuchadnezzar had the king, Jehoiachin, deported to Babylon. In 588, Judah, under the king’s uncle Zedekiah, revolted. In 587–586 Nebuchadnezzar marched on defiant Jerusalem, besieged it for months, and finally stormed it, wreaking total destruction. Nebuchadnezzar ordered the city leveled, the people slaughtered, the Jewish Temple razed and Prince Zedekiah was made to witness his sons’ executions before his own eyes were gouged out. The Jews were then deported east, where they mourned Zion “by the rivers of Babylon.”
Nebuchadnezzar’s achievements on the battlefield were accompanied by a surge of domestic construction. Drawing on the slave labor of the various peoples he had subjugated, Nebuchadnezzar had numerous temples and public buildings erected or renovated. The extravagant new royal palace, begun by his father, was completed. And, most famously, the king commissioned the Hanging Gardens of Babylon—one of the wonders of the ancient world—as a present for his wife.
In his chronicles and inscriptions, he stressed above all his devotion to the god of Babylon, Marduk, and his love and promotion of justice for his people: he was a reformer who rebuilt the law courts, banned bribery, prosecuted officials for corruption, and stressed that he would not tolerate anyone who persecuted the poor and powerless. Furthermore, the biblical story of his madness is in fact a historical mistake, made deliberately to taint his reputation by the Bible’s Jewish writers, who hated him. It was actually the last King of Babylon, Nabonidus (556–539 BC)—who left the city for ten years to live in Arabia—who was said to have gone mad before losing his empire to Persia. Nebuchadnezzar died in 562; his son and heir was a failure, assassinated after two years—and his empire scarcely outlived him by twenty years. Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon in 539.
Despite his many benevolent achievements, Nebuchadnezzar is indelibly associated with unbridled conquest and the brutal treatment of subject peoples—the Destroyer of Nations who fulfilled the vision of the Jewish prophet Jeremiah: “He has gone out from his place, to make your land a waste. Your cities will be ruins, without inhabitant.”