Fall of Samaria (722 BC): End of the Kingdom of Israel

The fall of Samaria, around 722 BC, marked the end of the Kingdom of Israel, the larger and richer of the two Hebrew kingdoms of the Iron Age. After a siege of about three years the Assyrian army took the Israelite capital, and the empire deported tens of thousands of its people and resettled the land with newcomers. The event shaped the history of the region, the later rivalry between Jews and Samaritans, and the enduring legend of the “ten lost tribes”.

Background: the northern kingdom

After the death of Solomon, according to the biblical account, the Israelite tribes split into two states: Israel in the north and Judah, centred on Jerusalem, in the south. Israel controlled the more fertile hill country, the Jezreel Valley and Galilee.

Around 880 BC King Omri founded a new capital on the hill of Samaria. His son Ahab made Israel a regional military power: Assyrian records say Ahab brought 2,000 chariots to the coalition that fought Shalmaneser III at the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. A few years later King Jehu appears on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III bowing and paying tribute.

Excavations at Samaria uncovered a royal acropolis with fine ashlar masonry, carved ivory furniture plaques known as the Samaria ivories, and the Samaria ostraca, inked potsherds recording deliveries of wine and oil in the 8th century BC.

Causes of the conquest

The decisive change came with Tiglath-Pileser III (r. 745-727 BC), who turned Assyria into a permanent territorial empire. When Israel joined an anti-Assyrian alliance with Damascus, he struck in 734-732 BC. He annexed Galilee and Gilead, deported part of their population, and supported the accession of Hoshea in Samaria after King Pekah was killed. Israel was reduced to a small vassal state around its capital.

Hoshea paid tribute for several years. But after Shalmaneser V succeeded Tiglath-Pileser in 727 BC, Hoshea stopped payment and, according to 2 Kings 17, sent envoys to “So, king of Egypt”, seeking support. The identity of this ruler is uncertain. Egypt was then divided among several dynasties and no help arrived.

The siege and capture

The Bible says that Shalmaneser imprisoned Hoshea and besieged Samaria for three years, and that the city was taken in the ninth year of Hoshea, which it equates with the sixth year of Hezekiah of Judah. A Babylonian chronicle notes that Shalmaneser ravaged a city called Shamara’in, which many scholars identify with Samaria.

Shalmaneser V died in late 722 BC, and the throne passed, possibly through a coup, to Sargon II. Sargon’s inscriptions at his palace in Khorsabad claim the conquest of Samaria for himself, together with the deportation of 27,290 people and the capture of chariots. Historians usually reconcile the sources by suggesting that Samaria fell to Shalmaneser in 722 BC and that Sargon dealt with the city again in 720 BC, after it joined a revolt led by Hamath in Syria, which he crushed at Qarqar.

Key people

Hoshea, son of Elah, was the last king of Israel. He owed his throne to Assyrian backing after the death of Pekah, and his reign of about nine years ended with his capture before the city fell. Nothing is known of his fate.

Shalmaneser V (r. 727-722 BC) is one of the least documented Assyrian kings, because few of his inscriptions survive. The Bible remembers him as the conqueror of Samaria, and many historians accept that the city fell in his final year.

Sargon II (r. 722-705 BC) was a usurper or at least an irregular successor, who spent his early years putting down revolts. His claim to have conquered Samaria appears in several texts, including the Nimrud Prism and the inscriptions of his new capital, Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad). He was also the king who completed the reorganisation of the region into Assyrian provinces.

The prophets Amos and Hosea, active in Israel in the mid-8th century BC, are not participants in the siege, but their books preserve the criticism of Israel’s rulers and society that later readers took as warnings of the coming catastrophe.

Deportation and resettlement

Mass deportation was standard Assyrian policy. It broke up local resistance and supplied labour, soldiers and farmers to other parts of the empire. According to 2 Kings 17, the Israelites were settled “in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes”, areas of northern Mesopotamia and western Iran. Later Assyrian documents from places such as Gozan (Tell Halaf) mention people with Israelite names, including some serving in the Assyrian army.

In return the Assyrians brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim into the former kingdom, and Sargon later settled Arab groups there too. Samaria became the capital of an Assyrian province called Samerina, governed by Assyrian officials. Archaeology shows that the province continued to function and that much of the rural population stayed on the land.

Myths and facts

The best-known myth is that the ten northern tribes vanished entirely and might be found somewhere far away. Over the centuries the lost tribes have been “identified” with peoples from Britain to Japan and the Americas. Historians see no evidence for such claims. The deportees were a minority of Israel’s population and were gradually absorbed into the multi-ethnic empire.

Another common belief is that all northern Israelites disappeared from history. In fact many remained in the land, and archaeological evidence suggests that Jerusalem grew rapidly in the late 8th century BC, partly perhaps through refugees from the north. The Samaritan community, which survives today near Nablus, traces its descent to Israelites who stayed; the hostile biblical account in 2 Kings 17 instead portrays the later inhabitants as foreign settlers.

By the numbers

Consequences and legacy

The fall of Samaria left Judah as the only Israelite kingdom. Two decades later Judah itself faced Assyrian invasion during the siege of Lachish in 701 BC. Biblical writers in Judah interpreted Israel’s destruction as divine punishment for idolatry, an explanation set out at length in 2 Kings 17 and echoed by the prophets Amos and Hosea, who had warned the northern kingdom.

Samaria itself remained an important town. It was rebuilt in the Hellenistic period and renamed Sebaste by Herod the Great in honour of the emperor Augustus. Its ruins at Sebastia were excavated by Harvard University in 1908-1910 and by a joint British-led expedition in the 1930s.

Timeline

• c. 880 BC: Omri founds Samaria as the capital of Israel.
• 853 BC: Ahab of Israel fights Shalmaneser III at Qarqar.
• 734-732 BC: Tiglath-Pileser III annexes Galilee and Gilead; Hoshea becomes king.
• 727 BC: Shalmaneser V becomes king of Assyria.
• c. 725 BC: Hoshea rebels; the Assyrian siege of Samaria begins.
• 722 BC: Samaria falls; Shalmaneser V dies and Sargon II takes the throne.
• 720 BC: Sargon II defeats a Syrian-Palestinian revolt and deports the people of Samaria.
• 1908-1910: Harvard excavations at Samaria uncover the Israelite royal acropolis.

Why it matters

The fall of Samaria is one of the best-documented events of the Iron Age, attested both in the Bible and in Assyrian royal inscriptions. It ended an independent kingdom, demonstrated the scale of Assyrian deportation policy, and gave rise to traditions about the lost tribes and the Samaritans that are still alive today.