http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_Israel_and_Judah
The name Israel first appears in the stele of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah c. 1209 BCE, "Israel is laid waste and his seed is no more."[18] This "Israel" was a cultural and probably political entity of the central highlands, well enough established to be perceived by the Egyptians as a possible challenge to their hegemony, but an ethnic group rather than an organised state;[19] Archaeologist Paula McNutt says: "It is probably ... during Iron Age I [that] a population began to identify itself as 'Israelite'," differentiating itself from its neighbours via prohibitions on intermarriage, an emphasis on family history and genealogy, and religion.[20]
History of ancient Israel and Judah
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Further information: Israelites, History of Palestine, Canaan § History, Pre-history of the Southern Levant, History of the Southern Levant and History of the Levant
The Iron Age kingdom of Israel (blue) and kingdom of Judah (yellow), with their neighbors (tan) (8th century BCE)
Part of a series on the
History of Israel
The Western Wall, Jerusalem
Ancient Israel and Judah
Prehistory ·
Hebrews ·
Israelites
United monarchy ·
Northern Kingdom ·
Kingdom of Judah ·
Babylonian rule ·
Persian rule ·
Hasmonean dynasty
Rome ·
Byzantium
Herodian kingdom ·
Tetrarchy ·
Roman Judea ·
Syria Palaestina ·
Palaestina Prima ·
Palaestina Secunda ·
Jewish-Sasanian commonwealth
Caliphate ·
Crusades
Jund Filastin ·
Jund al-Urdunn ·
Kingdom of Jerusalem ·
Ayyubid dynasty ·
Mongol invasions ·
Mamluk Sultanate ·
Ottoman rule (Mutasarrifate)
Israel and Judah were related Iron Age kingdoms of the ancient Levant. The Kingdom of Israel emerged as an important local power by the 9th century BCE before falling to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE. Israel's southern neighbor, the Kingdom of Judah, emerged in the 8th century[1] and enjoyed a period of prosperity as a client-state of first Assyria and then Babylon before a revolt against the Neo-Babylonian Empire led to its destruction in 586 BCE. Following the fall of Babylon to the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE, some Judean exiles returned to Jerusalem, inaugurating the formative period in the development of a distinctive Judahite identity in the Persian province of Yehud. Yehud was absorbed into the subsequent Hellenistic kingdoms that followed the conquests of Alexander the Great, but in the 2nd century BCE the Judaeans revolted against the Hellenist Seleucid Empire and created the Hasmonean kingdom. This, the last nominally independent Judean kingdom, came to an end in 63 BCE with its conquest by Pompey of Rome. With the installation of client kingdoms under the Herodian Dynasty, the Kingdom of Israel was wracked by civil disturbances which culminated in the Jewish Revolt, the destruction of the Temple, the emergence of rabbinical Judaism and Early Christianity