Few places on Earth have changed hands as often as the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. On a tour you literally walk through the layers. Here is the timeline we keep in our heads (dates are approximate).
Prehistory: humans lived in the Carmel caves for hundreds of thousands of years, and Jericho is one of the oldest towns in the world, settled by around 9000 BCE. Bronze Age (about 3300-1200 BCE): Canaanite city states such as Megiddo and Hazor, under strong Egyptian influence.
Iron Age (about 1200-586 BCE): the Israelites and the Philistines appear. The united kingdom of David and Solomon is dated around 1000 BCE, later split into Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Assyria destroyed the kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, and Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple in 586 BCE.
Persian period (539-332 BCE): Cyrus the Great allowed exiles to return and the Second Temple was built. Hellenistic period (332-63 BCE): Alexander the Great, then the Ptolemies and Seleucids; the Maccabean revolt (remembered at Hanukkah) led to the independent Hasmonean kingdom.
Roman period (63 BCE-4th century CE): Herod the Great built Masada, Caesarea and the expanded Temple. Jesus lived and preached in the Galilee and Jerusalem. The Great Revolt ended with the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and after the Bar Kochba revolt (132-135) the province was renamed Syria Palaestina.
Byzantine period (4th century-634/640): the land became Christian; churches were built at Bethlehem, Jerusalem and the Galilee. Early Muslim period (from the 630s): Umayyad and Abbasid rule; the Dome of the Rock was completed in 691.
Crusader period (1099-1291), interrupted by Saladin's Ayyubid conquest in 1187. Mamluk period (1260s-1516). Ottoman period (1516-1917): Suleiman the Magnificent built Jerusalem's walls. British Mandate (1917/1920-1948). And on 14 May 1948, the State of Israel was declared.
Once you know the sequence, every archaeological site suddenly makes sense.
Keep reading
- HistoryThe Crusaders in the Holy Land: Castles, Knights and KingdomsFrom the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 to the fall of Acre in 1291 - and the castles they left behind.
- HistoryThe Knights' Halls of Acre: A Crusader City Under the CityGothic halls buried under an Ottoman citadel, a secret Templar tunnel and a UNESCO old city by the sea.
- HistoryUNESCO World Heritage Sites in Israel: The Complete ListMasada, Acre, the White City, the Bahai Gardens and the lesser-known sites worth a detour.