Who Ruled the Land
Thirteen divisions of the country between the Jordan and the sea, c. 1200 BC – AD 135.
On the maps. These are schematic. Boundaries in the east and the south were vague in antiquity and are argued over now; the coastline, the two lakes and the Jordan are drawn for orientation rather than to survey accuracy. Each map shows who held what relative to whom. Every panel links to its entry on the period timeline, where the source and the attestation grade are recorded.
1. The tribal allotments
Joshua 13–21, text only
Twelve territories drawn by lot, Levi holding none. Two and a half tribes east of the Jordan. Boundaries described by landmark, not surveyed. No external corroboration exists for this division.
2. Saul’s kingdom
c. 1020–1010 BC
The first king, ruling from Gibeah over a territory the text does not define and the archaeology cannot confirm. Philistia holds the coast throughout. Saul dies with three sons at Gilboa, and the kingdom does not pass intact.
3. The first split
c. 1010–1003 BC
Abner makes Saul’s son Ish-bosheth king over Israel at Mahanaim; the men of Judah anoint David at Hebron. Two kings, at war with each other, for about seven years. The line of division is Judah against Israel — the same line the kingdom will split along again in 931. The text gives Ish-bosheth two years and David seven and a half at Hebron, a discrepancy it does not resolve.
4. The kingdom united
c. 1003–931 BC
All the tribes come to David at Hebron and he takes Jerusalem, a city belonging to no tribe, and rules from it. Solomon overlays twelve administrative districts that do not follow the tribal boundaries and that exist to victual the royal household one month each.
5. The kingdom splits
931 BC
Rehoboam refuses to lighten the burden and ten tribes go with Jeroboam. Israel takes the north and the east and is the larger and richer state; Judah keeps Jerusalem and the south. Two states in one land for two hundred years.
6. Assyria takes the north
734–722 BC
Tiglath-Pileser III annexes Galilee, Gilead and the coast in 734–732. Samaria falls in 722 and Sargon II records the deportation of 27,290 people and the resettlement of the province with others. Israel ends as a state. Judah survives as a tributary.
7. Yehud, a Persian province
c. 538–332 BC
A small territory around Jerusalem under a governor, striking its own silver coins inscribed YHD. Samaria is a separate province; the coast and the south are administered apart. The land is no longer a state in any sense.
8. The Hasmonean state at its greatest
103–76 BC
Independence won in 142. John Hyrcanus takes Idumaea c. 112–107 and razes the Samaritan temple on Gerizim; Aristobulus takes Galilee and the title of king in 104; Alexander Jannaeus reaches the sea and the desert. The largest Jewish state since the united monarchy.
9. Pompey’s settlement
63 BC
Rome intervenes in a Hasmonean civil war and takes Jerusalem. The coastal cities and the Decapolis are detached and made free; Samaria is separated. The Jewish state loses the sea and is reduced to a landlocked remnant paying tribute.
10. Herod’s kingdom
c. 20–4 BC
Reunified by conquest 37 BC and enlarged by Augustus: Trachonitis, Batanaea and Auranitis in 23, the Panias district in 20. The coast returns. Larger than the Hasmonean state and held by one man.
11. The four-way division
4 BC
Augustus splits the kingdom on Herod’s death. Archelaus takes Judaea, Samaria and Idumaea as ethnarch with 600 talents; Antipas Galilee and Peraea as tetrarch with 200; Philip the north-east with 100. Salome receives three towns. The title of king passes to no one.
12. Whole again, for three years
AD 41–44
Caligula gives Agrippa I Philip’s tetrarchy in 37 and Antipas’s in 39; Claudius adds Judaea and Samaria in 41. For three years one man rules everything Herod ruled. He dies at Caesarea in 44 and the whole of it reverts to Rome.
13. Province, and renamed
AD 135
After the second revolt the province is renamed. Jerusalem is refounded as Aelia Capitolina and Jews are barred from it. The land is administered as Roman territory and will not be a Jewish state again.
14. What the sequence shows
Thirteen divisions in thirteen centuries. Three things the maps carry on their own.
The kingdom split twice, along the same line. When Saul died the country divided into Judah under David at Hebron and Israel under Ish-bosheth at Mahanaim, and the two houses were at war for about seven years. When Solomon died it divided again, on the same seam, and that time it did not close. The unified monarchy sits between two separations of the same two halves, which is a different picture from a whole that broke once.
The unified state is the exception. The land was under one native ruler for roughly seventy years under David and Solomon after the reunion, about eighty under the Hasmoneans, thirty-three under Herod, and three under Agrippa I. Every other period is a division or a foreign administration.
The evidence improves as the divisions get worse. The first four rest on a single text. From about 925 BC foreign inscriptions name the kingdoms; from 722 the empires record their annexations in detail. By 4 BC the division is documented down to the revenue each heir received. The clearest records describe the most fragmented arrangements, because the record-keepers were the ones doing the fragmenting.
15. Sources
Every division mapped here has an entry on the period timeline carrying its source and its attestation grade — one amber dot for a single text channel, two green for independent sources crossing, three green for a contemporary inscription or material evidence.
- Verification register. The maps are schematic and no boundary on them should be cited as a survey line. Three items are most worth checking before publication: the two-year reign given to Ish-bosheth at 2 Samuel 2:10 against David’s seven and a half years at Hebron, a discrepancy the text does not resolve; the revenue figures for the 4 BC division; and the deportation figure of 27,290 for 722 BC.