Nadene Goldfoot
Back in 1975, Dr. Magen Broshi,(1929-2020) an archaeologist at the Israel Museum, scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and longtime curator of Israel's "Shrine of the Book," wrote in the Biblical Archaology Review, that part of the lost tribes of Israel appear to have been located.
In 721 BCE, the northern Kingdom of Israel, composed of 10 of the ancient Israelite tribes descended from the sons of Jacob, was conquered by King Sargon of Assyria and destroyed by him. Sargon annexed the country, deported 27,290 Israelites to Assyria and Media, and replaced them with Syrian and Babylonian prisoners that they didn't want to keep. The next year of 720, Sargon defeated a military alliance which included the remnants of the Israelites of Samaria (northern tribes). By 712 BCE, he was assassinated.
The Assyrians were among the cruelest people ever to walk across the stage of history. Contemporaneous Assyrian reliefs have been found in which prisoners of the Assyrians are led through the street like dogs, with ropes attached to rings inserted in the septum of the nose. In other reliefs, parading Assyrians hold Hebrew prisoners aloft, impaled on Assyrian spears.
In accordance with their usual practice, the Assyrians deported much of the upper classes of Israel and settled other peoples in their place. (How would they know who was of upper class? Clothing, most likely.)
Those who remained in the northern section of Israel that they didn't kidnap wound up intermarrying with the newcomers, and out of this amalgamation came the people we read about as the Samaritans. (Samaria was the capital of the Northern kingdom of Israel, founded 880 BCE by Omri) . The name of Samaria is also applied to the entire northern region of the central highlands of Eretz Yisrael. Samaritans, originally calling themselves Bene Yisrael/Shomerim (the keepers of the Law) were descended from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh with an admixture of non-Israelite colonists (II Kings 17:24-41).
As for those taken away by the Assyrians, they have been referred to as the Ten Lost Tribes. Today we are sure that many of the Pashtuns of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are remnants of these lost tribes. Back in 1975, Dr Broshi, made a different discovery about what had happened to some of those Israelites that can explain where the rest went.
He found that many Israelites fled south into their neighboring kingdom of Judah in order to escape the Assyrian onslaught, probably those young enough to evade being caught. There they melded with their Hebrew brethren and retained their Hebrew identity.
Tyropoean Valley: Jerusalem While all of the evidence had not yet been analyzed by December of 1975, it was becoming increasingly clear that Jerusalem underwent a major expansion during the 8th century BCE. Until that time, Jerusalem was confined in the ridge east of the narrow, central valley of the city, known as the Tyropoean Valley.
Then, during the 8th century, Jerusalem exploded across the valley to the western ridge. By the end of the 8th century, the archaeological evidence indicates, the city had expanded to 3 or 4 times its former size. Most of the evidence of this expansion comes from Israeli excavations in the city since 1968.
In 1970, Professor Nachman Avigad (1905-1992) found a massive wall between 20 and 23 feet wide on the western ridge, which he dates toward the end of the 8th century.
Thus, by that time,, this section of the city was already enclosed by a wall. Beneath this wall, and therefore earlier than it, Professor Avigad found a structure which may date somewhat earlier in the 8th century, indicating that the western expansion of the city started before the building of the wall there. Excavations west of the wall indicate that by the end of the 8th century, Jerusalem had extensive suburbs outside of city wall. Among the most exciting finds was the remnants of the Broad Wall twice mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah. Built to defend Jerusalem during the reign of King Hezekiah in the late 8th century BCE, there remains an 80-foot (24 m) stretch of wall, 23 feet (7.0 m) thick, rising from bedrock west of the Temple Mount. Nearby, Avigad also unearthed the Israelite Tower, a remnant of Jerusalem's Iron Age fortifications attesting to the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.
Other excavations on the western ridge of the city---in the Citadel, in the Armenian garden and on Mount Zion---have also revealed evidence of initial occupation during this period. All of this makes it clear, in Dr. Broshi's words, "that Jerusalem at about 700 BCE had mushroomed, historically speaking, overnight".
According to Dr. Broshi, this expansion cannot be explained by natural population growth or by normal economic growth. Moreover, the expansion was relatively sudden rather than gradual.
For millennia, the Jebusite city of Jerusalem had been confined in a small area on the eastern ridge. David's City was likewise limited. Solomon expanded the city northward to include the area of the present Temple Mount. This additional area was use primarily for the Temple, Solomon's royal palace and the administrative area allocated to government buildings.
From the death of Solomon to the end of the 8th century BCE---almost 200 years---the city limits changed very little. Then toward the end of the 8th century, the city expanded by a factor of 3 or 4. Dr. Broshi estimates the population increased from about 7,500 to about 24,000.
Dr. Broshi attributes this expansion to 2 massive waves of immigration. The 1st he associates with a population flight from the northern kingdom of Israel as a result of the Assyrian conquest in 721 BCE. according to this theory, substantial numbers of the "lost tribes" took up residence in the newly settled parts of Jerusalem.
The 2nd wave of immigration which accounts for the expansion of Jerusalem came later in the 8th century, according to Dr. Broshi, from Judean territories. As a result of Sennacherib's invasion of Judah at the end of the 8th century, Judah lost considerable territory in the SW part of the kingdom to Assyria, which Assyria ceded to the Philistine city-states. Many of the Judeans uprooted by this invasion, Dr. Broshi believes, also fled to Jerusalem. The evidence which Dr. Broshi cites for the flight of the refugees is not confined to Jerusalem.
In 1967 and 1968, a survey conducted by Professor Moshe Kochavi (1928-2008)of Tel Aviv University revealed that almost half of the settlements in the Judean hills which were occupied during the Judean monarchy were founded during the century before the First Temple was finally destroyed in 587 BCE. Other scholars have found that numerous sites in other parts of the Kingdom of Judah---in the Negev, in the Judean desert, and along the Dead Sea---were 1st intensively settled in the 8th century. Kochavi was one of numerous archaeologists who in 2007 petitioned the Supreme Court of Israel to order an immediate cessation of digging operations being performed by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf on the Temple Mount.
Thus, according to Dr. Broshi, the Israelites from the northern kingdom fled not only to Jerusalem but also to numerous other sites in Judah. In this way, large numbers of people from the "lost tribes" of Israel melded into the population of their sister kingdom of Judah. A similar population increase at these sites also followed the loss of the western provinces of Judah at the end of the 8th century. Some of our LOST TRIBES have been with us all this time. (I wonder if DNA testing would reveal whether they were from the North or the South of Israel?)
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
The Jewish Digest, December 1975, from The Biblical Archeology Review, Sept. 1975, Vol.1, No.31 is published quarterly by the Biblical Archeology Society, 1819 H Street, NW. Washington, DC 20006.
https://networks.h-net.org/node/28655/discussions/6281944/passing-dr-magen-broshi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahman_Avigad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Kochavi
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/MAGAZINE-israeli-archaeologists-find-new-section-of-jerusalem-s-ancient-defensive-wall-1.9998944
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