Samaria Before and After David: Ancient History of Our Ancient Ancestors

Nadene Goldfoot

   King David was born in about 1010 BCE and died after 970 BCE .  He was the youngest son of Jesse and was born in Bethlehem.  His 1st wife was king Saul's daughter, Michal.  He lived in Hebron, his temporary capital,  where he became king of Judah, there for 8 years, then captured the Jebusite stronghold of Jebus, later Jerusalem which he took for his capital.                               

Samaria (Shomron) was the name of Israel's capital city and also of the Northern section of Israel's capital.  It was founded in about 880 BCE by Israel's king Omri and was on a hill bought from Shemer told about in (I Kings 16:24).  The site, 7 miles NW of Shechem/Nablus) was on an isolated elevation dominating a wide countryside.  The city took up 25 acres and had an acropolis with a wall which was the royal palace built in an Assyrian style.  

Samaria as a capital withstood the siege of the Syrians but fell in 721 BCE  to Sargon II of Assyria who resettled it with Cutheans.  They intermingled with the remnants of the former population and were the ancestors of the Samaritans.

     Persian Empire from 700 to 300 BCE

  The Cuthites are mentioned in Josephus, Antiquities Book 11, Chapter 4, as "Cutheans", naming them as those who were brought from Media and Persia and "planted" in Samaria by the King of Assyria after he had conquered the Ten Tribes of Israel. They are not mentioned in detail in the Bible.  

The Cuthites were to blame for the postponing of the construction of the Second Temple, during the reign of Cyrus the Great. They did this after the Jewish people returned from Babylonian exile, and first agreed to help them, but after the Jews refused, they lied to king Cyrus who postponed the building process. Their religion was quite different from the Israelites:  Cuth (or Cuthah) is mentioned in the 2 Kings 17:30 in reference to the gods or idols made and worshiped by different tribes, which took place in the former holy places of exiled Israelites (King James Bible trans.): "And the men of Babylon made Succothbenoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima.

Japheth in his father Noah's blessing was promised wide territories, progenitor of 14 peoples mostly in the Indo-European language group, ranging from the Caucasus Mts to the Aegean Sea.  Shem is where the Semites came from.  Today with DNA, scientists have given us letters of the alphabet to distinguish lines of people from one another.  We do carry different DNA, though most is the same, being humans and all.  Our ancestors weren't too off track in creating their own way of identification.  

For instance:  J1 (Cohen gene)  Human Y chromosome haplogroup J1-M267 is a common male lineage in West Asia. One high-frequency region-encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, southern Mesopotamia, and the southern Levant-resides ~ 2000 km away from the other one found in the Caucasus.  The gene from brother of Moses-Aaron's descendants. 

          Western Asia 

 Media indeed was an ancient Asiatic country.  The Torah refers to the Medes as sons of Japheth.  they cooperated with the Babylonians in the 6th century BCE, but were defeated by Cyrus of Persia (538 BCE)  who was a good king to the Jews, even thought to be Queen Esther's son.  Actually, it is said that Biblical sources, such as ancient Greek writers- sources for Christianity, confused the Medes with the Persians. 

 We know much more about the Persians, today's Iranians.The ancient Persians were an Indo-Iranian people who migrated to the Iranian plateau during the end of the second millennium B.C.E., possibly from the Caucasus or Central Asia. Originally a pastoral people who roamed the steppes with their livestock, they were ethnically related to the Bactrians, Medes and Parthians.

Later, the name of Samaria was used to describe the entire northern region of the central highlands of Palestine, as in Judea and Samaria, used much after King Solomon died and Judah was left, along with some of Benjamin and Simeon, as the remains of Israel after the 721 BCE tragedy.  

Before it became Samaria, no doubt the land belonged to the Ammonites of Ammon.  They were an ancient people and country in  what we call Transjordan of yesterday.  Their capital was Rabbath Ammon which is today's modern Amman.

They were a Semitic tribe, told about in the Bible (Gen.19:38), relatives of the Israelites  Their main period of development was from the 13th to 8th centuries BCE, following which it declined, being eventually absorbed into Arab tribes from Saudi Arabia. 

     Against the Ammonites  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLbAFzm8YAc 

After the Israelites occupied Canaan, they were frequently attacked by the Ammonites who suffered defeats at the hands of Jephthah, 12th century BCE Israelite judge who lived in Gilead which was threatened by the Ammonites,  and Saul, a Benjamite son of Kish, fighter of Philistines and Ammonites who was the 1st king of Israel, chosen by Samuel.  

After Saul, David annexed their kingdom but they regained their independence and attacked the southern part of Israel called Judah on several occasions mentioned in (II Chron.20; 27:5;  II Kings 24:2).  

After the destruction of the 1st Temple, Baalis, king of Ammon, instigated the murder of Gedaliah, presumably to weaken Judah still further as told in (Jer.40:14).  

On the return from Babylon, Ammon joined Judah's enemies and Tobiah the ammonite supported Sanballat in his opposition to Nehemiah which is described in (Neh.2:10). 

 During the Hasmonean rising, the Ammonites aided the Syrian forces and were defeated by Judah the Maccabee in 163 BCE.  

Milcom or Milkom (Ammonite: 𐤌𐤋𐤊𐤌 *Mīlkām; Hebrew: מִלְכֹּם Mīlkōm) was the name of either the national god, or a popular god, of the Ammonites. He is attested in the Hebrew Bible and in archaeological finds from the former territory of Ammon. His connections to other deities with similar names attested in the Bible and archaeologically are debated, as well as his relationship to the Canaanite supreme deity El, or the putative deity Moloch.

Not much is known about the Ammonite culture as no literary remains have survived, but there have been excavations in trans-jordan that indicate a developed kingdom with fortified frontiers, artistic tastes, and advanced agriculture.  They worshiped fertility gods, the chief being Milkom.  

Resource:

https://www.livescience.com/who-were-the-persians#:~:text=The%20ancient%20Persians%20were%20an,the%20Bactrians%2C%20Medes%20and%20Parthians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milcom