The Defences of the Salomonic Kingdom

Abstract

There exist two basic incentives for the permanent fortification of any given realm. The first one is the wish to preserve the status quo after having attained the desired territorial gains, economic security and general political standing; the second one, the need to strengthen one's country's defences against impending aggression from without. One is prone to ascribe the fortificatory activities of King Solomon to the first category, against those of King Rehoboam of Judah, for instance, which clearly belong to the second one. But a closer examination of the political background reveals that, although the Salomonic works do fall within the general framework of consolidating the strong position attained, they will have been accelerated by the signs of re-emergent dangers during the latter half of Solomon's reign. Taking the year 24 of his rule, according to I Kings ix, 10, as terminus post quem for the commencement of his fortifications,! one reaches a period both of revolts of subjugated peoples and of estrangement with Egypt, which began to show under its new king Shishak 12 disquietening signs of renewed strength and of interest in the Palestinian sphere, as exemplified by harbouring and aiding fugitive opponents of the Jewish kingdom.3 This brings us to another reason for fortifying the Salomonic kingdom, i.e., its location astride the great Afro-Asian land-bridge formed by the Levant coast-lands connecting by means of their international highways, since the dawn of history, the lands of the Nile and the African Mediterranean littoral with Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and beyond. Thus, any people wishing to maintain its national independence in these parts, was subject to more or less constant pressure from the powers of the day, in Biblical times Egypt in the South and Syria-Babylonia in the North. After King David had established the Jewish Empire in these parts during a spell of exhaustion of the great powers, it was now imperative to guard against their aspirations to regain their dominant position in the country. The third reason for the fortification of the kingdom, and peculiar to it, was again an outcome of its location, which made any state founded in the general area of Palestine an outpost of settled life on the fringes between the desert and the sown, and thus the goal for constant inroads from the nomadic tribes out of the Syrian desert and Sinai. Each and every government wishing to maintain some vestiges of law and order in these parts, was then compelled to provide a constant watch along its desert borders, based on a rather