They acquired iron technology and formed independent city states in the wake of the power vacuum created by the fall of the Hittites and the retreat of the Egyptians in the 1200s B.C. They also acquired some religious ideas and political and social institutions from Mesopotamian culture. They were called Canaanites. The name means people of the purple; it comes from a purple dye made in the region. Some Canaanite city states along the coast of modern Lebanon began to trade by sea up and down the Mediterranean coast. As trade developed, they sailed farther and farther away to reach new markets. When they came into contact with the Greeks, the Greeks translated the name Canaanite into the Greek term. That term is Phoenician, which we still use for these traders. The Phoenicians were significant because their trading eventually took them all over the Mediterranean. They even set up trading posts in Africa, Spain, and other distant lands. This helped to spread civilization far more widely to backward lands all around the Mediterranean from 1000 to 500. They also invented a new, simplified system of writing, the alphabet. Most modern alphabets are based on it, including our own.

Another people who appeared in this region in the early Iron Age were the Hebrews. The word Hebrew means nomad or wanderer. In their earliest history, the Hebrews lived by herding flocks of sheep and goats through the deserts bordering Syria-Palestine. The Hebrews of later times had many stories about their life in this early period, which are preserved in the book of Genesis. We have no way of checking these stories historiographically. But there are still nomads today in this part of the world. Their general life and institutions are very similar to what is described in these early Hebrew writings.

Nomads live in what are called extended families. An extended family is made up of a family head called a patriarch with his sons and their wives and children. The patriarch makes all the decisions for the family; he rules the family members and leads them as long as he lives. When the patriarch dies, his sons break apart and form extended families of their own, which go their own way. They have to keep in small groups because resources are limited. The families normally stayed apart; but sometimes in early history families descended from the same man would ally together in larger groups called tribes for the purpose of war.

The Hebrews lived as nomads until about 1200 B.C.  Then they began to leave the desert to invade the lands of the southern Canaanites. They were one of the many groups of migrant barbarians who plagued the civilized areas at the end of the Bronze Age. By this time, the Hebrew people had grown into a collection of twelve tribes, each of which was descended from one of the twelve sons of an original patriarch named Israel. Thus, they are sometimes called Hebrews and sometimes the children or descendants of Israel. They had a common ancestry, a common religion, and a common Semitic language.

But at first, they did not have a common government or a single leader. Their organization was still loose and primitive. The main activity that the tribes cooperated in was religion. They had a high priest who was in charge of their worship. But he did not have any political power. Occasionally, a very capable military leader would appear and unite the tribes for war. These persons were followed because they were thought to have support of the Hebrew god. We call these leaders “judges,” but that term is misleading. They were really only generals; they did not have any power or authority outside of war.

Aside from fighting together, the individual tribes and even the individual families ran their own affairs. For two hundred years, the tribes fought to take land away from the Canaanites so that they could settle it themselves. But they did not gain control of the whole region at first. Many of the Canaanites had well organized city-states; these states were too strong for the loosely organized Hebrews to conquer.

 During the long conflict with the more civilized Canaanites, many Hebrews began to see the need for a stronger government. They began to press for the creation of a Hebrew kingdom. Some conservative Hebrews fought to preserve the older tribal system; but by 1020 B.C., demands for a king became so strong that they could no longer be resisted.

The Hebrews were influenced by the Mesopotamian idea that kings had to receive their authority from god. That determined the way the kingship was founded. The most widely recognized leader was the high priest named Samuel. He was thought to receive support and inspiration from the Hebrew god. Thus, he was called upon to choose a king with the help of god. He conferred the kingship on a man named Saul (1200-1000 B.C.).

Saul is regarded as the first Hebrew king, but he was still mainly a military leader. The tribes followed him in war, but they resisted his efforts to govern them in other ways. The man who finally created a truly strong government was Saul’s son-in-law and successor, David (1000-961). He was the greatest political leader in Hebrew history. He was a great general. By military skill, he forced all the Hebrews to accept his rule; and he also conquered the remaining Canaanite states in Palestine. Thus, he made Israel a real country with definite lands and definite boundaries under his leadership. He set up a permanent capital for the country in Jerusalem, a city that he had captured in war. David also started the process of organizing a true royal government to rule his lands. He took a census of the country, levied taxes, and set up a bureaucracy to enforce his orders.

This work of reorganization was completed by the third king, David’s son Solomon (961-922). Under him, the Hebrew kingdom reached the height of its power. He conquered extensive foreign lands to the north; for a while his kingdom reached all the way to upper Mesopotamia. At home, he perfected the machinery of government and carried out many extensive building projects. The most important was a huge temple at Jerusalem for the Hebrew god. Solomon succeeded in making Israel a strong, sophisticated state not unlike the great kingdom of Mesopotamia in earlier times. But in doing so, he angered many Hebrews. He had to tax the people heavily to pay for his building and his wars. His policies also offended conservative Hebrews. They were afraid that Hebrews were beginning to live too much like other peoples of the Syria-Palestine region.

After Solomon’s death, a civil war broke out between those who opposed his policies and those who supported them. As a result of this conflict, the Hebrews became divided into two separate kingdoms with separate governments. The larger of the two was the kingdom of Israel in the north; the smaller was the kingdom of Judah, centered around Jerusalem in the south. The split between them was never healed. After 922, the high point in the political history of the Hebrews was passed. They were never strong again.