Very little is known about the ancient figures of the Jewish people. Basically, this information is taken from religious sources - the Jewish Torah or even Christian retelling, the Bible. Three of them are especially interesting - Saul, David and Solomon, rulers of the united kingdom of Israel.
Actually, the homeland of the ancient Jews only under these kings was a single whole, all the rest of the time there were several of them on the site of one Kingdom - from 2 to 12. It can be said that the ancient Jews did not really like the central government, but preferred to live in disunity. Historically, there are several reasons for this, one of which is the clan division of the Jews. It is enough to remember the “12 tribes of Israel” to understand why they could not manage to make some kind of a single state.
Nevertheless, for almost a hundred years, it succeeded. The three above-mentioned rulers were able to unite disparate clans and build a kind of state formation. This period (11th century BC) represented the heyday of the Kingdom of Israel. The Jews began to reckon with their great neighbors - Egypt and Babylon.
The first kings, Saul and David, are little known to the general public. Even among believers, the memories of David boil down to his battle with Goliath, but almost everyone knows about Solomon. The legendary king, who asked God not for glory and wealth, but for wisdom, became famous for centuries. Mentions about him exist not only in Jewish or Christian texts, but also in many works that do not have Hebrew origin.
The historicity of Solomon is still in doubt. Official science believes that there is no evidence of his life in the archaeological chronicles, and all that is is just folklore, which cannot be trusted. But it’s one thing, if we start only from the Hebrew folklore, and quite another, to consider the creativity of peoples, with the Jews in no way connected. And here a lot of interesting things arise, since not only Jews have a mention of Solomon. Moreover, the internal Jewish political struggle in the view of "from the outside" is illuminated in such a way that it almost completely confirms the biblical texts.
In itself, the story of Solomon's rise to power is so unusual that it even seems absolutely implausible. The kings that preceded him (Saul and David) came to power through the "anointing to the kingdom" by the prophet Samuel. But, it should be understood that in fact it was about the fact that they received permission to rule from the clerical elite of that time. And the collective image of "the prophet Samuel" is nothing more than the decision of the spiritual leaders of the Hebrew clans.
When Saul became displeasing to them, he, along with all three heirs, fell in the battle of Galboa, and David, who had no hereditary rights to the throne, became king. Even his lineage from the tribe of Judah did not coincide with Saul's - from the tribe of Benjamin. But, the priests were not mistaken with their choice. David was so loyal to them that he built a temple for them in Jerusalem (although the temple was a small building, a place for keeping the Tabernacle - a sacred relic of the Jews) and in every possible way encouraged all religious affairs. He ruled for a long time, almost 40 years, and it seemed that everything would continue to be fine and wonderful. But, here our hero, Solomon, entered the stage.
As the fourth and youngest son of King David, he naturally had no rights to the throne. However, his older brothers died one after another, and the circumstances were such that they simply could not survive.
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Amnon, David's eldest son and heir, was killed by his brother Absalom on a trumped-up charge; daddy didn't let son. Then he removed the son through his friend and military leader Joab. Adonijah, the third son of David, was placed by his father in such a rigid framework that he had only two choices: flight or death. Choosing flight, he was killed in exile by the people of Solomon. In general, the path of the wisest of kings to his throne was not easy …
Here it should be said at once that the priesthood did not harbor much love for Solomon and was afraid of his coming to the throne. And he had very serious reasons for this. The fact is that Solomon was the son of Bathsheba, and she was not of Jewish origin. Most likely, she was a Hittite. Even today, Jews do not approve of such manifestations in the genealogy, what about those dark times?
In addition, Bathsheba became David's wife, to put it mildly, against her will. Having fallen in love with her, David sent her husband to certain death, and he himself took her to his palace by force. In fact, raised by his mother, could Solomon treat his father with all the respect? He could, of course, not choose the parents, however, he perfectly understood what awaited him after David's death, so he decided to act proactively, clearing his way to the throne over the corpses of his half-brothers.
However, being indeed a very clever person, he understood that this alone was not enough. To become the king of Israel, one more obstacle must be removed - the clerics. Mindful of how easily they castled "Saul-David", Solomon came to the only correct decision: the functions of the priesthood should be limited as much as possible and not given them any power.
The first thing Solomon did was to form a personal guard. In this he took the example of Saul, who once selected 30 great warriors for personal protection. Solomon had about 3.5 thousand such soldiers alone, and most of them were foreigners. Naturally, behind such protection, the tsar could safely ignore all the advice from the clergy, which, in fact, was what he was doing.
And if in the first years of his reign Solomon openly professed Judaism, then, having received all the power, he returned to his original religion: it was probably a pagan Hittite cult. Moreover, his main wives were not Jewish, but foreign women. One of them is the Hittite Naama, the second is Maatkare, the daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh of the 21st dynasty, Psusennes II. And no one, remembering the fate of all Solomon's rivals to the throne, figuratively speaking, did not even make a sound!
Everyone remembers the legendary Temple of Solomon - a grandiose structure built as the first official Jewish temple. Everything is so, only he became Jewish after the death of the king. Before that, most likely, it was a pagan cult place. In general, the Jewish chief priests were very unhappy with this course of events, but they could not do anything.
And Solomon went even further. He was able to build the foreign and domestic policy of the state in such a way that it was under him that the kingdom of Israel reached its heyday. At the crossroads of the trade routes of the ancient world, the Jews received the maximum benefits from their position. The king practically did not fight wars, in every possible way he encouraged new ideas in construction and business. Only the annual income of the then Israel was about 700 gold talents. In terms of modern money, it would look like this: a country the size of Latvia with an annual turnover similar to that of Japan. With such support from the population, Solomon could not be afraid of poison in wine or a stylet under the shoulder blade.
But everything beautiful comes to an end. After the death of Solomon, his son Rehoboam, despite his origin, returns everything to normal. He again restores the privileges of the clergy, who safely, having staged a small rebellion, breaks the state into two: Judea and Israel.
The consequences make themselves felt after a couple of years: the then Pharaoh of Egypt Sheshonk captured Judea and made Rehoboam his vassal. And after another 200 years, Assyria will conquer the Northern Israelite kingdom. And until modern Israel, which will appear only in 1948, Jews will not actually have a homeland in the political sense of the word …
The priests begin to discredit in every possible way not only the memory of Solomon, but also his ideas. Most likely, it is thanks to their activities that no factual evidence of its existence has reached us. However, in Karnak there is a stele that tells about Sheshonk's victories; on it, in addition to the captured Jewish cities, the name of King Yake appears, who had united them before. And this, according to collections of ancient texts, is one of the names of Solomon …