Samaria - History

History

The city Samaria was established as the capital of the Kingdom of Israel during the reign of Omri circa 884 BC. Prior to the Omride period the site appears to have been the center of an extensive wine and oil production area, which may have accounted for its choice as the new capital. Apparently the origin of the name of the site was from Shemer the eponymous owner of the land that Omri purchased for two talents of silver (1 Kings 16:23-24). The city is built on the summit of a rocky hill. The earliest remains consist of extensive rock cut installations, initially thought to date to the Early Bronze Age by Kenyon, these have recently been re-evaluated, first by Stager and then by Franklin, and are now recognized to be the remains of an extensive early Iron Age oil and wine industry (designated Building Period 0).

In 1908-1910, Harvard’s Committee on Exploration in the Orient conducted an expedition to excavate the site of Samaria-Sebaste. Remains of the royal palace built by Omri and Ahab during the Israelite period were discovered along with buildings constructed by the Babylonian, Greeks and Romans. Among the pottery fragments unearthed were ostraca bearing Hebrew inscriptions in carbon ink citing Biblical names and memoranda of commercial shipments.

Approximately 27 BCE, the city was rebuilt by Herod the Great who named it Sebaste after the emperor Augustus. Herod surrounded the city with a large wall and included within it a smaller walled component that featured a temple.