The history of ancient Israel and Judah spans from the early appearance of the Israelites in Canaan's hill country during the late second millennium BCE, to the establishment and subsequent downfall of the two Israelite kingdoms in the mid-first millennium BCE. This history unfolds within the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. The earliest documented mention of "Israel" as a people appears on the Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian inscription dating back to around 1208 BCE. Archaeological evidence suggests that ancient Israelite culture evolved from the pre-existing Canaanite civilization. During the Iron Age II period, two Israelite kingdoms emerged, covering much of Canaan: the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.
According to the Hebrew Bible, a "United Monarchy" consisting of Israel and Judah existed as early as the 11th century BCE, under the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon; the great kingdom later was separated into two smaller kingdoms: Israel, containing the cities of Shechem and Samaria, in the north, and Judah, containing Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple, in the south. The historicity of the United Monarchy is debated—as there are no archaeological remains of it that are accepted as consensus—but historians and archaeologists agree that Israel and Judah existed as separate kingdoms by c. 900 BCE and c. 850 BCE, respectively. The kingdoms' history is known in greater detail than that of other kingdoms in the Levant, primarily due to the selective narratives in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, which were included in the Bible.
