What has been called the Axial Age was one of the major breakthroughs in the intellectual history of mankind. It occurred from roughly the eighth to the third century BCE, a period that saw the radical transformation of the world’s intellectual horizons.

Throughout the world, this was a time of restless intellectual ferment. In both India and China, there was a revolution in outlook with the ideas of Buddha and Confucius. The impact of both men has been enormous throughout the centuries and continues up to the present.

In the Mediterranean basin, the eighth century BCE saw the birth of the foundations of western civilization. Tradition tells us that the Phoenicians brought the alphabet to Greece in the early eighth century BCE. Shortly thereafter, Homer would use it to write down his immortal epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. According to tradition, it was also in the eighth century, in 776 BCE, that the first Olympics were held.

In Italy, according to legend, the eighth century also saw the traditional establishment of Rome in 753 BCE. At the same time, in Israel, we saw the emergence of some of the greatest prophets, including Micah, Hosea and Amos. To the south, in Judah, the incomparable Isaiah came along at the end of the eighth century BCE, just in time to advise Hezekiah, the king of Judah, to resist the invasion of the Assyrian juggernaut of King Sennacherib. The Assyrians had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel a scant two decades earlier and sent some of its people into captivity, giving birth to the legend of the Ten Lost Tribes.

Archeology gives vivid testimony to these activities. In Jerusalem, we have the broad wall that Hezekiah built, as well as the tunnel underneath the City of David that still bears his name. According to the eminent biblical scholar and archeologist Baruch Halpern, Hezekiah did much more, and archeology has left us traces of Hezekiah’s activities.

Halpern argues that Hezekiah began the process of state centralization when he gathered up the population of the Judean countryside and brought the people to Jerusalem, to be protected by the walls of its newly constructed fortification system. Since the Six Day War, some of the fortification system has been excavated by Nachman Avigad and others in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.

Between the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE and the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 701 BCE, Jerusalem underwent tremendous growth in population. Some of this growth can be ascribed to the arrival of refugees from the northern kingdom of Israel. (Apparently, not all of the population was carried off into captivity.)

Halpern also comes up with a brilliant hypothesis in which he looks at the change in the architectural layout of Judean towns and villages and sees this as a reflection of Hezekiah’s centralization, in which the old clan system in operation since the conquest of Canaan has been superseded by a new social framework that sees the king asserting central authority.   

Hezekiah’s grandson, Josiah, completed this process of centralization that involved religious reforms as well, in which worship was purified of pagan influences. When I excavated the City of David in Jerusalem in the late 1970s and early ’80s with Israeli archeologist Yigal Shiloh, we found numerous votive statues of pagan gods, providing a clear reason for the necessity of religious reform.

Archeology has provided us with even more evidence of these reforms. Throughout the country, we have discovered various cult sites where altars were destroyed. At the same time, Jerusalem was built up as both a cult centre and a royal capital.

It was Josiah who was reputed to have discovered ancient texts that led to his purification of the Temple, in which he called on the people to re-dedicate themselves once more to their religion. Here was an ancient example of the Past moving Forward toward the Future.