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The final demise of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, at the hands of the powerful Assyrian Empire in 720 BCE, receives only a few terse passages in the Book of 2 Kings:Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria; for three years he besieged it. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria; he carried the Israelites away to Assyria. He placed them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes...From at least the ninth century BCE, the Northern Kingdom of Israel had...

Gezer is mentioned in a well-known passage in the Hebrew Bible that states that Solomon used forced labor "to build the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, [and] Gezer" (1 Kings 9:15)... at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer... most of the structures clearly belong to the Iron Age. In contrast, the water system at Tel Gezer has now been dated by project archaeologists to a much earlier period -- the MBA -- with a date as early as 2000 B.C... Gezer is also the site of massive fortifications and other structures dating to the MBA -- in addition to the Iron Age...