Part of Ten Lost Tribes Located

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Part of the so-called lost tribes of Israel appear to have been located.

In 721 B.C., the northern Kingdom of Israel, composed of ten of the ancient Israelite tribes descended from the sons of Jacob, was conquered and destroyed by Assyria.

The Assyrians were among the cruelest people ever to walk across the stage of history. Contemporaneous Assyrian reliefs have been found in which prisoners of the Assyrians are led through the street like dogs, with ropes attached to rings inserted in the septum of the nose. In other reliefs, parading Assyrians hold Hebrew prisoners aloft, impaled on Assyrian spears. In accordance with their usual practice, the Assyrians deported much of the upper classes of Israel and settled other peoples in their place. Those who remained intermarried with the newcomers, and out of this amalgamation came the Samaritans. Those who were deported were never heard from again. To history, the tribes who made up the northern Kingdom of Israel are known as the ten lost tribes.

However, according to a recent study by Dr. Magen Broshi, an archaeologist at the Israel Museum, many Israelites fled south into the neighboring Kingdom of Judah in order to escape the Assyrian onslaught. There they melded with their Hebrew brethren and retained their Hebrew identity.

While all of the evidence has not yet been analyzed, it is becoming increasingly clear that Jerusalem underwent a major expansion during the eighth century B.C. Until that time, Jerusalem was confined to the ridge east of the narrow, central valley of the city, known as the Tyropoean Valley. Then, during the eighth century, the city exploded across the valley to the western ridge. By the end of the eighth century, the archaeological evidence indicates, the city had expanded to three or four times its former size.