Th e seeds of this book were sown in a series of lectures I gave at the Collège de France in February 2012. Th e series, delivered at the invitation of my colleague and friend, Prof. Th omas Römer, was entitled "Th e Emergence of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. " I wish to thank Th omas for his kind invitation, for his hospitality while I was in Paris, and for initiating the publication of this book. Th e book was fi rst published in French under the title Le Royaume biblique oublié (Paris, 2013) by Odile Jacob for the Collège de France.Th is book is also based on many articles that I have written over the course of several years, some of them in collaboration with colleagues. I am indebted to four of them who have granted me permission to summarize parts of our articles in this book: Alexander Fantalkin (article on Khirbet Qeiyafa published in Tel Aviv 2012), Oded Lipschits (article on Jahaz and Ataroth published in ZDPV 2010), Nadav Na'aman (article on Shechem of the Late Bronze Age and the northern kingdom published in IEJ 2005), and Benjamin Sass (article on the spread of scribal activity in the Levant in the Iron I-IIA, to be published in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel).Th e preparation of this book was supported by the Chaim Katzman Archaeology Fund at Tel Aviv University. I am grateful to Myrna Pollak for her highly professional editing of the manuscript and to Alexander Pechuro and my student Maayan Mor for the preparation of the fi gures.