Bnei Israel

A Timeline of the Children of Israel

c. 2000 BCE — Present · Where scripture meets the spade

An interactive timeline of the Children of Israel — the Israelites — from the Middle Bronze Age to the present day, where the biblical narrative meets archaeology, history, and the genetics of the Jewish people.

• Middle Bronze Age
  c. 2000 — 1550 BCE
  Urban civilizations rise across the Levant; Amorite migrations reshape the Near East. The world Abraham was born into.
• Late Bronze Age
  c. 1550 — 1200 BCE
  Egyptian dominance over Canaan; the cosmopolitan Amarna world; collapse of palace civilizations around 1200 BCE.
• Iron Age I
  c. 1200 — 1000 BCE
  Highland villages multiply across Canaan; the emergence of Israel as a distinct people in the archaeological record.
• Iron Age II
  c. 1000 — 586 BCE
  The age of kingdoms — the United Monarchy, the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, ending with Babylonian destruction.
• Classical Antiquity
  586 BCE — 324 CE
  Persian, Hellenistic, Hasmonean, and Roman rule. Two temples destroyed; rabbinic Judaism takes shape.
• Medieval Period
  324 — 1500 CE
  Talmudic academies; Islamic and Christian rule; Sephardi golden age; Ashkenazi heartlands; the Spanish expulsion.
• Modern Era
  1500 — Present
  Mysticism and Hasidism, emancipation, Zionism, the Holocaust, the founding of Israel, and the ingathering of exiles.