Omri's son, Ahab, ruled after him (circa 873–851 B.C.E.) and was one of Israel's most powerful kings. Although Ahab and Jezebel, his Phoenician wife, became the infamous couple whom the biblical writers loved to hate, extrabiblical texts and archaeology tell the fuller story behind the grand city these powerful figures called home. Ahab expanded the size of Samaria and propelled Israel into international politics by fighting protracted wars against the kingdom of Aram, struggling for hegemony over Transjordan, and participating in an anti-Assyrian league at Qarqar. But his marriage, policies, and foreign alliances invited the biblical writers' scorn.
The Hebrew Bible obliquely praises and criticizes the lavish royal houses purportedly constructed by Ahab. Excavators have recovered a staggering quantity of ivory objects, sculptures, wall panels, furniture trim, and glass inlays from Samaria's summit. These items reflect Israelite, Phoenician, and Egyptian artistic motifs with some direct parallels to ivories found in the contemporaneous Assyrian capital, Nimrud. The presence of unworked tusks suggests that Samaria might even have been a production center for these carvings. The engravings seem to reflect two distinct styles—one in low relief with simple borders and backgrounds, the other in deeper relief with fewer traces of colored insets. The former group sometimes appeared so lavishly decorated with gold foil and inlays of lapis lazuli that precious little of the gleaming-white ivory actually remained visible. Such conspicuous opulence undoubtedly inflamed orthodox Yahwists like Elijah and the early writing prophets who focused on social justice and the poor.
Samaria's wealth and importance during the peaceful and prosperous reign of Jeroboam II (793-753 B.C.E., according to E. R. Thiele) is seen in the 68 ostraca found in the "Ostraca House" that lay west of and below the palace. These ostraca (inscriptions on pottery shards) date to the early eighth century B.C.E. and record small shipments of wine and oil to the capital from clan-based communities in the surrounding countryside (including Shechem, but not the rebuilt Tirzah). Personal names attested on these shards belong either to absentee landlords temporarily residing in the royal compound of Samaria and receiving the shipments from their own local estates or to clan heads who were sending tax payments to the king. As the number of villages on the seaward slopes of the Ephraimite hill country grew, sparsely populated Samaria preserved its status as a city of the elite. It remained a "forbidden city" to local Hebrew prophets (Elijah, Amos), except for those imprisoned there (Micaiah ben Imlah).
Archaeologists have not found Israelite temples on Samaria's summit, though a possible shrine lay nearly 900 meters east of the royal compound. But tantalizing scenes and inscriptions dating from the early eighth century B.C.E. have appeared far south of Samaria at Kuntillet Ajrud, an isolated caravanserai in the northern Sinai Desert operating as a state-sponsored way station (recall Elijah's flight in 1Kgs 19:1-8) under the authority of Samaria's kings. One graffito refers to "Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah." Scholars debate whether "asherah/Asherah" refers to the fecund Canaanite goddess herself, to her cultic symbol (a sacred tree), or more generically to a shrine/sanctuary or goddess/consort. Whatever else this provocative inscription may imply, it seems to indicate the presence of an active cult and perhaps even a temple to Yahweh at Samaria. Though such a structure may indeed have existed there, Ahab (who gave his sons Yahwistic names: Ahaziah, "held by Yahweh," and Jehoram/Joram, "Yahweh is exalted") apparently also built temples or shrines to the Canaanite gods Baal and Asherah, according to the biblical text. Taken together, the biblical and extrabiblical evidence suggests a degree of religious pluralism at Samaria that would have enraged the orthodox Yahwistic establishment in Israel. In its broader world, Samaria seems to have maintained a kind of controlled syncretism, adopting elements of a variety of religious beliefs and practices. At home, its cult of Yahweh was, at best, monolatrous. The irony that the Ajrud inscription may recognize a Yahwistic temple at Samaria while the biblical writers mention only the shrines to Baal and Asherah underscores the historiography behind the Bible's theological agenda against Samaria.
Samaria was the third and longest-lasting capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel.
Prior to Samaria's service as capital of the northern kingdom, the small site was home to a family-owned villa that produced fine oils and wine.
Direct references to Samaria first occur in the historical books; 1-2 Kings account for 62 percent of the mentions of Samaria in the Hebrew Bible, which shows little interest in Samaria after its fall to the Assyrians in 721 B.C.E.
Even late in the history of the First Temple period, writers remembered Samaria as the elder sister of Jerusalem (Ezek 16:46, Ezek 23:4; compare the earlier Amos 6:1).
The first major excavation of Samaria (by Harvard University in 1908–1910) began with a letter of personal support from President Theodore Roosevelt.
A late (mid-fourth century C.E.) tradition claims Samaria as the burial place of John the Baptist.
Both the capital city and the region over which it ruled bore the name Samaria.
Those who were not deported from the region during the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles came to be known as Samaritans; they built their own temple atop Mount Gerizim in the fifth century B.C.E. and adopted their own translation of the Torah (Pentateuch) as their entire biblical canon.
25From there he went on to Mount Carmel, and then returned to Samaria.
6So King Jehoram marched out of Samaria at that time and mustered all Israel.
9The head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all.
19Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?
13In the prophets of Samaria I saw a disgusting thing: they prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray.
Prophets whose sayings and lives are depicted in the biblical books bearing their names, including Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets.
Characterized by the worship of one deity as chief among a pantheon of other deities. An example is the worship of Marduk as the chief deity of the Babylonian pantheon.
The blending of multiple religious traditions into one hybrid expression, faith, or practice.