Israel and
Judah were related Iron Age kingdoms of the ancient
Levant. The
Kingdom of Israel emerged as an important local power by the 9th century BCE before falling to the
Neo-Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE. Israel's southern neighbor, the
Kingdom of Judah, emerged in the 8th century BCE and enjoyed a period of prosperity as a
client-state of first Assyria and then
Babylon before a revolt against the
Neo-Babylonian Empire led to its destruction in 586 BCE. Following the fall of Babylon to the
Persian king
Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE, some Judean exiles returned to Jerusalem, inaugurating the formative period in the development of a distinctive Judahite identity in the Persian province of
Yehud. Yehud was absorbed into the subsequent Hellenistic kingdoms that followed the conquests of
Alexander the Great, but in the 2nd century BCE the Judaeans revolted against the Hellenist
Seleucid Empire and created the
Hasmonean kingdom. This, the last nominally independent
Judean kingdom, came to an end in
63 BCE with its conquest by Pompey of Rome. With the installation of client kingdoms under the
Herodian Dynasty, the Kingdom of Israel was wracked by civil disturbances which culminated in the
First Jewish–Roman War, the destruction of the Temple, the emergence of
Rabbinic Judaism and
Early Christianity.