Omrides? Although the Book of Samuel and initial parts of the Books of Kings, portray Saul, David and Solomon ruling in succession over a powerful and cosmopolitan united kingdom of Israel and Judah, Finkelstein and Silberman regard modern archaeological evidence as showing that this may not be true. Archaeology instead shows that in the time of Solomon, the northern kingdom of Israel was quite small, too poor to be able to pay for a vast army, and with too little bureaucracy to be able to administer a kingdom, certainly not an empire; it only emerged later, around the beginning of the 9th century BCE, in the time of Omri. There is little to suggest that Jerusalem, called by the Bible David's capital, was "more than a typical hill country village" during the time of David and of Solomon, and Judah remained little more than a sparsely populated rural region until the 8th century BCE. Although the Tel Dan Stele seems to confirm that a "House of David" existed, and "clearly validates the biblical description of a figure named David becoming the founder of the dynasty of Judahite kings in Jerusalem", it says nothing else about him. There are remains of once grand cities at Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer, with archeological evidence showing that they suffered violent destruction. This destruction once was attributed to the 10th century BCE campaigns by Shishak, these cities therefore being ascribed to David and Solomon as proof of the Bible's account of them, but the destruction layers have since been redated to the late 9th century BCE campaign of Hazael, and the cities to the time of the Omride kings. The Tel Dan Stele, the Mesha Stele, the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser, and direct evidence from excavations, together paint a picture of the Omride kings ruling a rich, powerful, and cosmopolitan empire, stretching from Damascus to Moab, and building some of the largest and most beautiful constructions of Iron Age Israel; by contrast, the Bible only remarks that the Omrides 'married foreign women' (presumably to make alliances) and upheld Canaanite religion, both of which it regards as wicked. The Bible Unearthed concludes that the biblical writers deliberately invented the empire, power, and wealth, of Saul, David, and Solomon, by appropriating the deeds and achievements of the Omrides, so that they could then denigrate the Omrides and obscure their accomplishments, since these kings held a religious viewpoint