in the early pseudoepigraphical work called the Testament of Solomon with its elaborate and grotesque demonology. Historicity As with most biblical personages in the middle era of Israelite society, the historicity of Solomon is hotly debated. Current consensus states that regardless of whether or not a man named Solomon truly reigned as king over the Judean hills in the tenth century BCE, the Biblical descriptions of his apparent empire's lavishness is almost surely an anachronistic exaggeration. As for Solomon himself, scholars on both the maximalist and minimalist sides of the spectrum of biblical archeology generally agree that he probably existed. However, a historically accurate picture of the Davidic king is difficult to construct. According to some archaeologists, Solomon could have only been the monarch or chieftain of Judah, and that the northern kingdom was a separate development. Such positions have been criticized by other archaeologists and scholars, who argue that a united monarchy did exist in the 10th century BC, while agreeing that the biblical account contains exaggerations. Arguments against biblical description Historical evidence of King Solomon other than the biblical accounts has been so minimal that some scholars have understood the period of his reign as a 'Dark Age' (Muhly 1998). The first-century Romano-Jewish scholar Josephus in Against Apion, citing Tyrian court records and Menander, gives a specific year during which King Hiram I of Tyre sent materials to Solomon for the construction of the Temple. However, no material evidence indisputably of Solomon's reign has been found. Yigael Yadin's excavations at Hazor, Megiddo, Beit Shean and Gezer uncovered structures that he and others have argued date from Solomon's reign, but others, such as Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, argue that they should be dated to the Omride period, more than a century after Solomon. According to Finkelstein and Silberman, authors of The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, at the time of the kingdoms of David and Solomon, Jerusalem was populated by only a few hundred residents or less, which is insufficient for an empire stretching from the Euphrates to Eilath. According to The Bible Unearthed, archaeological evidence suggests that the kingdom of Israel at the time of Solomon was little more than a small city state, and so it is implausible that Solomon received tribute as large as 666 talents of gold per year. Although both Finkelstein and Silberman