The Israelites (; Hebrew: בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, Bənēy Yīsrāʾēl, transl. 'Children of Israel') were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan.The name of Israel first appears in the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt, dated to about 1200 BCE. Modern archaeology suggests that the Israelites branched out from the Canaanites through the development of Yahwism, a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion centred on the national god Yahweh. They spoke an archaic form of the Hebrew language, which was a regional variety of the Canaanite language, known today as Biblical Hebrew. In the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged. The Kingdom of Israel, with its capital at Samaria, fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720 BCE; while the Kingdom of Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem, was destroyed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. Some of...
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