17 THE ISRAELITE-JUDAHITE STRUGGLE environmental conditions and their contrasting history in the second millennium BCE. Israel was characterized by significant continuity in Bronze Age cultural traits, by heterogeneous population and by strong contacts with its neighbors. Judah was characterized by isolation and by local, Iron Age cultural features, as evidenced by the layout of its provincial administrative towns. Israel emerged as a full-blown state in the early 9th century BCE, together with Moab, Ammon and Aram Damascus, while Judah (and Edom) emerged about a century and a half later, in the second half of the 8th century ”. The discussion about the similarities and differences between the two kingdoms suffers from a notable lack of contemporary documents, and relies instead on the attributes of states that may be traced in the archaeological record. This is a serious hindrance when trying to draw analogies between Mesopotamia — where the relationship between Babylonia and Assyria were established mainly on the basis of texts — and that of Israel and Judah, where it was inferred mainly from the archaeological evidence. Nevertheless, with all due caution, I submit that the political-cultural relationship between the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel may be compared with that between Assyria and Babylonia. Like Babylonia, Israel was the territory where many statehood, cultic and cultural elements first emerged. In Mesopotamia, Assyria rose to become the dominant power and used its military supremacy to gain control over the cultic and culture heritage of ancient Mesopotamia; while in Palestine, following the annexation of Israel by Assyria, its patrimony was left vacant and Judah tried to absorb it and be considered the “genuine” Israel. The thesis suggested here is that the adoption of the Israelite identity by the Judahite scribes and elite was motivated by the desire to take over the highly prestigious vacant heritage of the Northern Kingdom, just as Assyria had sought to take possession of the highly prestigious heritage of ancient Mesopotamia. It is further suggested that the raison d’être of this ideological and literary claim date to the time of the monarchy, when Judah was still in control of its territory, civil and religious institutions and self identity. The reasoning for this is that, following the destruction of Jerusalem and the incorporation of the kingdom into the Babylonian province system, Judah lost its former political-national identity, and from this time and until the successful revolt of the Hasmonaeans, it held the same administrative status as that of the province of Samerina.