SAMARIA, an ancient city of Palestine in the tribe of Ephraim, 6 m. N. of Shechem (Nablus). The site, an isolated steep hill in the very centre of Palestine, is one of great natural strength. Sebastiyeh, a mean village of 600 inhabitants, occupies part of the area of the royal city; its houses are mostly built with ancient materials.
Omri, king of Israel, bought the hill from its owner, Shemer, for two talents of silver, and erected a city which he made his capital (I Ki. xvi. 24). The evidence of the excavations establishes that the site was unoccupied prior to the time of Omri (loth century B.c.). Ahab occupied the city, built a temple and remodelled Omri's palace, which was further extended later and probably by Jeroboam II. Benhadad II. of Syria in the days of Elijah and Elisha, after having been repulsed from its walls (I Ki. xx. 34) returned to besiege it and bring it to dire straits through famine (2 Ki. vi. vii.). Shalmaneser IV. laid siege to it for three years (724-22 B.c.), but died during its progress. The operation was completed by Sargon, who deported its inhabitants and substituted for them a new body of settlers from Cutha, the ancestors of the Samaritans. Alexander the Great conquered it in 331 B.C., as did also later Ptolemy Lagi and Antiochus Poliorcetes. It offered a lively resistance to the fanatical John Hyrcanus. Pompey rebuilt it ; Gabinius restored it ; but Herod the Great was its chief benefactor. A temple, hippodrome and colonnaded streets
were amongst his endowments; their remains still arrest at tention. He made it his capital and it took the name Sebaste (commemorating Augustus). The rise of Nablus (Neapolis), restored by Vespasian, involved the gradual decay of Sebaste. The Crusaders built a church on the hill and established a bishopric. The church, like so many others, was later converted into a mosque. Here were shown the tombs of Elisha, Obadiah, and John the Baptist.
From 1908 to 1910 excavations, under the auspices of Harvard University were carried out on the site, the results of which were published in 1924. The oldest edi fice found on the hill was the palace of Omri, added to and enlarged by Ahab and Jeroboam II. An interesting discovery was that of a number of Hebrew texts traced in ink on tiles in Hebrew writing of a beautiful type belonging to the 9th century B.C. The foundations of a forum, senate-house, palace, city-gate flanked by two round towers, etc., have been laid bare. The low ground to the north-east was the site of the stadium.
See G. A. Reisner, C. S. Fisher, D. G. Lyon, Harvard Excavations at Samaria (1908—so) (1924) ; R. Dussaud, "Samarie au temps d'Achab," Syria 6 (1925), 314 seq. (E. Ro.)