Between 880-723/22 BCE, Samaria was the capital of the northern
Israelite kingdom of Israel, also known as Samaria after its long-time capital. Under the four centuries long Mesopotamian rule (723/22-322 BCE), it reached a golden age, which was again the case under King
Herod (r. 37-4 BCE). At the modern village site of Sebastiyeh near the tell, pottery findings were dated to the Late Roman and Byzantine periods, but also to the
Early Muslim, medieval (
Crusader,
Ayyubid, etc.),
Ottoman and modern periods. According to the
Hebrew Bible,
Omri, the sixth king of Israel (ruled 880s–870s BCE), purchased a hill owned by an individual (or clan) named Shemer for two
talents of silver, and built its new capital on its broad summit, replacing
Tirzah, Israel's second capital (). According to some biblical scholars, the earliest reference to a settlement at this location may be the town of Shamir, which according to the Hebrew Bible was the home of the
judge Tola in the 12th century BC (). Omri is thought to have granted the
Arameans the right to "make streets in Samaria" as a sign of submission (). This probably meant permission was granted to the Aramean merchants to carry on their trade in the city. This would imply the existence of a considerable Aramean population, who called it Shamerain. In 720 BCE, Samaria fell to the
Neo-Assyrian Empire following a three-year siege, bringing an end to the Kingdom of Israel. After the fall of the kingdom, Samaria became an administrative center under Neo-Assyrian,
Neo-Babylonian, and
Achaemenid (Persian) rule. which led some scholars to identify the structure with the "palace adorned with ivory" mentioned in the Bible (). The
Samaria Ostraca, a collection of 102 ostraca written in the
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet were unearthed by
George Andrew Reisner of the
Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East.
Hellenistic period Samaria (Shomron) was conquered by
Alexander the Great in 331 BCE.
Curtius reports that Alexander destroyed the city and expelled its Samaritan inhabitants after Andromachus, the governor of Syria was lynched there. The city was re-established as a Macedonian military colony. During the
Wars of the Diadochi, Samaria, at the time primarily a fort settled by Macedonians, was again destroyed according to
Josephus, citing
Polybius.
Roman period After
Pompey rebuilt the town in the year 63 BCE,
Hellenized Samaritans and the descendants of
Macedonian soldiers inhabited the city. at Sebastia The Roman emperor
Augustus granted Samaria to
Herod the Great, the Roman client king of
Judea, following the defeat of Anthony and
Cleopatra. Herod built the city anew in 27 BCE and named it "Sebastia" in honour of the emperor. Herod built two temples in the city: one, dedicated to Augustus, was constructed on an elevated platform in the city's
acropolis; it was probably influenced by the
Forum of Caesar in
Rome. The second temple was dedicated to
Kore. A large stadium was also built at the city, which was settled with 6000 veteran colonists, probably non-Jews who fought alongside Herod and helped him secure the throne. Later, in 7 BCE and after a trial at
Berytus, Herod had his sons
Alexander and
Aristobulus IV transported to Sebastia and executed by being strangled for treason.
Theodosius II locates the execution of
John the Baptist by Herod at Sebastia, while
Josephus writes it took place in
Machaerus east of the
Jordan River. Early Christian tradition held that his body was interred in Sebastia, alongside the prophets
Elisha and
Obadiah, and a cult around him and the tomb had formed before the 4th century BCE.
Saladin came to Sebastia during his expedition to central Palestine in 1184. Sebastia's bishop then released eighty Muslim captives to ensure the town's safety.
Niccolò da Poggibonsi, an Italian monk who visited Sebaste in 1347, wrote that the town was in ruins, and that only "some
Saracens and a few Samaritans" lived there.
Ottoman period Sebastia was incorporated into the
Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, and in 1596 it appeared in the
tax registers as being in the
Nahiya of Jabal Sami, part of
Sanjak Nablus. It had a population of 20 households and 3 bachelors, all Muslim. The villagers paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, occasional revenues, goats and/or beehives; a total of 5,500
akçe. Accordiong to the French explorer
Victor Guérin, Sebastia had less than a thousand inhabitants when he visited the village in 1870. In 1870/1871 (1288
AH), an Ottoman census listed the village in the
nahiya (sub-district) of Wadi al-Sha'ir. In 1882, the
PEF's
Survey of Western Palestine described Sebastia as "A large and flourishing village, of stone and
mud houses, on the hill of the ancient Samaria. The position is a very fine one; the hill rises some 400 to 500 feet above the open valley on the north, and is isolated on all sides but the east, where a narrow saddle exists some 200 feet lower than the top of the hill. There is a flat plateau on the top, on the east end of which the village stands, the plateau extending westwards for over half a mile. A higher knoll rises from the plateau, west of the village, from which a fine view is obtained as far as the Mediterranean Sea. The whole hill consists of soft soil, and is terraced to the very top. On the north it is bare and white, with steep slopes, and a few
olives; a sort of recess exists on this side, which is all plough-land, in which stand the lower
columns. On the south a beautiful olive-grove, rising in terrace above terrace, completely covers the sides of the hill, and a small extent of open terraced-land, for growing
barley, exists towards the west and at the top. The village itself is ill-built, and modern, with ruins of the crusader
Cathedral of Saint John towards the northwest. Between 1915 and 1938, Sebastia was served by two stations on the Afula–Nablus–Tulkarm branch line of the
Jezreel Valley railway: Mas'udiya station at the three-way junction, around 1.5 km to the west of the village, and Sabastiya station, around 1.5 km to the south. The site was first excavated by the Harvard Expedition, initially directed by
Gottlieb Schumacher in 1908 and then by
George Andrew Reisner in 1909 and 1910; with the assistance of architect C.S. Fisher and D.G. Lyon.
British Mandate period In the
1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the
British Mandate authorities,
Sabastia had a population of 572; 10 Christians and 562 Muslim. This had increased in the
1931 census to 753; 2 Jews, 20 Christians and 731 Muslim, in a total of 191 houses. In the
1945 statistics Sebastia had a population of 1,020; 980 Muslims and 40 Christians, with 5,066
dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 1,284 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 3,493 used for cereals, while 90 dunams were built-up land. The second expedition was known as the Joint Expedition, a consortium of 5 institutions directed by
John Winter Crowfoot between 1931 and 1935; with the assistance of
Kathleen Mary Kenyon,
Eliezer Sukenik and G.M. Crowfoot. The leading institutions were the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, the
Palestine Exploration Fund, and the
Hebrew University. In the 1960s small scale excavations directed by
Fawzi Zayadine were carried out on behalf of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan.
Jordanian period In the wake of the
1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the
1949 Armistice Agreements, Sebastia came under
Jordanian rule. In 1961, the population was 1,345.
Post-1967 waves near the entrance of Tel Sebastia, 2022 Since the
Six-Day War in 1967, Sebastia has been held under
Israeli military occupation, while the Palestinian Authority is the civil authority of the area. In modern-day Sebastia, the village's main
mosque, known as the
Nabi Yahya Mosque, stands within the remains of a Crusader
cathedral that is believed to be built upon the tombs of the prophets
Elisha,
Obediah and John the Baptist beside the public square. There are also
Roman royal tombs, and a few medieval and many
Ottoman era buildings which survive in a good state of preservation. In late 1976, the Israeli settlers movement,
Gush Emunim, attempted to establish a settlement at the
Ottoman train station. The Israeli government did not approve and the group that was removed from the site would later found the settlement of
Elon Moreh adjacent to
Nablus. The ancient site of Sebastia is located just above the built-up area of the modern day village on the eastern slope of the hill. In July 2023, 19-year-old Fawzi Makhalfeh was killed by Israeli soldiers at the village, to what the
Palestinian Authority described as an execution, and residents described as an act of terrorism. In August 2024, the Israeli military briefly seized the village, an act described as a routine occurrence by residents. In November 2025, Israel announced plans to expropriate of land around the archaeological site making it the largest archaeological site expropriated in the West Bank. The Israeli government said the move was to protect the site from looting; heritage organisation Emek Shaveh said that "The site itself is under Israeli both security and civilian control, which means that had they wanted to, the staff officer for archaeology could have allocated resources, personnel in order to oversee that the site was well taken care of, to keep away looters and so forth". The Palestinian Authority said the expropriation was a way of furthering annexation of the West Bank. == Demography ==