Well Wishes
The history of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel is about the history and religion of the Jews, who originated in the Land of Israel, and have maintained physical, cultural, and religious ties to it ever since. First emerging in the later part of the 2nd millennium BCE as an outgrowth of southern Canaanites, the Hebrew Bible claims that a United Israelite monarchy existed starting in the 10th century BCE. The first appearance of the name "Israel" in the non-Biblical historic record is the Egyptian Merneptah Stele, circa 1200 BCE. During biblical times, two kingdoms occupied the highland zone, the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and the Kingdom of Judah by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Initially exiled to Babylon, upon the defeat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire by the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great, many of the Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem, building the Second Temple.