Solomon is, in the biblical account, the son of David and Bathsheba and the third king of a united Israel, whose reign in the tenth century BCE is portrayed as the kingdom's golden age of peace, wealth and empire. He is remembered above all for two things: for wisdom, granted at his request in a dream and displayed in the famous judgment between two women claiming one child; and for building the first Temple in Jerusalem, the house of God at the centre of Israelite worship.
The books of Kings and Chronicles describe a magnificent court, vast building works, a fleet and international trade, and the visit of the Queen of Sheba, drawn by his fame. They also record his fall: many foreign wives, the toleration and building of shrines to their gods, and, as a consequence, the divine sentence that the kingdom would be torn apart, which it is, splitting after his death into Israel and Judah.
The historical Solomon is harder to reach. No contemporary inscription names him, and archaeologists dispute how far the grand united monarchy of the biblical text corresponds to the more modest realities on the ground in tenth-century Jerusalem. The debate remains open; what is not in doubt is the enormous later importance of the figure the text created.