According to the biblical narrative, after Solomon's death, his son and successor Rehoboam adopted harsh policies towards the northern Israelites, who then rejected the reign of the House of David and sought Jeroboam as their king.

Current scholarly consensus allows for a historical Solomon, but regards his reign as king over Israel and Judah in the 10th century BCE as uncertain and the biblical portrayal of his apparent empire's opulence as most probably an anachronistic exaggeration.

[19][dubious – discuss] According to the most widely used chronology, based on that by the Old Testament professor Edwin R. Thiele, the death of Solomon and the division of his kingdom would have occurred in the fall of 931 BCE.

In particular he continued his father's very profitable relationship with the Phoenician king Hiram I of Tyre (see 'wealth' below); they sent out joint expeditions to the lands of Tarshish and Ophir to engage in the trade of luxury products, importing gold, silver, sandalwood, pearls, ivory, apes, and peacocks.

Pleased, God personally answered Solomon's prayer, promising him great wisdom because he did not ask for self-serving rewards like long life or the death of his enemies.

This complex included buildings referred to as: Solomon's throne is said to have been spectacularly opulent and possessed moving parts, making it one of the earliest mechanical devices in history.

[38] These all have substantial ancient remains, including impressive six-chambered gates, and ashlar palaces; however it is no longer the scholarly consensus that these structures date to the time, according to the Bible, when Solomon ruled.

[39] According to the Bible, during Solomon's reign, Israel enjoyed great commercial prosperity, with extensive traffic being carried on by land with Tyre, Egypt, and Arabia, and by sea with Tarshish, Ophir, and South India.

[45] In the branch of literary analysis that examines the Bible, called higher criticism, the story of Solomon falling into idolatry by the influence of Pharaoh's daughter and his other foreign wives is "customarily seen as the handiwork of the 'deuteronomistic historian(s)'", who are held to have written, compiled, or edited texts to legitimize the reforms of Hezekiah's great-grandson, King Josiah who reigned from about 641 to 609 BCE (over 280 years after Solomon's death according to Bible scholars).

[46] Scholarly consensus in this field holds that "Solomon's wives/women were introduced in the 'Josianic' (customarily Dtr) edition of Kings as a theological construct to blame the schism [between Judah and the Northern Kingdom of Israel] on his misdeeds".

[46] In a brief, unelaborated, and enigmatic passage, the Hebrew Bible describes how the fame of Solomon's wisdom and wealth reached even the far-off Queen of Sheba.

[47] Whether the passage is simply to provide a brief foreign witness of Solomon's wealth and wisdom, or whether the visit is meant to have more significance, is unknown; nevertheless the Queen of Sheba has become the subject of numerous stories.

An Ethiopian account from the 14th century (Kebra Nagast) maintains that the Queen of Sheba had sexual relations with King Solomon and gave birth beside the Mai Bella stream in the province of Hamasien, Eritrea.

The child was a son who became Menelik I, King of Axum, and founded a dynasty that would reign as the Jewish, then Christian, Empire of Ethiopia which lasted 2900 years until Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974.

King Solomon is a central biblical figure, who, according to the Hebrew Bible, was the builder of the First Temple in Jerusalem and the last ruler of the united Kingdom of Israel.

Current consensus states that regardless of whether or not a man named Solomon truly reigned as king over the Judean hills in the tenth century BCE, the biblical description of his apparent empire's lavishness is almost surely an anachronistic exaggeration.

The first-century Romano-Jewish scholar Josephus in Against Apion, citing Tyrian court records and Menander, gives a specific year during which King Hiram I of Tyre sent materials to Solomon for the construction of the Temple.

[39] According to Finkelstein and Silberman, authors of The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts,[72] at the time of the kingdoms of David and Solomon, Jerusalem was populated by only a few hundred residents or less, which is insufficient for an empire stretching from the Euphrates to Eilath.

[76] Seventeen years later, traces of cinnamon were found in Phoenician clay flasks from three small sites in the Israeli coastal plain dating from the 10th century BCE.

[77] Kenneth Kitchen argues that Solomon ruled over a comparatively wealthy "mini-empire", rather than a small city-state, and considers 666 gold talents a modest amount of money.

[79] In 2014, professor of anthropology Jimmy Hardin and his team discovered six official clay bullae seals at a site east of Gaza called Khirbet Summeily.

[89][90] The biblical passages that understand Tarshish as a source of King Solomon's great wealth in metals—especially silver, but also gold, tin and iron (Ezekiel 27)—were linked to archaeological evidence from silver-hoards found in Phoenicia in 2013.

The evidence from the hoards shows that the Levant was a center of wealth in precious metals during the reigns of Solomon and Hiram, and matches the texts that say the trade extended from Asia to the Atlantic Ocean.

[91] The distribution of fortified cities between Phoenicia and Galilee in Iron Age IIA (10th-9th century BCE) provides context on Solomon's sale of territory to Hiram, which he derided as Cabul (i.e. "good for nothing").

[92] Kyle H. Keimer argues that they reflected Solomon's apathy to the tribe of Asher, who lived in Phoenicia, or his strategic thinking, where these cities served as defense barriers against foreign invasions.

[16] Some scholars and historians argue that the passages, such as his dedication prayer (1 Kings 8:14–66), that describe Solomon's apparent initial devotion to Yahweh were written much later, after Jerusalem had become the religious centre of the kingdom, replacing locations such as Shiloh and Bethel.

Miserable indeed was the price for which they sold their souls, if only they knew!The Quran makes a reference to a "puppet" posing as Solomon in exegetical literature understood as a jinni or demon, who escaped captivity and took over his kingdom.

The beasts and fowl of their own accord entered the kitchen of Solomon's palace, so that they might be used as food for him, and extravagant meals for him were prepared daily by each of his 700 wives and 300 concubines, with the thought that perhaps the king would feast that day in her house.

[123] The element of a ring thrown into the sea and found back in a fish's belly also appeared in Herodotus' account of Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos (c. 538–522 BCE).

However, according to rabbinical accounts, Necho did not know how the mechanism worked and so accidentally struck himself with one of the lions causing him to become lame; Nebuchadnezzar, into whose possession the throne subsequently came, shared a similar fate.