The book by Professor of St. Petersburg State University, Head of the Department of Jewish Culture of St. Petersburg State University I.R. Tantevsky addresses the key problems of Israeli-Jewish ethnogenesis and the formation of Israel under Tsar David as a regional multi-ethnic state of the imperial type in the context of tribal and international relations in the Eastern Mediterranean at the turn of the II and I millennium BC. Significant attention paid to the data of biblical archeology, first of all, recent excavations in Khirbet Qeiaf, in the "City of David" area in Jerusalem and in the Ophel area (between the "City of David" and the Temple Mount), and the epigraphic materials relevant to the subject of the book.