Archevite

Archevites were among the foreign peoples resettled in Samaria by the Assyrian king Asnappar following the deportation of the northern Israelite population. They are listed in Ezra 4:9 as signatories to a letter sent to Artaxerxes opposing the rebuilding of Jerusalem. The name is generally connected with Erech (Uruk), one of the most ancient cities of Mesopotamia, located in southern Babylon. Their presence in Samaria reflects the Assyrian and later Babylonian practice of using population transfers as tools of imperial control.

Like the other groups named in Ezra 4:9—Dinaites, Apharsathchites, Tarpelites, Apharsites, and others—the Archevites represent the diverse, ethnically mixed population that had developed in the former northern kingdom over the century and a half between the Assyrian conquest and the Persian restoration of Judah. Their opposition to Jerusalem's rebuilding reflects the political interests of a settled population who had no desire to see Judean national institutions restored.