The Kingdom of Judah (, Mamlekhet Yehuda) was a state established in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. The Hebrew Bible says that the kingdom of Judah, along with the northern Kingdom of Israel, was the successor to a United Monarchy, but modern archaeology and textual analysis have suggested otherwise, rejecting the account of a united monarchy and indicating that Judah became a fully developed kingdom much later than the culturally related but politically distinct northern kingdom of Israel. It is often referred to as the "Southern Kingdom" to distinguish it from the northern Kingdom of Israel.