How big was Solomon's kingdom?

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As the Bible describes it, Israel and Judah themselves ran “from Dan even to Beer-sheba”, about 236 km from north to south in a straight line, while Solomon's rule over vassal kings reached “from Tiphsah even to Azzah”, from Thapsacus on the Euphrates to Gaza, about 600 km, and his gathering at the Temple came “from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of Egypt”, about 415 km. How much of this was a real state is one of the most disputed questions of biblical archaeology: views range from a regional power of the tenth century BC to a small highland kingdom around Jerusalem. Kings says that “Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from the river unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt: they brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life”, the bounds once promised to Abraham, “from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates”. Within Israel twelve officers each supplied the court for a month. His ships sailed from Ezion-geber “on the shore of the Red sea, in the land of Edom”, about 430 km from Dan, and Chronicles credits him with building Tadmor, Palmyra, in the Syrian desert, about 420 km from Jerusalem. Kings also tells that the empire was slipping: Hadad the Edomite rose against him, and Rezon and his band “reigned in Damascus”, and he “was an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon”. Archaeology has not settled it. Yigael Yadin dated the matching gates of Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer to Solomon, as the cities named in 1 Kings 9:15; Israel Finkelstein's low chronology moves them to the ninth century and the house of Omri, and sees Solomon's Jerusalem as a modest town. Others, citing the stepped stone structure and large buildings on the City of David ridge, the fortress at Khirbet Qeiyafa and the copper mines of the Arabah, argue for a real tenth-century state, while most agree that the vassal empire is told in the language of royal ideal. No inscription of Solomon has been found. The map uses about 950 BC, within his reign of about 970–931 BC.