* 1 Kings vii. 15-22; cf. 2 Chron. iv. 11-13. The names were probably engraved each upon its respective column, and taken together formed an inscription which could be interpreted in various ways. The most simple interpretation is to recognise in them a kind of talismanic formula to ensure the strength of the building, affirming "that it exists by the strength" of God.

The interior contained only two chambers; the hekal, or holy place, where were kept the altar of incense, the seven-branched candlestick, and the table of shewbread; and the Holy of Holies—debir—where the ark of God rested beneath the wings of two cherubim of gilded wood. Against the outer wall of the temple, and rising to half its height, were rows of small apartments, three stories high, in which were kept the treasures and vessels of the sanctuary. While the high priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies only once a year, the holy place was accessible at all times to the priests engaged in the services, and it was there that the daily ceremonies of the temple-worship took place; there stood also the altar of incense and the table of shewbread. The altar of sacrifice stood on the platform in front of the entrance; it was a cube of masonry with a parapet, and was approached by stone steps; it resembled, probably, in general outline the monumental altars which stood in the forecourts of the Egyptian temples and palaces. There stood by it, as was also customary in Chaldaea, a "molten sea," and some ten smaller lavers, in which the Levites washed the portions of the victims to be offered, together with the basins, knives, flesh-hooks, spoons, shovels, and other utensils required for the bloody sacrifice. A low wall surmounted by a balustrade of cedar-wood separated this sacred enclosure from a court to which the people were permitted to have free access. Both palace and temple were probably designed in that pseudo-Egyptian style which the Phoenicians were known to affect. The few Hebrew edifices of which remains have come down to us, reveal a method of construction and decoration common in Egypt; we have an example of this in the uprights of the doors at Lachish, which terminate in an Egyptian gorge like that employed in the naos of the Phonician temples.



Drawn by Paucher-Gudin, from the drawing by Petrie.

The completion of the whole plan occupied thirteen years; at length both palace and temple were finished in the XVIIth year of the king's reign. Solomon, however, did not wait for the completion of the work to dedicate the sanctuary to God. As soon as the inner court was ready, which was in his XIth year, he proceeded to transfer the ark to its new resting-place; it was raised upon a cubical base, and the long staves by which it had been carried were left in their rings, as was usual in the case of the sacred barks of the Egyptian deities.* The God of Israel thus took up His abode in the place in which He was henceforth to be honoured. The sacrifices on the occasion of the dedication were innumerable, and continued for fourteen days, in the presence of the representatives of all Israel. The ornate ceremonial and worship which had long been lavished on the deities of rival nations were now, for the first time, offered to the God of Israel. The devout Hebrews who had come together from far and near returned to their respective tribes filled with admiration,** and their limited knowledge of art doubtless led them to consider their temple as unique in the world; in fact, it presented nothing remarkable either in proportion, arrangement, or in the variety and richness of its ornamentation and furniture. Compared with the magnificent monuments of Egypt and Chaldaea, the work of Solomon was what the Hebrew kingdom appears to us among the empires of the ancient world—a little temple suited to a little people.

* 1 Kings viii. 6-8, and 2 Ghron. v. 7-9.

** 1 Kings vi. 37, 38 states that the foundations were laid in the IVth year of Solomon's reign, in the month of Ziv, and that the temple was completed in the month of Bui in the XIth year; the work occupied seven years. 1 Kings vii. 1 adds that the construction of the palace lasted thirteen years; it went on for six years after the completion of the temple. The account of the dedication (1 Kings viii.) contains a long prayer by Solomon, part of which (vers. 14- 66) is thought by certain critics to be of later date. They contend that the original words of Solomon are confined to vers. 12 and 13.

The priests to whose care it was entrusted did not differ much from those whom David had gathered about him at the outset of the monarchy. They in no way formed an hereditary caste confined to the limits of a rigid hierarchy; they admitted into their number—at least up to a certain point—men of varied extraction, who were either drawn by their own inclinations to the service of the altar, or had been dedicated to it by their parents from childhood. He indeed was truly a priest "who said of his father and mother, 'I have not seen him;' neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew he his own children." He was content, after renouncing these, to observe the law of God and keep His covenant, and to teach Jacob His judgments and Israel His law; he put incense before the Lord, and whole burnt offerings upon His altar.*

* Those are the expressions used in the Blessing of Moses (Deut. xxxiii. 8-12); though this text is by some writers placed as late as the VIIIth century B.C., yet the state of things there represented would apply also to an earlier date. The Hebrew priest, in short, had the same duties as a large proportion of the priesthood in Chaldae and Egypt.

As in Egypt, the correct offering of the Jewish sacrifices was beset with considerable difficulties, and the risk of marring their efficacy by the slightest inadvertence necessitated the employment of men who were thoroughly instructed in the divinely appointed practices and formulae. The victims had to be certified as perfect, while the offerers themselves had to be ceremonially pure; and, indeed, those only who had been specially trained were able to master the difficulties connected with the minutiae of legal purity. The means by which the future was made known necessitated the intervention of skilful interpreters of the Divine will. We know that in Egypt the statues of the gods were supposed to answer the questions put to them by movements of the head or arms, sometimes even by the living voice; but the Hebrews do not appear to have been influenced by any such recollections in the use of their sacred oracles. We are ignorant, however, of the manner in which the ephod was consulted, and we know merely that the art of interrogating the Divine will by it demanded a long noviciate.* The benefits derived by those initiated into these mysteries were such as to cause them to desire the privileges to be perpetuated to their children. Gathered round the ancient sanctuaries were certain families who, from father to son, were devoted to the performance of the sacred rites, as, for instance, that of Eli at Shiloh, and that of Jonathan-ben-Gershom at Dan, near the sources of the Jordan; but in addition to these, the text mentions functionaries analogous to those found among the Canaanites, diviners, seers—roe—who had means of discovering that which was hidden from the vulgar, even to the finding of lost objects, but whose powers sometimes rose to a higher level when they were suddenly possessed by the prophetic spirit and enabled to reveal coming events. Besides these, again, were the prophets—nabi**—who lived either alone or in communities, and attained, by means of a strict training, to a vision of the future.

* An example of the consulting of the ephod will be found in 1 Sam. xxx. 7, 8, where David desires to know if he shall pursue the Amalekites.

** 1 Sam. ix. 9 is a gloss which identifies the seer of former times with the prophet of the times of the monarchy.

Their prophetic utterances were accompanied by music and singing, and the exaltation of spirit which followed their exercises would at times spread to the bystanders,—as is the case in the "zikr" of the Mahomedans of to-day.*

* 1 Sam. x. 5-13, where we see Saul seized with the prophetic spirit on meeting with a band of prophets descending from the high place; cf. 2 Sam. vi. 13-16, 20-23, for David dancing before the ark.

The early kings, Saul and David, used to have recourse to individuals belonging to all these three classes, but the prophets, owing to the intermittent character of their inspiration and their ministry, could not fill a regular office attached to the court. One of this class was raised up by God from time to time to warn or guide His servants, and then sank again into obscurity; the priests, on the contrary, were always at hand, and their duties brought them into contact with the sovereign all the year round. The god who was worshipped in the capital of the country and his priesthood promptly acquired a predominant position in all Oriental monarchies, and most of the other temples, together with the sacerdotal bodies attached to them, usually fell into disrepute, leaving them supreme. If Amon of Thebes became almost the sole god, and his priests the possessors of all Egypt, it was because the accession of the XVIIIth dynasty had made his pontiffs the almoners of the Pharaoh. Something of the same sort took place in Israel; the priesthood at Jerusalem attached to the temple built by the sovereign, being constantly about his person, soon surpassed their brethren in other parts of the country both in influence and possessions. Under David's reign their head had been Abiathar, son of Ahimelech, a descendant of Eli, but on Solomon's accession the primacy had been transferred to the line of Zadok. In this alliance of the throne and the altar, it was natural at first that the throne should reap the advantage. The king appears to have continued to be a sort of high priest, and to have officiated at certain times and occasions.* The priests kept the temple in order, and watched over the cleanliness of its chambers and its vessels; they interrogated the Divine will for the king according to the prescribed ceremonies, and offered sacrifices on behalf of the monarch and his subjects; in short, they were at first little more than chaplains to the king and his family.

* Solomon officiated and preached at the consecration of the temple (1 Kings viii.). The actual words appear to be of a later date; but even if that be the case, it proves that, at the time they were written, the king still possessed his full sacerdotal powers.

Solomon's allegiance to the God of Israel did not lead him to proscribe the worship of other gods; he allowed his foreign wives the exercise of their various religions, and he raised an altar to Chemosh on the Mount of Olives for one of them who was a Moabite. The political supremacy and material advantages which all these establishments acquired for Judah could not fail to rouse the jealousy of the other tribes. Ephraim particularly looked on with ill-concealed anger at the prospect of the hegemony becoming established in the hands of a tribe which could be barely said to have existed before the time of David, and was to a considerable extent of barbarous origin. Taxes, homage, the keeping up and recruiting of garrisons, were all equally odious to this, as well as to the other clans descended from Joseph; meanwhile their burdens did not decrease. A new fortress had to be built at Jerusalem by order of the aged king. One of the overseers appointed for this work—Jeroboam, the son of Nebat—appears to have stirred up the popular discontent, and to have hatched a revolutionary plot. Solomon, hearing of the conspiracy, attempted to suppress it; Jeroboam was forewarned, and fled to Egypt, where Pharaoh Sheshonq received him with honour, and gave him his wife's sister in marriage.* The peace of the nation had not been ostensibly troubled, but the very fact that a pretender should have risen up in opposition to the legitimate king augured ill for the future of the dynasty. In reality, the edifice which David had raised with such difficulty tottered on its foundations before the death of his successor; the foreign vassals were either in a restless state or ready to throw off their allegiance; money was scarce, and twenty Galilaean towns had been perforce ceded to Hiram to pay the debts due to him for the building of the temple;** murmurings were heard among the people, who desired an easier life.

* 1 Kings xi. 23-40, where the LXX. is fuller than the A. V.

** 1 Kings ix. 10-13; cf. 2 Cliron. viii. 1, 2, where the fact seems to have been reversed, and Hiram is made the donor of the twenty towns.

In a future age, when priestly and prophetic influences had gained the ascendant, amid the perils which assailed Jerusalem, and the miseries of the exile, the Israelites, contrasting their humiliation with the glory of the past, forgot the reproaches which their forefathers had addressed to the house of David, and surrounded its memory with a halo of romance. David again became the hero, and Solomon the saint and sage of his race; the latter "spake three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." We are told that God favoured him with a special predilection, and appeared to him on three separate occasions: once immediately after the death of David, to encourage him by the promise of a prosperous reign, and the gift of wisdom in governing; again after the dedication of the temple, to confirm him in his pious intentions; and lastly to upbraid him for his idolatry, and to predict the downfall of his house. Solomon is supposed to have had continuous dealings with all the sovereigns of the Oriental world,* and a Queen of Sheba is recorded as having come to bring him gifts from the furthest corner of Arabia.

* 1 Kings iv. 34; on this passage are founded all the legends dealing with the contests of wit and wisdom in which Solomon was supposed to have entered with the kings of neighbouring countries; traces of these are found in Dius, in Menander, and in Eupolemus.

His contemporaries, however, seem to have regarded him as a tyrant who oppressed them with taxes, and whose death was unregretted.*

* I am inclined to place the date of Solomon's death between 935 and 930 B.C.



His son Rehoboam experienced no opposition in Jerusalem and Judah on succeeding to the throne of his father; when, however, he repaired to Shechem to receive the oath of allegiance from the northern and central tribes, he found them unwilling to tender it except under certain conditions; they would consent to obey him only on the promise of his delivering them from the forced labour which had been imposed upon them by his predecessors. Jeroboam, who had returned from his Egyptian exile on the news of Solomon's death, undertook to represent their grievances to the new king. "Thy father made our yoke grievous: now therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee." Rehoboam demanded three days for the consideration of his reply; he took counsel with the old advisers of the late king, who exhorted him to comply with the petition, but the young men who were his habitual companions urged him, on the contrary, to meet the remonstrances of his subjects with threats of still harsher exactions. Their advice was taken, and when Jeroboam again presented himself, Rehoboam greeted him with raillery and threats. "My little finger is thicker than my father's loins. And now whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions." This unwise answer did not produce the intimidating effect which was desired; the cry of revolt, which had already been raised in the earlier days of the monarchy, was once more heard. "What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your tents, O Israel: now see to thine own house, David." Rehoboam attempted to carry his threats into execution, and sent the collectors of taxes among the rebels to enforce payment; but one of them was stoned almost before his eyes, and the king himself had barely time to regain his chariot and flee to Jerusalem to escape an outburst of popular fury. The northern and central tribes immediately offered the crown to Jeroboam, and the partisans of the son of Solomon were reduced to those of his own tribe; Judah, Caleb, the few remaining Simeonites, and some of the towns of Dan and Benjamin, which were too near to Jerusalem to escape the influence of a great city, were all who threw in their lot with him.*

* 1 Kings xii. 1—24; cf. 2 Chron. x., xi. 1-4. The text of 1 Kings xii. 20 expressly says, "there was none that followed the house of David but the tribe of Judah only;" whereas the following verse, which some think to have been added by another hand, adds that Rehoboam assembled 180,000 men "which were warriors" from "the house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin."

Thus was accomplished the downfall of the House of David, and with it the Hebrew kingdom which it had been at such pains to build up. When we consider the character of the two kings who formed its sole dynasty, we cannot refrain from thinking that it deserved a better fate. David and Solomon exhibited that curious mixture of virtues and vices which distinguished most of the great Semite princes. The former, a soldier of fortune and an adventurous hero, represents the regular type of the founder of a dynasty; crafty, cruel, ungrateful, and dissolute, but at the same time brave, prudent, cautious, generous, and capable of enthusiasm, clemency, and repentance; at once so lovable and so gentle that he was able to inspire those about him with the firmest friendship and the most absolute devotion. The latter was a religious though sensual monarch, fond of display—the type of sovereign who usually succeeds to the head of the family and enjoys the wealth which his predecessor had acquired, displaying before all men the results of an accomplished work, and often thereby endangering its stability. The real reason of their failure to establish a durable monarchy was the fact that neither of them understood the temperament of the people they were called upon to govern. The few representations we possess of the Hebrews of this period depict them as closely resembling the nations which inhabited Southern Syria at the time of the Egyptian occupation. They belong to the type with which the monuments have made us familiar; they are distinguished by an aquiline nose, projecting cheek-bones, and curly hair and beard. They were vigorous, hardy, and inured to fatigue, but though they lacked those qualities of discipline and obedience which are the characteristics of true warrior races, David had not hesitated to employ them in war; they were neither sailors, builders, nor given to commerce and industries, and yet Solomon built fleets, raised palaces and a temple, and undertook maritime expeditions, and financial circumstances seemed for the moment to be favourable.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Petrie.

The onward progress of Assyria towards the Mediterranean had been arrested by the Hittites, Egypt was in a condition of lethargy, the Aramaean populations were fretting away their energies in internal dissensions; David, having encountered no serious opposition after his victory over the Philistines, had extended his conquests and increased the area of his kingdom, and the interested assistance which Tyre afterwards gave to Solomon enabled the latter to realise his dreams of luxury and royal magnificence. But the kingdom which had been created by David and Solomom rested solely on their individual efforts, and its continuance could be ensured only by bequeathing it to descendants who had sufficient energy and prudence to consolidate its weaker elements, and build up the tottering materials which were constantly threatening to fall asunder. As soon as the government had passed into the hands of the weakling Rehoboam, who had at the outset departed from his predecessors' policy, the component parts of the kingdom, which had for a few years been, held together, now became disintegrated without a shock, and as if by mutual consent. The old order of things which existed in the time of the Judges had passed away with the death of Saul. The advantages which ensued from a monarchical regime were too apparent to permit of its being set aside, and the tribes who had been bound together by nearly half a century of obedience to a common master now resolved themselves, according to their geographical positions, into two masses of unequal numbers and extent—Judah in the south, together with the few clans who remained loyal to the kingly house, and Israel in the north and the regions beyond Jordan, occupying three-fourths of the territory which had belonged to David and Solomon.

Israel, in spite of its extent and population, did not enjoy the predominant position which we might have expected at the beginning of its independent existence. It had no political unity, no capital in which to concentrate its resources, no temple, and no army; it represented the material out of which a state could be formed rather than one already constituted. It was subdivided into three groups, formerly independent of, and almost strangers to each other, and between whom neither David nor Solomon had been able to establish any bond which would enable them to forget their former isolation. The centre group was composed of the House of Joseph—Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh—and comprised the old fortresses of Perea, Mahanaim, Penuel, Succoth, and Eamoth, ranged in a line running parallel with the Jordan. In the eastern group were the semi-nomad tribes of Reuben and Gad, who still persisted in the pastoral habits of their ancestors, and remained indifferent to the various revolutions which had agitated their race for several generations. Finally, in the northern group lay the smaller tribes of Asher, Naphtali, Issachar, Zebulon, and Dan, hemmed in between the Phoenicians and the Aramaeans of Zoba and Damascus. Each group had its own traditions, its own interests often opposed to those of its neighbours, and its own peculiar mode of life, which it had no intention of renouncing for any one else's benefit. The difficulty of keeping these groups together became at once apparent. Shechem had been the first to revolt against Rehoboam; it was a large and populous town, situated almost in the centre of the newly formed state, and the seat of an ancient oracle, both of which advantages seemed to single it out as the future capital. But its very importance, and the memories of its former greatness under Jeruhhaal and Abimelech, were against it. Built in the western territory belonging to Manasseh, the eastern and northern clans would at once object to its being chosen, on the ground that it would humiliate them before the House of Joseph, in the same manner as the selection of Jerusalem had tended to make them subservient to Judah. Jeroboam would have endangered his cause by fixing on it as his capital, and he therefore soon quitted it to establish himself at Tirzah. It is true that the latter town was also situated in the mountains of Ephraim, but it was so obscure and insignificant a place that it disarmed all jealousy; the new king therefore took up his residence in it, since he was forced to fix on some royal abode, but it never became for him what Jerusalem was to his rival, a capital at once religious and military. He had his own sanctuary and priests at Tirzah, as was but natural, but had he attempted to found a temple which would have attracted the whole population to a common worship, he would have excited jealousies which would have been fatal to his authority. On the other hand, Solomon's temple had in its short period of existence not yet acquired such a prestige as to prevent Jeroboam's drawing his people away from it: which he determined to do from a fear that contact with Jerusalem would endanger the allegiance of his subjects to his person and family. Such concourses of worshippers, assembling at periodic intervals from all parts of the country, soon degenerated into a kind of fair, in which commercial as well as religious motives had their part.



Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph published by the Duc de Luynes.

These gatherings formed a source of revenue to the prince in whose capital they were held, and financial as well as political considerations required that periodical assemblies should be established in Israel similar to those which attracted Judah to Jerusalem. Jeroboam adopted a plan which while safeguarding the interests of his treasury, prevented his becoming unpopular with his own subjects; as he was unable to have a temple for himself alone, he chose two out of the most venerated ancient sanctuaries, that of Dan for the northern tribes, and that of Bethel, on the Judaean frontier, for the tribes of the east and centre. He made two calves of gold, one for each place, and said to the people, "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." He granted the sanctuaries certain appanages, and established a priesthood answering to that which officiated in the rival kingdom: "whosoever would he consecrated him, that there might be priests of the high places."* While Jeroboam thus endeavoured to strengthen himself on the throne by adapting the monarchy to the temperament of the tribes over which he ruled, Rehoboam took measures to regain his lost ground and restore the unity which he himself had destroyed. He recruited the army which had been somewhat neglected in the latter years of his father, restored the walls of the cities which had remained faithful to him, and fortified the places which constituted his frontier defences against the Israelites.** His ambition was not as foolish as we might be tempted to imagine. He had soldiers, charioteers, generals, skilled in the art of war, well-filled storehouses, the remnant of the wealth of Solomon, and, as a last resource, the gold of the temple at Jerusalem. He ruled over the same extent of territory as that possessed by David after the death of Saul, but the means at his disposal were incontestably greater than those of his grandfather, and it is possible that he might in the end have overcome Jeroboam, as David overcame Ishbosheth, had not the intervention of Egypt disconcerted his plans, and, by exhausting his material forces, struck a death-blow to all his hopes.

* 1 Kings xii. 25-32; chaps, xii. 33, xiii., xiv. 1-18 contain, side by side with the narrative of facts, such as the death of Jeroboam's son, comments on the religious conduct of the sovereign, which some regard as being of later date.

** 1 Kings xii. 21-24; cf. 2 Ghron. xi. 1-17, where the list of strongholds, wanting in the Boole of Kings, is given from an ancient source. The writer affirms, in harmony with the ideas of his time, "that the Levites left their suburbs and their possession, and came to Judah and Jerusalem; for Jeroboam and his sons cast them off, that they should not execute the Priest's office unto the Lord."

The century and a half which had elapsed since the death of the last of the Ramessides had, as far as we can ascertain, been troubled by civil wars and revolutions.*

* I have mentioned above the uncertainty which still shrouds the XXth dynasty. The following is the order in which I propose that its kings should be placed:—



The imperious Egypt of the Theban dynasties had passed away, but a new Egypt had arisen, not without storm and struggle, in its place. As long as the campaigns of the Pharaohs had been confined to the Nile valley and the Oases, Thebes had been the natural centre of the kingdom; placed almost exactly between the Mediterranean and the southern frontier, it had been both the national arsenal and the treasure-house to which all foreign wealth had found its way from the Persian Gulf to the Sahara, and from the coasts of Asia Minor to the equatorial swamps. The cities of the Delta, lying on the frontier of those peoples with whom Egypt now held but little intercourse, possessed neither the authority nor the resources of Thebes; even Memphis, to which the prestige of her ancient dynasties still clung, occupied but a secondary place beside her rival. The invasion of the shepherds, by making the Thebaid the refuge and last bulwark of the Egyptian nation, increased its importance: in the critical times of the struggle, Thebes was not merely the foremost city in the country, it represented the country itself, and the heart of Egypt may be said to have throbbed within its walls. The victories of Ahmosis, the expeditions of Thutmosis I. and Thutmosis III., enlarged her horizon; her Pharaohs crossed the isthmus of Suez, they conquered Syria, subdued the valleys of the Euphrates and the Balikh, and by so doing increased her wealth and her splendour. Her streets witnessed during two centuries processions of barbarian prisoners laden with the spoils of conquest. But with the advent of the XIXth and XXth dynasties came anxious times; the peoples of Syria and Libya, long kept in servitude, at length rebelled, and the long distance between Karnak and Gaza soon began to be irksome to princes who had to be constantly on the alert on the Canaanite frontier, and who found it impossible to have their head-quarters six hundred miles from the scene of hostilities. Hence it came about that Ramses II., Minephtah, and Ramses III. all took up their abode in the Delta during the greater part of their active life; they restored its ancient towns and founded new ones, which soon acquired considerable wealth by foreign commerce. The centre of government of the empire, which, after the dissolution of the old Memphite state, had been removed southwards to Thebes on account of the conquest of Ethiopia and the encroachment of Theban civilization upon Nubia and the Sudan, now gradually returned northwards, and passing over Heracleo-polis, which had exercised a transitory supremacy, at length established itself in the Delta. Tanis, Bubastis, Sais, Mondes, and Sebennytos all disputed the honour of forming the royal residence, and all in turn during the course of ages enjoyed the privilege without ever rising to the rank of Thebes, or producing any sovereigns to be compared with those of her triumphant dynasties. Tanis was, as we have seen, the first of these to rule the whole of the Nile valley. Its prosperity had continued to increase from the time that Ramses II. began to rebuild it; the remaining inhabitants of Avaris, mingled with the natives of pure race and the prisoners of war settled there, had furnished it with an active and industrious population, which had considerably increased during the peaceful reigns of the XXth dynasty. The surrounding country, drained and cultivated by unremitting efforts, became one of the most fruitful parts of the Delta; there was a large exportation of fish and corn, to which were soon added the various products of its manufactories, such as linen and woollen stuffs, ornaments, and objects in glass and in precious metals.*

* The immense number of designs taken from aquatic plants, as, for instance, the papyrus and the lotus, single or in groups, as well as from fish and aquatic birds, which we observe on objects of Phoenician goldsmiths' work, leads me to believe that the Tyrian and Sidonian artists borrowed most of their models from the Delta, and doubtless from Tanis, the most flourishing town of the Delta during the centuries following the downfall of Thebes.

These were embarked on Egyptian or Phoenician galleys, and were exchanged in the ports of the Mediterranean for Syrian, Asiatic, or AEgean commodities, which were then transmitted by the Egyptian merchants to the countries of the East and to Northern Africa.* The port of Tanis was one of the most secure and convenient which existed at that period. It was at sufficient distance from the coast to be safe from the sudden attacks of pirates,** and yet near enough to permit of its being reached from the open by merchantmen in a few hours of easy navigation; the arms of the Nile, and the canals which here flowed into the sea, were broad and deep, and, so long as they were kept well dredged, would allow the heaviest-laden vessel of large draught to make its way up them with ease.

* It was from Tanis that the Egyptian vessel set out carrying the messengers of Hrihor to Byblos.

** We may judge of the security afforded by such a position by the account in Homer which Ulysses gives to Eumaios of his pretended voyage to Egypt; the Greeks having disembarked, and being scattered over the country, were attacked by the Egyptians before they could capture a town or carry their booty to the ships.

The site of the town was not less advantageous for overland traffic. Tanis was the first important station encountered by caravans after crossing the frontier at Zalu, and it offered them a safe and convenient emporium for the disposal of their goods in exchange for the riches of Egypt and the Delta. The combination of so many advantageous features on one site tended to the rapid development of both civic and individual wealth; in less than three centuries after its rebuilding by Ramses II., Tanis had risen to a position which enabled its sovereigns to claim even the obedience of Thebes itself.

We know very little of the history of this Tanite dynasty; the monuments have not revealed the names of all its kings, and much difficulty is experienced in establishing the sequence of those already brought to light.*

* The classification of the Tanite line has been complicated in the minds of most Egyptologists by the tendency to ignore the existence of the sacerdotal dynasty of high priests, to confuse with the Tanite Pharaohs those of the high priests who bore the crown, and to identify in the lists of Manetho (more or less corrected) the names they are in search of. A fresh examination of the subject has led me to adopt provisionally the following order for the series of Tanite kings:—



Their actual domain barely extended as far as Siut, but their suzerainty was acknowledged by the Said as well as by all or part of Ethiopia, and the Tanite Pharaohs maintained their authority with such vigour, that they had it in their power on several occasions to expel the high priests of Amon, and to restore, at least for a time, the unity of the empire. To accomplish this, it would have been sufficient for them to have assumed the priestly dignity at Thebes, and this was what no doubt took place at times when a vacancy in the high priesthood occurred; but it was merely in an interim, and the Tanite sovereigns always relinquished the office, after a brief lapse of time, in favour of some member of the family of Hrihor whose right of primogeniture entitled him to succeed to it.* It indeed seemed as if custom and religious etiquette had made the two offices of the pontificate and the royal dignity incompatible for one individual to hold simultaneously. The priestly duties had become marvellously complicated during the Theban hegemony, and the minute observances which they entailed absorbed the whole life of those who dedicated themselves to their performance.**

* This is only true if the personage who entitles himself once within a cartouche, "the Master of the two lands, First Prophet of Amon, Psiukhan-nit," is really the Tanite king, and not the high priest Psiukhannit.

** The first book of Diodorus contains a picture of the life of the kings of Egypt, which, in common with much information contained in the work, is taken from a lost book of Hecataeus. The historical romance written by the latter appears to have been composed from information taken from Theban sources. The comparison of it with the inscribed monuments and the ritual of the cultus of Amon proves that the ideal description given in this work of the life of the kings, merely reproduces the chief characteristics of the lives of the Theban and Ethiopian high priests; hence the greater part of the minute observances which we remark therein apply to the latter only, and not to the Pharaohs properly so called.

They had daily to fulfil a multitude of rites, distributed over the various hours in such a manner that it seemed impossible to find leisure for any fresh occupation without encroaching on the time allotted to absolute bodily needs. The high priest rose each morning at an appointed hour; he had certain times for taking food, for recreation, for giving audience, for dispensing justice, for attending to worldly affairs, and for relaxation with his wives and children; at night he kept watch, or rose at intervals to prepare for the various ceremonies which could only be celebrated at sunrise. He was responsible for the superintendence of the priests of Amon in the numberless festivals held in honour of the gods, from which he could not absent himself except for some legitimate reason. From all this it will be seen how impossible it was for a lay king, like the sovereign ruling at Tanis, to submit to such restraints beyond a certain point; his patience would soon have become exhausted, want of practice would have led him to make slips or omissions, rendering the rites null and void; and the temporal affairs of his kingdom—internal administration, justice, finance, commerce, and war—made such demands upon his time, that he was obliged as soon as possible to find a substitute to fulfil his religious duties. The force of circumstances therefore maintained the line of Theban high priests side by side with their sovereigns, the Tanite kings. They were, it is true, dangerous rivals, both on account of the wealth of their fief and of the immense prestige which they enjoyed in Egypt, Ethiopia, and in all the nomes devoted to the worship of Amon. They were allied to the elder branch of the ramessides, and had thus inherited such near rights to the crown that Smendes had not hesitated to concede to Hrihor the cartouches, the preamble, and insignia of the Pharaoh, including the pschent and the iron helmet inlaid with gold. This concession, however, had been made as a personal favour, and extended only to the lifetime of Hrihor, without holding good, as a matter of course, for his successors; his son Pionkhi had to confine himself to the priestly titles,* and his grandson Painotmu enjoyed the kingly privileges only during part of his life, doubtless in consequence of his marriage with a certain Makeri, probably daughter of Psiukhannit L, the Tanite king. Makeri apparently died soon after, and the discovery of her coffin in the hiding-place at Deir el-Bahari reveals the fact of her death in giving birth to a little daughter who did not survive her, and who rests in the same coffin beside the mummy of her mother. None of the successors of Painotmu—Masahirti, Manakhpirri, Painotmu II., Psiukhannit, Nsbindidi—enjoyed a similar distinction, and if one of them happened to surround his name with a cartouche, it was done surreptitiously, without the authority of the sovereign.**

* The only monument of this prince as yet known gives him merely the usual titles of the high priest, and the inscriptions of his son Painotmu I. style him "First Prophet of Amon." His name should probably be read Paionukhi or Pionukhi, rather than Pionkhi or Piankhi. It is not unlikely that some of the papyri published by Spiegelberg date from his pontificate.

** Manakhpirri often places his name in a square cartouche which tends at times to become an oval, but this is the case only on some pieces of stuff rolled round a mummy and on some bricks concealed in the walls of el-Hibeh, Thebes, and Gebelein. If the "Psiukhannit, High Priest of Amon," who once (to our knowledge) enclosed his name in a cartouche, is really a high priest, and not a king, his case would be analogous to that of Manakhpirri.

Painotmu II. contented himself with drawing attention to his connection with the reigning house, and styled himself "Royal Son of Psiukhannit-Miamon," on account of his ancestress Makeri having been the daughter of the Pharaoh Psiukhannit.*

* The example of the "royal sons of Ramses" explains the variant which makes "Painotmu, son of Manakhpirri," into "Painotmu, royal son of Psiukhannit-Miamon."

The relationship of which he boasted was a distant one, but many of his contemporaries who claimed to be of the line of Sesostris, and called themselves "royal sons of Ramses," traced their descent from a far more remote ancestor.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch- Bey.

The death of one high priest, or the appointment of his successor, was often the occasion of disturbances; the jealousies between his children by the same or by different wives were as bitter as those which existed in the palace of the Pharaohs, and the suzerain himself was obliged at times to interfere in order to restore peace. It was owing to an intervention of this kind that Manakhpirri was called on to replace his brother Masahirti. A section of the Theban population had revolted, but the rising had been put down by the Tanite Siamon, and its leaders banished to the Oasis; Manakhpirri had thereupon been summoned to court and officially invested with the pontificate in the XXVth year of the king's reign. But on his return to Karnak, the new high priest desired to heal old feuds, and at once recalled the exiles.* Troubles and disorders appeared to beset the Thebans, and, like the last of the Ramessides, they were engaged in a perpetual struggle against robbers.**

* This appears in the Maunier Stele preserved for some time in the "Maison Francaise" at Luxor, and now removed to the Louvre.

** The series of high priests side by side with the sovereigns of the XXIst dynasty may be provisionally arranged as follows:—



The town, deprived of its former influx of foreign spoil, became more and more impoverished, and its population gradually dwindled. The necropolis suffered increasingly from pillagers, and the burying-places of the kings were felt to be in such danger, that the authorities, despairing of being able to protect them, withdrew the mummies from their resting-places. The bodies of Seti I., Ramses II., and Ramses III. were once more carried down the valley, and, after various removals, were at length huddled together for safety in the tomb of Amenothes I. at Drah-abu'l-Neggah.

The Tanite Pharaohs seemed to have lacked neither courage nor good will. The few monuments which they have left show that to some extent they carried on the works begun by their predecessors. An unusually high inundation had injured the temple at Karnak, the foundations had been denuded by the water, and serious damage would have been done, had not the work of reparation been immediately undertaken. Nsbindidi reopened the sandstone quarries between Erment and Grebelein, from which Seti I. had obtained the building materials for the temple, and drew from thence what was required for the repair of the edifice. Two of the descendants of Nsbindidi, Psiukhannit I. and Amenemopit, remodelled the little temple built by Kheops in honour of his daughter Honit-sonu, at the south-east angle of his pyramid. Both Siamonmiamon and Psiukhannit I. have left traces of their work at Memphis, and the latter inserted his cartouches on two of the obelisks raised by Ramses at Heliopolis. But these were only minor undertakings, and it is at Tanis that we must seek the most characteristic examples of their activity. Here it was that Psiukhannit rebuilt the brick ramparts which defended the city, and decorated several of the halls of the great temple. The pylons of this sanctuary had been merely begun by Sesostris: Siamon completed them, and added the sphinxes; and the metal plaques and small objects which he concealed under the base of one of the latter have been brought to light in the course of excavations. The appropriation of the monuments of other kings, which we have remarked under former dynasties, was also practised by the Tanites. Siamon placed his inscriptions over those of the Kamessides, and Psiukhannit engraved his name on the sphinxes and statues of Ame-nemhait III. as unscrupulously as Apophis and the Hyksos had done before him. The Tanite sovereigns, however, were not at a loss for artists, and they had revived, after the lapse of centuries, the traditions of the local school which had flourished during the XIIth dynasty.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch- Bey.

One of the groups, executed by order of Psiukhannit, has escaped destruction, and is now in the Gizeh Museum. It represents two figures of the Nile, marching gravely shoulder to shoulder, and carrying in front of them tables of offerings, ornamented with fish and garnished with flowers. The stone in which they are executed is of an extraordinary hardness, but the sculptor has, notwithstanding, succeeded in carving and polishing it with a skill which does credit to his proficiency in his craft. The general effect of the figures is a little heavy, but the detail is excellent, and the correctness of pose, precision in modelling, and harmony of proportion are beyond criticism. The heads present a certain element of strangeness. The artist evidently took as his model, as far as type and style of head-dress are concerned, the monuments of Amenemhait III. which he saw around him; indeed, he probably copied one of them feature for feature. He has reproduced the severity of expression, the firm mouth, the projecting cheek-bones, the long hair and fan-shaped beard of his model, but he has not been able to imitate the broad and powerful treatment of the older artists; his method of execution has a certain hardness and conventionality which we never see to the same extent in the statues of the XIIth dynasty. The work is, however, an extremely interesting one, and we are tempted to wish that many more such monuments had been saved from the ruins of the city.*

* Mariette attributes this group to the Hyksos; I have already expressed the opinion that it dates from the XXIst dynasty.

The Pharaoh who dedicated it was a great builder, and, like most of his predecessors with similar tastes, somewhat of a conqueror. The sovereigns of the XXIst dynasty, though they never undertook any distant campaigns, did not neglect to keep up a kind of suzerainty over the Philistine Shephelah to which they still laid claim. The expedition which one of them, probably Psiukhannit II., led against Gezer, the alliance with the Hebrews and the marriage of a royal princess with Solomon, must all have been regarded at the court of Tanis as a partial revival of the former Egyptian rule in Syria. The kings were, however, obliged to rest content with small results, for though their battalions were sufficiently numerous and well disciplined to overcome the Canaanite chiefs, or even the Israelite kingdom, it is to be doubted whether they were strong enough to attack the troops of the Aramaean or Hittite princes, who had a highly organised military system, modelled on that of Assyria. Egyptian arms and tactics had not made much progress since the great campaigns of the Theban conquerors; the military authorities still complacently trusted to their chariots and their light troops of archers at a period when the whole success of a campaign was decided by heavily armed infantry, and when cavalry had already begun to change the issue of battles. The decadence of the military spirit in Egypt had been particularly marked in all classes under the later Ramessides, and the native militia, without exception, was reduced to a mere rabble—courageous, it is true, and able to sell their lives dearly when occasion demanded, rather than give way before the enemy, but entirely lacking that enthusiasm and resolution which sweep all obstacles before them. The chariotry had not degenerated in the same way, thanks to the care with which the Pharaoh and his vassals kept up the breeding of suitable horses in the training stables of the principal towns. Egypt provided Solomon with draught-horses, and with strong yet light chariots, which he sold with advantage to the sovereigns of the Orontes and the Euphrates. But it was the mercenaries who constituted the most active and effective section of the Pharaonic armies. These troops formed the backbone on which all the other elements—chariots, spearmen, and native archers—were dependent. Their spirited attack carried the other troops with them, and by a tremendous onslaught on the enemy at a decisive moment gave the commanding general some chance of success against the better-equipped and better-organised battalions that he would be sure to meet with on the plains of Asia. The Tanite kings enrolled these mercenaries in large numbers: they entrusted them with the garrisoning of the principal towns, and confirmed the privileges which their chiefs had received from the Ramessides, but the results of such a policy were not long in manifesting themselves, and this state of affairs had been barely a century in existence before Egypt became a prey to the barbarians.

It would perhaps be more correct to say that it had fallen a prey to the Libyans only. The Asiatics and Europeans whom the Theban Pharaohs had called in to fight for them had become merged in the bulk of the nation, or had died out for lack of renewal. Semites abounded, it is true, in the eastern nomes of the Delta, but their presence had no effect on the military strength of the country. Some had settled in the towns and villages, and were engaged in commerce or industry; these included Phoenician, Canaanite, Edomite, and even Hebrew merchants and artisans, who had been forced to flee from their own countries owing to political disturbances.*

* Jeroboam (1 Kings xi. 40, xii. 2, 3) and Hadad (1 Kings xi. 17-22) took refuge in this way at the court of Pharaoh.

A certain proportion were descendants of the Hidjsos, who had been reinforced from time to time by settlements of prisoners captured in battle; they had taken refuge in the marshes as in the times of Abmosis, and there lived in a kind of semi-civilized independence, refusing to pay taxes, boasting of having kept themselves from any alliances with the inhabitants of the Nile valley, while their kinsmen of the older stock betrayed the knowledge of their origin by such disparaging nicknames as Pa-shmuri, "the stranger," or Pi-atnu, "the Asiatic." The Shardana, who had constituted the body-guard of Ramses II., and whose commanders had, under Ramses III., ranked with the great officers of the crown, had all but disappeared. It had been found difficult to recruit them since the dislodgment of the People of the Sea from the Delta and the Syrian littoral, and their settlement in Italy and the fabulous islands of the Mediterranean; the adventurers from Crete and the AEgean coasts now preferred to serve under the Philistines, where they found those who were akin to their own race, and from thence they passed on to the Hebrews, where, under David and Solomon, they were gladly hired as mercenaries.*

* Carians or Cretans (Chercthites) formed part of David's body-guard (2 Sam viii. 18, xv. 18, xx. 23); one again meets with these Carian or Cretan troops in Judah in the reign of Athaliah (2 Kings xi. 4, 19).

The Libyans had replaced the Shardana in all the offices they had filled and in all the garrison towns they had occupied. The kingdom of Maraiu and Kapur had not survived the defeats which it had suffered from Minephtah and Ramses III., but the Mashauasha who had founded it still kept an active hegemony over their former subjects; hence it was that the Egyptians became accustomed to look on all the Libyan tribes as branches of the dominant race, and confounded all the immigrants from Libya under the common name of Mashauasha.* Egypt was thus slowly flooded by Libyans; it was a gradual invasion, which succeeded by pacific means where brute force had failed. A Berber population gradually took possession of the country, occupying the eastern provinces of the Delta, filling its towns—Sais, Damanhur, and Marea—making its way into the Fayum, the suburbs of Heracleopolis, and penetrating as far south as Abydos; at the latter place they were not found in such great numbers, but still considerable enough to leave distinct traces.** The high priests of Amon seem to have been the only personages who neglected to employ this ubiquitous race; but they preferred to use the Nubian tribe of the Mazaiu,*** who probably from the XIIth dynasty onwards had constituted the police force of Thebes.

* Ramses III. still distinguished between the Qahaka, the Tihonu, and the Mashauasha; the monuments of the XXIInd dynasty only recognise the Mashaiiasha, whose name they curtail to Ma.

** The presence in those regions of persons bearing Asiatic names has been remarked, without drawing thence any proof for the existence of Asiatic colonies in those regions. The presence of Libyans at Abydos seems to be proved by the discovery in that town of the little monument reproduced on the next page, and of many objects in the same style, many of which are in the Louvre or the British Museum.

*** I have not discovered among the personal attendants of the descendants of Hrihor any functionary bearing the title of Chief of the Mashaiuasha ; even those who bore it later on, under the XXIInd dynasty, were always officers from the north of Egypt. It seems almost certain that Thebes always avoided having Libyan troops, and never received a Mashauasha settlement.

These Libyan immigrants had adopted the arts of Egypt and the externals of her civilization; they sculptured rude figures on the rocks and engraved scenes on their stone vessels, in which they are represented fully armed,* and taking part in some skirmish or attack, or even a chase in the desert. The hunters are divided into two groups, each of which is preceded by a different ensign—that of the West for the right wing of the troop, and that of the East for the left wing. They carry the spear the boomerang, the club, the double-curved bow, and the dart; a fox's skin depends from their belts over their thighs, and an ostrich's feather waves above their curly hair.

* I attribute to the Libyans, whether mercenaries or tribes hovering on the Egyptian frontier, the figures cut everywhere on the rocks, which no one up till now has reproduced or studied. To them I attribute also the tombs which Mr. Petrie has so successfully explored, and in which he finds the remains of a New Race which seems to have conquered Egypt after the VIth dynasty: they appear to be of different periods, but all belong to the Berber horsemen of the desert and the outskirts of the Nile valley.



Drawn by Boudier, from the original in the Louvre.

They never abandoned this special head-dress and manner of arming themselves, and they can always be recognised on the monuments by the plumes surmounting their forehead.*

* This design is generally thought to represent a piece of cloth folded in two, and laid flat on the head; examination of the monuments proves that it is the ostrich plume fixed at the back of the head, and laid flat on the hair or wig.

Their settlement on the banks of the Nile and intermarriage with the Egyptians had no deteriorating effect on them, as had been the case with the Shardana, and they preserved nearly all their national characteristics. If here and there some of them became assimilated with the natives, there was always a constant influx of new comers, full of energy and vigour, who kept the race from becoming enfeebled. The attractions of high pay and the prospect of a free-and-easy life drew them to the service of the feudal lords. The Pharaoh entrusted their chiefs with confidential offices about his person, and placed the royal princes at their head. The position at length attained by these Mashauasha was analogous to that of the Oossasans at Babylon, and, indeed, was merely the usual sequel of permitting a foreign militia to surround an Oriental monarch; they became the masters of their sovereigns. Some of their generals went so far as to attempt to use the soldiery to overturn the native dynasty, and place themselves upon the throne; others sought to make and unmake kings to suit their own taste. The earlier Tanite sovereigns had hoped to strengthen their authority by trusting entirely to the fidelity and gratitude of their guard; the later kings became mere puppets in the hands of mercenaries. At length a Libyan family arose who, while leaving the externals of power in the hands of the native sovereigns, reserved to themselves the actual administration, and reduced the kings to the condition of luxurious dependence enjoyed by the elder branch of the Ramessides under the rule of the high priests of Amon.

There was at Bubastis, towards the middle or end of the XXth dynasty, a Tihonu named Buiuwa-buiuwa. He was undoubtedly a soldier of fortune, without either office or rank, but his descendants prospered and rose to important positions among the Mashadasha chiefs: the fourth among these, Sheshonq by name, married Mihtinuoskhit, a princess of the royal line. His son, Namaroti, managed to combine with his function of chief of the Mashauasha several religious offices, and his grandson, also called Sheshonq, had a still more brilliant career. We learn from the monuments of the latter that, even before he had ascended the throne, he was recognised as king and prince of princes, and had conferred on him the command of all the Libyan troops. Officially he was the chief person in the state after the sovereign, and had the privilege of holding personal intercourse with the gods, Amonra included—a right which belonged exclusively to the Pharaoh and the Theban high priest. The honours which he bestowed upon his dead ancestors were of a remarkable character, and included the institution of a liturgical office in connection with his father Namaroti, a work which resembles in its sentiments the devotions of Bamses II. to the memory of Seti. He succeeded in arranging a marriage between his son Osorkon and a princess of the royal line, the daughter of Psiukhannit II., by which alliance he secured the Tanite succession; he obtained as a wife for his second son Auputi, the priestess of Amon, and thus obtained an indirect influence over the Said and Nubia.*

* The date of the death of Painotmu II. is fixed at the XVIth year of his reign, according to the inscriptions in the pit at Deir el-Bahari. This would be the date of the accession of Auputi', if Auputi succeeded him directly, as I am inclined to believe; but if Psiukhannit was his immediate successor, and if Nsbindidi succeeded Manakhpirri, we must place the accession of Auputi some years later.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by E. Brugsch-Bey.

This priestess was probably a daughter or niece of Painotmu II., but we are unacquainted with her name. The princesses continued to play a preponderating part in the transmission of power, and we may assume that the lady in question was one of those whose names have come down to us—Nsikhonsu, Nsitani-bashiru, or Isimkhobiu II., who brought with her as a dowry the Bubastite fief. We are at a loss whether to place Auputi immediately after Painotmu, or between the ephemeral pontificates of a certain Psiukhannit and a certain Nsbindidi. His succession imposed a very onerous duty upon him. Thebes was going through the agonies of famine and misery, and no police supervision in the world could secure the treasures stored up in the tombs of a more prosperous age from the attacks of a famished people. Arrests, trials, and punishments were ineffectual against the violation of the sepulchres, and even the royal mummies—including those placed in the chapel of Amenothes I. by previous high priests—were not exempt from outrage. The remains of the most glorious of the Pharaohs were reclining in this chapel, forming a sort of solemn parliament: here was Saqnunri Tiuaqni, the last member of the XVIIth dynasty; here also were the first of the XVIIIth—Ahmosis, Amenothes I., and the three of the name Thutmosis, together with the favourites of their respective harems—Nofritari, Ahhotpu II., Anhapu, Honittimihu, and Sitkamosis; and, in addition, Ramses I., Seti I., Ramses II. of the XIXth dynasty, Ramses III. and Ramses X. of the XXth dynasty. The "Servants of the True Place" were accustomed to celebrate at the appointed periods the necessary rites established in their honour. Inspectors, appointed for the purpose by the government, determined from time to time the identity of the royal mummies, and examined into the condition of their wrappings and coffins: after each inspection a report, giving the date and the name of the functionary responsible for the examination, was inscribed on the linen or the lid covering the bodies. The most of the mummies had suffered considerably before they reached the refuge in which they were found. The bodies of Sitamon and of the Princess Honittimihu had been completely destroyed, and bundles of rags had been substituted for them, so arranged with pieces of wood as to resemble human figures. Ramses I., Ramses II., and Thutmosis had been deprived of their original shells, and were found in extemporised cases. Hrihor's successors, who regarded these sovereigns as their legitimate ancestors, had guarded them with watchful care, but Auputi, who did not feel himself so closely related to these old-world Pharaohs, considered, doubtless, this vigilance irksome, and determined to locate the mummies in a spot where they would henceforward be secure from all attack. A princess of the family of Manakhpirri—Isimkhobiu, it would appear—had prepared a tomb for herself in the rocky cliff which bounds the amphitheatre of Deir el-Bahari on the south. The position lent itself readily to concealment. It consisted of a well some 130 feet deep, with a passage running out of it at right angles for a distance of some 200 feet and ending in a low, oblong, roughly cut chamber, lacking both ornament and paintings. Painotmu II. had been placed within this chamber in the XVIth year of the reign of Psiukhannit II., and several members of his family had been placed beside him not long afterwards. Auputi soon transferred thither the batch of mummies which, in the chapel of Amenothes I., had been awaiting a more definite sepulture; the coffins, with what remained of their funerary furniture, were huddled together in disorder. The chamber having been filled up to the roof, the remaining materials, consisting of coffers, boxes of Ushabti, Canopic jars, garlands, together with the belongings of priestly mummies, were arranged along the passage; when the place was full, the entrance was walled up, the well filled, and its opening so dexterously covered that it remained concealed until-our own time. The accidental "sounding" of some pillaging Arabs revealed the place as far back as 1872, but it was not until ten years later (1881) that the Pharaohs once more saw the light. They are now enthroned—who can say for how many years longer? —in the chambers of the Gizeh Museum. Egypt is truly a land of marvels! It has not only, like Assyria and Chaldaea, Greece and Italy, preserved for us monuments by which its historic past may be reconstructed, but it has handed on to us the men themselves who set up the monuments and made the history. Her great monarchs are not any longer mere names deprived of appropriate forms, and floating colourless and shapeless in the imagination of posterity: they may be weighed, touched, and measured; the capacity of their brains may be gauged; the curve of their noses and the cut of their mouths may be determined; we know if they were bald, or if they suffered from some secret infirmity; and, as we are able to do in the case of our contemporaries, we may publish their portraits taken first hand in the photographic camera. Sheshonq, by assuming the control of the Theban priesthood, did not on this account extend his sovereignty over Egypt beyond its southern portion, and that part of Nubia which still depended on it. Ethiopia remained probably outside his jurisdiction, and constituted from this time forward an independent kingdom, under the rule of dynasties which were, or claimed to be, descendants of Hrihor. The oasis, on the other hand, and the Libyan provinces in the neighbourhood of the Delta and the sea, rendered obedience to his officers, and furnished him with troops which were recognised as among his best. Sheshonq found himself at the death of Psiukhannit II., which took place about 940 B.C., sole master of Egypt, with an effective army and well-replenished treasury at his disposal. What better use could he make of his resources than devote them to reasserting the traditional authority of his country over Syria? The intestine quarrels of the only state of any importance in that region furnished him with an opportunity of which he found it easy to take advantage. Solomon in his eyes was merely a crowned vassal of Egypt, and his appeal for aid to subdue Gezer, his marriage with a daughter of the Egyptian royal house, the position he had assigned her over all his other wives, and all that we know of the relations between Jerusalem and Tanis at the time, seem to indicate that the Hebrews themselves acknowledged some sort of dependency upon Egypt. They were not, however, on this account free from suspicion in their suzerain's eyes, who seized upon every pretext that offered itself to cause them embarrassment. Hadad, and Jeroboam afterwards, had been well received at the court of the Pharaoh, and it was with Egyptian subsidies that these two rebels returned to their country, the former in the lifetime of Solomon, and the latter after his death. When Jeroboam saw that he was threatened by Rehoboam, he naturally turned to his old protectors. Sheshonq had two problems before him. Should he confirm by his intervention the division of the kingdom, which had flourished in Kharu for now half a century, into two rival states, or should he himself give way to the vulgar appetite for booty, and step in for his own exclusive interest? He invaded Judaea four years after the schism, and Jerusalem offered no resistance to him; Rehoboam ransomed his capital by emptying the royal treasuries and temple, rendering up even the golden shields which Solomon was accustomed to assign to his guards when on duty about his person.*

* 1 Kings xiv. 25-28; cf. 2 Chron. xii. 1-10, where an episode, not in the Book of Kings, is introduced. The prophet Shemaiah played an important part in the transaction.

This expedition of the Pharaoh was neither dangerous nor protracted, but it was more than two hundred years since so much riches from countries beyond the isthmus had been brought into Egypt, and the king was consequently regarded by the whole people of the Nile valley as a great hero. Auputi took upon himself the task of recording the exploit on the south wall of the temple of Amon at Karnak, not far from the spot where Ramses II. had had engraved the incidents of his Syrian campaigns. His architect was sent to Silsilis to procure the necessary sandstone to repair the monument. He depicted upon it his father receiving at the hands of Amon processions of Jewish prisoners, each one representing a captured city. The list makes a brave show, and is remarkable for the number of the names composing it: in comparison with those of Thutmosis III., it is disappointing, and one sees at a glance how inferior, even in its triumph, the Egypt of the XXIInd dynasty was to that of the XVIIIth.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato.

It is no longer a question of Carchemish, or Qodshu, or Mitanni, or Naharaim: Megiddo is the most northern point mentioned, and the localities enumerated bring us more and more to the south—Eabbat, Taanach, Hapharaim, Mahanaim,* Gibeon, Beth-horon, Ajalon, Jud-hammelek, Migdol, Jerza, Shoko, and the villages of the Negeb. Each locality, in consequence of the cataloguing of obscure towns, furnished enough material to cover two, or even three of the crenellated cartouches in which the names of the conquered peoples are enclosed, and Sheshonq had thus the puerile satisfaction of parading before the eyes of his subjects a longer cortege of defeated chiefs than that of his predecessor. His victorious career did not last long: he died shortly after, and his son Osorkon was content to assume at a distance authority over the Kharu.**

* The existence of the names of certain Israelite towns on the list of. Sheshonq has somewhat astonished the majority of the historians of Israel. Renan declared that the list must "put aside the conjecture that Jeroboam had been the instigator of the expedition, which would certainly have been readily admissible, especially if any force were attached to the Greek text of 1 Kings xii. 24, which makes Jeroboam to have been a son-in-law of the King of Egypt;" the same view had been already expressed by Stade; others have thought that Sheshonq had conquered the country for his ally Jeroboam. Sheshonq, in fact, was following the Egyptian custom by which all countries and towns which paid tribute to the Pharaoh, or who recognised his suzerainty, were made to, or might, figure on his triumphal lists whether they had been conquered or not: the presence of Megiddo or Mahanaim on the lists does not prove that they were conquered by Sheshonq, but that the prince to whom they owed allegiance was a tributary to the King of Egypt. The name of Jud-ham- melek, which occupies the twenty-ninth place on the list, was for a long time translated as king or kingdom of Judah, and passed for being a portrait of Rehoboam, which is impossible. The Hebrew name was read by W. Max Millier Jad- ham-meleh, the hand, the fort of the king. It appears to me to be more easy to see in it Jud-liam-meleh and to associate it with Jehudah, a town of the tribe of Dan, as Brugsch did long ago.

** Champollion identified Osorkon I. with the Zerah, who, according to 2 Chron. xiv. 9-15, xvi. 8, invaded Judah and was defeated by Asa, but this has no historic value, for it is clear that Osorkon never crossed the isthmus.

It does not appear, however, that either the Philistines, or Judah, or Israel, or any of the petty tribes which had momentarily gravitated around David and Solomon, were disposed to dispute Osorkon's claim, theoretic rather than real as it was. The sword of the stranger had finished the work which the intestine quarrel of the tribes had begun. If Rehoboam had ever formed the project of welding together the disintegrated elements of Israel, the taking of Jerusalem must have been a death-blow to his hopes. His arsenals were empty, his treasury at low ebb, and the prestige purchased by David's victories was effaced by the humiliation of his own defeat. The ease with which the edifice so laboriously constructed by the heroes of Benjamin and Judah had been overturned at the first shock, was a proof that the new possessors of Canaan were as little capable of barring the way to Egypt in her old age, as their predecessors had been when she was in her youth and vigour. The Philistines had had their day; it seemed by no means improbable at one time that they were about to sweep everything before them, from the Negeb to the Orontes, but their peculiar position in the furthest angle of the country, and their numerical weakness, prevented them from continuing their efforts for a prolonged period, and they were at length obliged to renounce in favour of the Hebrews their ambitious pretensions. The latter, who had been making steady progress for some half a century, had been successful where the Philistines had signally failed, and Southern Syria recognised their supremacy for the space of two generations. We can only conjecture what they might have done if a second David had led them into the valleys of the Orontes and Euphrates. They were stronger in numbers than their possible opponents, and their troops, strengthened by mercenary guards, would have perhaps triumphed over the more skilled but fewer warriors which the Amorite and Aramaean cities could throw into the field against them. The pacific reign of Solomon, the schism among the tribes, and the Egyptian invasion furnished evidence enough that they also were not destined to realise that solidarity which alone could secure them against the great Oriental empires when the day of attack came.

The two kingdoms were then enjoying an independent existence. Judah, in spite of its smaller numbers and its recent disaster, was not far behind the more extensive Israel in its resources. David, and afterwards Solomon, had so kneaded together the various elements of which it was composed—Caleb, Cain, Jerahmeel and the Judsean clans—that they had become a homogeneous mass, grouped around the capital and its splendid sanctuary, and actuated with feelings of profound admiration and strong fidelity for the family which had made them what they were. Misfortune had not chilled their zeal: they rallied round Rehoboam and his race with such a persistency that they were enabled to maintain their ground when their richer rivals had squandered their energies and fallen away before their eyes. Jeroboam, indeed, and his successors had never obtained from their people more than a precarious support and a lukewarm devotion: their authority was continually coming into conflict with a tendency to disintegration among the tribes, and they could only maintain their rule by the constant employment of force. Jeroboam had collected together from the garrisons scattered throughout the country the nucleus of an army, and had stationed the strongest of these troops in his residence at Tirzah when he did not require them for some expedition against Judah or the Philistines. His successors followed his example in this respect, but this military resource was only an ineffectual protection against the dangers which beset them. The kings were literally at the mercy of their guard, and their reign was entirely dependent on its loyalty or caprice: any unscrupulous upstart might succeed in suborning his comrades, and the stroke of a dagger might at any moment send the sovereign to join his ancestors, while the successful rebel reigned in his stead.* The Egyptian troops had no sooner set out on their homeward march, than the two kingdoms began to display their respective characteristics. An implacable and truceless war broke out between them. The frontier garrisons of the two nations fought with each other from one year's end to another—carrying off each other's cattle, massacring one another, burning each other's villages and leading their inhabitants into slavery.**

* Among nineteen kings of Israel, eight were assassinated and were replaced by the captains of their guards—Nadab, Elah, Zimri, Joram, Zachariah, Shallum, Pekahiah, and Pekah.

** This is what is meant by the Hebrew historians when they say "there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life" (1 Kings xv. 6; cf. 2 Ohron. xii. 15), and "between Abijam and Jeroboam" (1 Kings xv. 7; 2 Ohron. xiii. 2), and "between Asa and Baasha" (1 Kings xv. 16, 32) "all their days."

From time to time, when the situation became intolerable, one of the kings took the field in person, and began operations by attacking such of his enemy's strongholds as gave him the most trouble at the time. Ramah acquired an unenviable reputation in the course of these early conflicts: its position gave it command of the roads terminating in Jerusalem, and when it fell into the hands of Israel, the Judaean capital was blockaded on this side. The strife for its possession was always of a terrible character, and the party which succeeded in establishing itself firmly within it was deemed to have obtained a great success.*

* The campaign of Abijah at Mount Zemaraim (2 Chron. xiii. 3-19), in which the foundation of the narrative and the geographical details seem fully historical. See also the campaign of Baasha against Ramah (1 Kings xv. 17-22; cf. 2 Chron. xvi. 1-6).

The encounter of the armies did not, however, seem to produce much more serious results than those which followed the continual guerilla warfare along the frontier: the conqueror had no sooner defeated his enemy than he set to work to pillage the country in the vicinity, and, having accomplished this, returned promptly to his headquarters with the booty. Rehoboam, who had seen something of the magnificence of Solomon, tried to perpetuate the tradition of it in his court, as far as his slender revenues would permit him. He had eighteen women in his harem, among whom figured some of his aunts and cousins. The titular queen was Maacah, who was represented as a daughter of Absalom. She was devoted to the asheras, and the king was not behind his father in his tolerance of strange gods; the high places continued to be tolerated by him as sites of worship, and even Jerusalem was not free from manifestations of such idolatry as was associated with the old Canaanite religion. He reigned seventeen years, and was interred in the city of David;* Abijam, the eldest son of Maacah, succeeded him, and followed in his evil ways. Three years later Asa came to the throne,** no opposition being raised to his accession. In Israel matters did not go so smoothly. When Jeroboam, after a reign of twenty-two years, was succeeded by his son Nadab, about the year 905 B.C., it was soon evident that the instinct of loyalty to a particular dynasty had not yet laid any firm hold on the ten tribes. The peace between the Philistines and Israel was quite as unstable as that between Israel and Judah: an endless guerilla warfare was waged on the frontier, Gibbethon being made to play much the same part in this region as Ramah had done in regard to Jerusalem. For the moment it was in the hands of the Philistines, and in the second year of his reign Nadab had gone to lay siege to it in force, when he was assassinated in his tent by one of his captains, a certain Baasha, son of Ahijah, of the tribe of Issachar: the soldiers proclaimed the assassin king, and the people found themselves powerless to reject the nominee of the army.***

* 1 Kings xiv. 22-24; cf. 2 Chron. xi. 18-23, where the details given in addition to those in the Booh of Kings seem to be of undoubted authenticity.

** 1 Kings xv. 1-8; cf. 2 Chron. xiii. The Booh of Kings describes his mother as Maacah, the daughter of Absalom (xv. 10), which would seem to indicate that he was the brother and not the son of Abijam. The uncertainty on this point is of long standing, for the author of Chronicles makes Abijam's mother out in one place to be Micaiah, daughter of Uriel of Gibcah (xiii. 2), and in another (xi. 20) Maacah, daughter of Absalom.

*** 1 Kings xv. 27-34.

Baasha pressed forward resolutely his campaign against Judah. He seized Eamah and fortified it;* and Asa, feeling his incapacity to dislodge him unaided, sought to secure an ally. Egypt was too much occupied with its own internal dissensions to be able to render any effectual help, but a new power, which would profit quite as much as Judah by the overthrow of Israel, was beginning to assert itself in the north. Damascus had, so far, led an obscure and peaceful existence; it had given way before Egypt and Chaldaea whenever the Egyptians or Chaldseans had appeared within striking distance, but had refrained from taking any part in the disturbances by which Syria was torn asunder. Having been occupied by the Amorites, it threw its lot in with theirs, keeping, however, sedulously in the background: while the princes of Qodshu waged war against the Pharaohs, undismayed by frequent reverses, Damascus did not scruple to pay tribute to Thutmosis III. and his descendants, or to enter into friendly relations with them. Meanwhile the Amorites had been overthrown, and Qodshu, ruined by the Asiatic invasion, soon became little more than an obscure third-rate town;** the Aramaeans made themselves masters of Damascus about the XIIth century, and in their hands it continued to be, just as in the preceding epochs, a town without ambitions and of no great renown.

* 1 Kings xv. 17; cf. 2 Ghron. xvi. 1.

** Qodshu is only once mentioned in the Bible (2 Sam. xxiv. 6), in which passage its name, misunderstood by the Massoretic scribe, has been restored from the Septuagint text.

We have seen how the Aramaeans, alarmed at the sudden rise of the Hebrew dynasty, entered into a coalition against David with the Ammonite leaders: Zoba aspired to the chief place among the nations of Central Syria, but met with reverses, and its defeat delivered over to the Israelites its revolted dependencies in the Hauran and its vicinity, such as Maacah, Geshur, and even Damascus itself.* The supremacy was, however, shortlived; immediately after the death of David, a chief named Rezon undertook to free them from the yoke of the stranger. He had begun his military career under Hada-dezer, King of Zoba: when disaster overtook this leader and released him from his allegiance, he collected an armed force and fought for his own hand. A lucky stroke made him master of Damascus: he proclaimed himself king there, harassed the Israelites with impunity during the reign of Solomon, and took over the possessions of the kings of Zoba in the valleys of the Litany and the Orontes.** The rupture between the houses of Israel and Judah removed the only dangerous rival from his path, and Damascus became the paramount power in Southern and Central Palestine. While Judah and Israel wasted their strength in fratricidal struggles, Tabrimmon, and after him Benhadad I., gradually extended their territory in Coele-Syria;*** they conquered Hamath, and the desert valleys which extend north-eastward in the direction of the Euphrates, and forced a number of the Hittite kings to render them homage.

* Cf. what is said in regard to these events on pp. 351, 352, supra.

** 1 Kings xi. 23-25. The reading "Esron" in the Septuagint (1 Kings xi. 23) indicates a form "Khezron," by which it was sought to replace the traditional reading "Rezon."

*** Hezion, whom the Jewish writer intercalates before Tabrimmon (1 Kings xv. 18), is probably a corruption of Rezon; Winckler, relying on the Septuagint variants Azin or Azael (1 Kings xv. 18), proposes to alter Hezion into Hazael, and inserts a certain Hazael I. in this place. Tabrimmon is only mentioned in 1 Kings xv. 18, where he is said to have been the father of Benhadad.

They had concluded an alliance with Jeroboam as soon as he established his separate kingdom, and maintained the treaty with his successors, Nadab and Baasha. Asa collected all the gold and silver which was left in the temple of Jerusalem and in his own palace, and sent it to Benhadad, saying, "There is a league between me and thee, between thy father and my father: behold, I have sent unto thee a present of silver and gold; go, break thy league with Baasha, King of Israel, that he may depart from me." It would seem that Baasha, in his eagerness to complete the fortifications of Ramah, had left his northern frontier undefended. Benhadad accepted the proposal and presents of the King of Judah, invaded Galilee, seized the cities of Ijon, Dan, and Abel-beth-Maacah, which defended the upper reaches of the Jordan and the Litany, the lowlands of Genesareth, and all the land of Naphtali. Baasha hastily withdrew from Judah, made terms with Benhadad, and settled down in Tirzah for the remainder of his reign;* Asa demolished Eamah, and built the strongholds of Gebah and Mizpah from its ruins.** Benhadad retained the territory he had acquired, and exercised a nominal sovereignty over the two Hebrew kingdoms. Baasha, like Jeroboam, failed to found a lasting dynasty; his son Blah met with the same fate at the hands of Zimri which he himself had meted out to Nadab. As on the former occasion, the army was encamped before Gibbethon, in the country of the Philistines, when the tragedy took place.

* 1 Kings xv. 21, xvi. 6.

** 1 Kings xv. 18-22; of. 2 Ghron. xvi. 2-6.

Elah was at Tirzah, "drinking himself drunk in the house of Arza, which was over the household;" Zimri, who was "captain of half his chariots," left his post at the front, and assassinated him as he lay intoxicated. The whole family of Baasha perished in the subsequent confusion, but the assassin only survived by seven days the date of his crime. When the troops which he had left behind him in camp heard of what had occurred, they refused to accept him as king, and, choosing Omri in his place, marched against Tirzah. Zimri, finding it was impossible either to win them over to his side or defeat them, set fire to the palace, and perished in the flames. His death did not, however, restore peace to Israel; while one-half of the tribes approved the choice of the army, the other flocked to the standard of Tibni, son of Ginath. War raged between the two factions for four years, and was only ended by the death—whether natural or violent we do not know—of Tibni and his brother Joram.*

* 1 Kings xvi. 8-22; Joram is not mentioned in the Massoretic text, but his name appears in the Septuagint.

Two dynasties had thus arisen in Israel, and had been swept away by revolutionary outbursts, while at Jerusalem the descendants of David followed one another in unbroken succession. Asa outlived Nadab by eleven years, and we hear nothing of his relations with the neighbouring states during the latter part of his reign. We are merely told that his zeal in the service of the Lord was greater than had been shown by any of his predecessors. He threw down the idols, expelled their priests, and persecuted all those who practised the ancient religions. His grandmother Maacah "had made an abominable image for an asherah;" he cut it down, and burnt it in the valley of the Kedron, and deposed her from the supremacy in the royal household which she had held for three generations. He is, therefore, the first of the kings to receive favourable mention from the orthodox chroniclers of later times, and it is stated that he "did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did David his father."* Omri proved a warlike monarch, and his reign, though not a long one, was signalised by a decisive crisis in the fortunes of Israel.** The northern tribes had, so far, possessed no settled capital, Shechem, Penuel, and Tirzah having served in turn as residences for the successors of Jeroboam and Baasha. Latterly Tirzah had been accorded a preference over its rivals; but Zimri had burnt the castle there, and the ease with which it had been taken and retaken was not calculated to reassure the head of the new dynasty. Omri turned his attention to a site lying a little to the north-west of Shechem and Mount Ebal, and at that time partly covered by the hamlet of Shomeron or Shimron—our modern Samaria.***

* 1 Kings xv. 11; cf. 2 Ohron. xiv. 2. It is admitted, however, though without any blame being attached to him, that "the high places were not taken away" (1 Kings xv. 14; cf. 2 Chron. xv. 17).

** The Hebrew writer gives the length of his reign as twelve years (1 Kings xvi. 23). Several historians consider this period too brief, and wish to extend it to twenty-four years; I cannot, however, see that there is, so far, any good reason for doubting the approximate accuracy of the Bible figures.

*** According to the tradition preserved in 1 Kings xvi. 24, the name of the city comes from Shomer, the man from whom Ahab bought the site.

His choice was a wise and judicious one, as the rapid development of the city soon proved. It lay on the brow of a rounded hill, which rose in the centre of a wide and deep depression, and was connected by a narrow ridge with the surrounding mountains. The valley round it is fertile and well watered, and the mountains are cultivated up to their summits; throughout the whole of Ephraim it would have been difficult to find a site which could compare with it in strength or attractiveness. Omri surrounded his city with substantial ramparts; he built a palace for himself, and a temple in which was enthroned a golden calf similar to those at Dan and Bethel.* A population drawn from other nations besides the Israelites flocked into this well-defended stronghold, and Samaria soon came to be for Israel what Jerusalem already was for Judah, an almost impregnable fortress, in which the sovereign entrenched himself, and round which the nation could rally in times of danger. His contemporaries fully realised the importance of this move on Omri's part; his name became inseparably connected in their minds with that of Israel. Samaria and the house of Joseph were for them, henceforth, the house of Omri, Bit-Omri, and the name still clung to them long after Omri had died and his family had become extinct.**

* Amos viii. 14, where the sin of Samaria, coupled as it is with the life of the god of Dan and the way of Beersheba, can, as Wellhausen points out, only refer to the image of the calf worshipped at Samaria.

** Shalmaneser II. even goes so far as to describe Jehu, who exterminated the family of Omri, as Jaua ahal Khumri, "Jehu, son of Omri."

He gained the supremacy over Judah, and forced several of the south-western provinces, which had been in a state of independence since the days of Solomon, to acknowledge his rule; he conquered the country of Medeba, vanquished Kamoshgad, King of Moab, and imposed on him a heavy tribute in sheep and wool.* Against Benhadad in the north-west he was less fortunate. He was forced to surrender to him several of the cities of Gilead—among others Bamoth-gilead, which commanded the fords over the Jabbok and Jordan.**

* Inscription of Meslia, 11. 5-7; cf. 2 Kings iii. 4.

** 1 Kings xx. 34. No names are given in the text, but external evidence proves that they were cities of Persea, and that Ramoth-gilead was one of them.



Drawn by Boudier, from photograph No. 2G of the Palestine Exploration Fund.

He even set apart a special quarter in Samaria for the natives of Damascus, where they could ply their trades and worship their gods without interference. It was a kind of semi-vassalage, from which he was powerless to free himself unaided: he realised this, and looked for help from without; he asked and obtained the hand of Jezebel, daughter of Bthbaal, King of the Sidonians, for Ahab, his heir. Hiram I., the friend of David, had carried the greatness of Tyre to its highest point; after his death, the same spirit of discord which divided the Hebrews made its appearance in Phoenicia. The royal power was not easily maintained over this race of artisans and sailors: Baalbazer, son of Hiram, reigned for six years, and his successor, Abdastart, was killed in a riot after a still briefer enjoyment of power. We know how strong was the influence exercised by foster-mothers in the great families of the Bast; the four sons of Abda-start's nurse assassinated their foster-brother, and the eldest of them usurped his crown. Supported by the motley crowd of slaves and adventurers which filled the harbours of Phoenicia, they managed to cling to power for twelve years. Their stupid and brutal methods of government produced most disastrous results. A section of the aristocracy emigrated to the colonies across the sea and incited them to rebellion; had this state of things lasted for any time, the Tyrian empire would have been doomed. A revolution led to the removal of the usurper and the restoration of the former dynasty, but did not bring back to the unfortunate city the tranquillity which it sorely needed. The three surviving sons of Baalbezer, Methuastarfc, Astarym, and Phelles followed one another on the throne in rapid succession, the last-named perishing by the hand of his cousin Ethbaal, after a reign of eight months. So far, the Israelites had not attempted to take advantage of these dissensions, but there was always the danger lest one of their kings, less absorbed than his predecessors in the struggle with Judah, might be tempted by the wealth of Phoenicia to lay hands on it. Ethbaal, therefore, eagerly accepted the means of averting this danger by an alliance with the new dynasty offered to him by Omri.*

* 1 Kings xvi. 31, where the historian has Hebraicised the Phonician name Ittobaal into "Ethbaal," "Baal is with him." Izebel or Jezebel seems to be an abbreviated form of some name like Baalezbel.

The presence of a Phonician princess at Samaria seems to have had a favourable effect on the city and its inhabitants. The tribes of Northern and Central Palestine had, so far, resisted the march of material civilization which, since the days of Solomon, had carried Judah along with it; they adhered, as a matter of principle, to the rude and simple customs of their ancestors. Jezebel, who from her cradle had been accustomed to all the luxuries and refinements of the Phoenician court, was by no means prepared to dispense with them in her adopted country. By their contact with her, the Israelites—at any rate, the upper and middle classes of them—acquired a certain degree of polish; the royal office assumed a more dignified exterior, and approached more nearly the splendours of the other Syrian monarchies, such as those of Damascus, Hamath, Sidon, Tyre, and even Judah.