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.

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

ENLARGE

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.*

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.

The onward progress of Assyria towards the Mediterranean had been arrested by the Hittites, Egypt was in a condition of lethargy, the Aramæan 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.

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 Judæan 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.

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 Thûtmosis I. and Thûtmosis III., enlarged her horizon; her Pharaohs crossed the isthmus of Suez, they conquered Syria, subdued the valleys of the Euphrates and the Balîkh, 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., Mînephtah, 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.*

These were embarked on Egyptian or Phoenician galleys, and were exchanged in the ports of the Mediterranean for Syrian, Asiatic, or Ægean 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.

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 Zalû, 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.**

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 Piônkhi had to confine himself to the priestly titles,* and his grandson Paînotmû enjoyed the kingly privileges only during part of his life, doubtless in consequence of his marriage with a certain Mâkerî, probably daughter of Psiûkhânnît L, the Tanite king. Mâkerî apparently died soon after, and the discovery of her coffin in the hiding-place at Deîr el-Baharî 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 Paînotmû—Masahirti, Manakhpirrî, Paînotmû II., Psiûkhânnît, Nsbindîdi—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.**

Paînotmû II. contented himself with drawing attention to his connection with the reigning house, and styled himself “Royal Son of Psiûkhânnît-Mîamon,” on account of his ancestress Mâkerî having been the daughter of the Pharaoh Psiûkhânnît.*

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.

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 Manakhpirrî 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; Manakhpirrî 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.**

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 Amenôthes 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. Nsbindîdi reopened the sandstone quarries between Erment and Grebeleîn, 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 Nsbindîdi, Psiûkhânnît I. and Amenemôpît, remodelled the little temple built by Kheops in honour of his daughter Honît-sonû, at the south-east angle of his pyramid. Both Siamonmîamon and Psiûkhânnît 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 Psiûkhânnît 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 Psiûkhânnît engraved his name on the sphinxes and statues of Ame-nemhâît III. as unscrupulously as Apôphis and the Hyksôs 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.

One of the groups, executed by order of Psiûkhânnît, has escaped destruction, and is now in the Gîzeh 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 Amenemhâît 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.*

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 Psiûkhânnît 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 Aramæan 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.*

A certain proportion were descendants of the Hidjsôs, 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-shmûrî, “the stranger,” or Pi-âtnû, “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 Ægean 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.*

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 Mâraîû and Kapur had not survived the defeats which it had suffered from Mînephtah and Ramses III., but the Mashaûasha 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 Mashaûasha.* 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 Mâzaîû,*** who probably from the XIIth dynasty onwards had constituted the police force of Thebes.

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.