The remnants of the old aboriginal clans, which had hitherto managed to preserve their independence, mainly owing to the dissensions among the Israelites, were at last absorbed into the tribes in whose territory they had settled. A few still held out, and only gave way after long and stubborn resistance: before he could triumph over Gezer, Solomon was forced to humble himself before the Egyptian Pharaoh. He paid homage to him, asked the hand of his daughter in marriage, and having obtained it, persuaded him to come to his assistance: the Egyptian engineers placed their skill at the service of the besiegers and soon brought the recalcitrant city to reason, handing it over to Solomon in payment for his submission.* The Canaanites were obliged to submit to the poll-tax and the corvée: the men of the league of Gibeon were made hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of the Lord.** The Hebrews themselves bore their share in the expenses of the State, and though less heavily taxed than the Canaanites, were, nevertheless, compelled to contribute considerable sums; Judah alone was exempt, probably because, being the private domain of the sovereign, its revenues were already included in the royal exchequer.***
* 1 Kings ix. 16. The Pharaoh in question was probably one
of the Psiûkhânnît, the Psûsennos II. of Manetho.
** 1 Kings ix. 20, 21. The annexation of the Gibeonites and
their allies is placed at the time of the conquest in Josh.
ix. 3-27; it should be rather fixed at the date of the loss
of independence of the league, probably in the time of
Solomon.
*** Stade thinks that Judah was not exempt, and that the
original document must have given thirteen districts.
In order to facilitate the collection of the taxes, Solomon divided the kingdom into twelve districts, each of which was placed in charge of a collector; these regions did not coincide with the existing tribal boundaries, but the extent of each was determined by the wealth of the lands contained within it. While one district included the whole of Mount Ephraim, another was limited to the stronghold of Mahanaim and its suburbs. Mahanaim was at one time the capital of Israel, and had played an important part in the life of David: it held the key to the regions beyond Jordan, and its ruler was a person of such influence that it was not considered prudent to leave him too well provided with funds. By thus obliterating the old tribal boundaries, Solomon doubtless hoped to destroy, or at any rate greatly weaken, that clannish spirit which showed itself with such alarming violence at the time of the revolt of Sheba, and to weld into a single homogeneous mass the various Hebrew and Canaanitish elements of which the people of Israel were composed.*
* 1 Kings iv. 7-19, where a list of the districts is given;
the fact that two of Solomon’s sons-in-law appear in it,
show that the document from which it is taken gave the staff
of collectors in office at the close of his reign.
Each of these provinces was obliged, during one month in each year, to provide for the wants of “the king and his household,” or, in other words, the requirements of the central government. A large part of these contributions went to supply the king’s table; the daily consumption at the court was—thirty measures of fine flour, sixty measures of meal, ten fat oxen, twenty oxen out of the pastures, a hundred sheep, besides all kinds of game and fatted fowl: nor need we be surprised at these figures, for in a country where, and at a time when money was unknown, the king was obliged to supply food to all his dependents, the greater part of their emoluments consisting of these payments in kind. The tax-collectors had also to provide fodder for the horses reserved for military purposes: there were forty thousand of these, and twelve thousand charioteers, and barley and straw had to be forthcoming either in Jerusalem itself or in one or other of the garrison towns amongst which they were distributed.* The levying of tolls on caravans passing through the country completed the king’s fiscal operations which were based on the systems prevailing in neighbouring States, especially that of Egypt.**
* 1 Kings iv. 26-28; the complementary passages in 1 Kings
x. 26 and 2 Chron. i. 14 give the number of chariots as 1400
and of charioteers at 12,000. The numbers do not seem
excessive for a kingdom which embraced the whole south of
Palestine, when we reflect that, at the battle of Qodshû,
Northern Syria was able to put between 2500 and 3000
chariots into the field against Ramses II. The Hebrew
chariots probably carried at least three men, like those of
the Hittites and Assyrians.
** 1 Kings x. 15, where mention is made of the amount which
the chapmen brought, and the traffic of the merchants
contains an allusion to these tolls.
Solomon, like other Oriental sovereigns, reserved to himself the monopoly of certain imported articles, such as yarn, chariots, and horses. Egyptian yarn, perhaps the finest produced in ancient times, was in great request among the dyers and embroiderers of Asia. Chariots, at once strong and light, were important articles of commerce at a time when their use in warfare was universal. As for horses, the cities of the Delta and Middle Egypt possessed a celebrated strain of stallions, from which the Syrian princes were accustomed to obtain their war-steeds.* Solomon decreed that for the future he was to be the sole intermediary between the Asiatics and the foreign countries supplying their requirements. His agents went down at regular intervals to the banks of the Nile to lay in stock; the horses and chariots, by the time they reached Jerusalem, cost him at the rate of six hundred silver shekels for each chariot, and one hundred and fifty shekels for each horse, but he sold them again at a profit to the Aramæan and Hittite princes. In return he purchased from them Cilician stallions, probably to sell again to the Egyptians, whose relaxing climate necessitated a frequent introduction of new blood into their stables.** By these and other methods of which we know nothing the yearly revenue of the kingdom was largely increased: and though it only reached a total which may seem insignificant in comparison with the enormous quantities of the precious metals which passed through the hands of the Pharaohs of that time, yet it must have seemed boundless wealth in the eyes of the shepherds and husbandmen who formed the bulk of the Hebrew nation.
* The terms in which the text, 1 Kings x. 27-29 (cf. 2
Citron, i. 16, 17), speaks of the trade in horses, show that
the traffic was already in existence when Solomon decided to
embark in it.
** 1 Kings x. 27-29; 2 Chron. i. 16, 17. Kuê, the name of
Lower Cilicia, was discovered in the Hebrew text by Pr.
Lenormant. Winckler, with mistaken reliance on the authority
of Erman, has denied that Egypt produced stud-horses at this
time, and wishes to identify the Mizraim of the Hebrew text
with Musri, a place near Mount Taurus, mentioned in the
Assyrian texts.
In thus developing his resources and turning them to good account, Solomon derived great assistance from the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon, a race whose services were always at the disposal of the masters of Southern Syria. The continued success of the Hellenic colonists on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean had compelled the Phoenicians to seek with redoubled boldness and activity in the Western Mediterranean some sort of compensation for the injury which their trade had thus suffered. They increased and consolidated their dealings with Sicily, Africa, and Spain, and established themselves throughout the whole of that misty region which extended beyond the straits of Gibraltar on the European side, from the mouth of the Guadalete to that of the Guadiana. This was the famous Tarshish—the Oriental El Dorado. Here they had founded a number of new towns, the most flourishing of which, Gadîr,* rose not far from the mouths of the Betis, on a small islet separated from the mainland by a narrow arm of the sea. In this city they constructed a temple to Melkarth, arsenals, warehouses, and shipbuilding yards: it was the Tyre of the west, and its merchant-vessels sailed to the south and to the north to trade with the savage races of the African and European seaboard. On the coast of Morocco they built Lixos, a town almost as large as Gadîr, and beyond Lixos, thirty days’ sail southwards, a whole host of depots, reckoned later on at three hundred.
* I do not propose to discuss here the question of the
identity of the country of Tartessos with the Tarshish or
Tarsis mentioned in the Bible (1 Kings x. 22).