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. Aûpûti 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 Thûtmosis 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 Qodshû, or Mitanni, or Naharaim: Megiddo is the most northern point mentioned, and the localities enumerated bring us more and more to the south—Eabbat, Taânach, Hapharaîm, Mahanaîm,* 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 Judæan 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.*