Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
after Prisse d’Avennes.
It is possible that he was a son of Piônkhi, and may have been placed in supreme power by his father when the latter reinstated the city in its place as capital. With all their partiality for real or supposed descendants of the Ramesside dynasty, the Thebans were, before all things, proud of their former greatness, and eagerly hoped to regain it without delay. When, therefore, they accepted this Kushite king who, to their eyes, represented the only family possessed of a legitimate claim to the throne, it was mainly because they counted on him to restore them to their former place among the cities of Egypt. They must have been cruelly disappointed when he left them for the Sacred Mountain. His invasion, far from reviving their prosperity, merely served to ratify the suppression of that pontificate of Amon-Râ which was the last remaining evidence of their past splendour.
All hope of re-establishing it had now to be abandoned, since the sovereign who had come to them from Napata was himself by birth and hereditary privelege and hereditary sole priest of Anion: in his absence the actual head of the Theban religion could lay claim only to an inferior office, and indeed, even then, the only reason for accepting a second prophet was that he might direct the worship of the temple at Karnak. The force of circumstances compelled the Ethiopians to countenance in the Thebaid what their Tanite or Bubastite predecessors had been obliged to tolerate at Hermopolis, Heracleopolis, Sais, and in many another lesser city; they turned it into a feudatory kingdom, and gave it a ruler who, like Auîti, half a century earlier, had the right to use the cartouches. Once installed, Kashta employed the usual methods to secure his seat on the throne, one of the first being a marriage alliance. The disappearance of the high priests had naturally increased the importance of the princesses consecrated to the service of Amon. From henceforward they were the sole visible intermediaries between the god and his people, the privileged guardians of his body and his double, and competent to perpetuate the line of the solar kings. The Theban appanage constituted their dowry, and even if their sex prevented them from discharging all those civil, military, and religious duties required by their position, no one else had the right to do so on their behalf, unless he was expressly chosen by them for the purpose. When once married they deputed their husbands to act for them; so long as they remained either single or widows, some exalted personage, the prophet of Amon or Montu, the ruler of Thebes, or the administrator of the Said, managed their houses and fiefs for them with such show of authority that strangers were at times deceived, and took him for the reigning monarch of the country.*
* Thus Harua, in the time of Amenertas, was prince and chief
over the servants of the “Divine Worshipper.” Mantumihâit,
in the time of Taharqa and of Tanuatamanu, was ruler of
Thebes, and fourth prophet of Amon, and it is he who is
described in the Assyrian monuments as King of Thebes.
The Pharaohs had, therefore, a stronger incentive than ever to secure exclusive possession of these women, and if they could not get all of them safely housed in their harems, they endeavoured, at any rate, to reserve for themselves the chief among them, who by purity of descent or seniority in age had attained the grade of Divine Worshipper. Kashta married a certain Shapenuapît, daughter of Osorkon III. and a Theban pallacide;* it is uncertain whether he eventually became king over Ethiopia and the Sudan or not. So far, we have no proof that he did, but it seems quite possible when we remember that one of his children, Shabaku (Sabaco), subsequently occupied the throne of Napata in addition to that of Thebes. Kashta does not appear to have possessed sufficient energy to prevent the Delta and its nomes from repudiating the Ethiopian supremacy. The Saites, under Tafnakhti or Bocchoris, soon got the upper hand, and it was to them that the Syrian vassals of Nineveh looked for aid, when death removed the conqueror who had trampled them so ruthlessly underfoot. Ever since the fall of Arpad, Hadrach, and Damascus, Shabaraîn, a town situated somewhere in the valley of the Orontes or of the Upper Litany,** and hitherto but little known, had served as a rallying-point for the disaffected Aramaean tribes: on the accession of Shalmaneser V. it ventured to rebel, probably in 727 B.C., but was overthrown and destroyed, its inhabitants being led away captive.
* It may be that, in accordance with a custom which obtained
during the generations that followed, and which possibly
originated about this period, this daughter of Osorkon III.
was only the adoptive mother of Amenertas.
** Shabaraîn was originally confounded with Samaria by the
early commentators on the Babylonian Chronicle. Halévy, very
happily, referred it to the biblical Sepharvaîm, a place
always mentioned in connection with Hamath and Arpad (2
Kings xvii. 24, 31; xviii. 34; xix. 13: cf. Isa. xxxvi. 19;
xxxvii. 13), and to the Sibraim of Ezekiel (xlvii. 16),
called in the Septuagint Samarêim. Its identification with
Samaria has, since then, been generally rejected, and its
connection with Sibraim admitted. Sibraim (or Sepharvaîm, or
Samarêîm) has been located at Shomerîyeh, to the east of the
Bahr-Kades, and south of Hamath.
This achievement proved, beyond the possibility of doubt, that in spite of their change of rulers the vengeance of the Assyrians was as keen and sharp as ever. Not one of the Syrian towns dared to stir, and the Phonician seaports, though their loyalty had seemed, for a moment, doubtful, took care to avoid any action which might expose them to the terrors of a like severity.* The Israelites and Philistines, alone of the western peoples, could not resign themselves to a prudent policy; after a short period of hesitation they drew the sword from its scabbard, and in 725 war broke out.**
* The siege of Tyre, which the historian Menander, in a
passage quoted by Josephus, places in the reign of
Shalmaneser, ought really to be referred to the reign of
Sennacherib, or the fragment of Menander must be divided
into three parts dealing with three different Assyrian
campaigns against Tyre, under Tiglath-pileser, Sennacherib,
and Esarhaddon respectively.
** The war cannot have begun earlier, for the Eponym
Canon, in dealing with 726, has the words “in the country,”
thus proving that no expedition took place in that year; in
the case of the year 725, on the other hand, it refers to a
campaign against some country whose name has disappeared.
The passages in the Book of Kings (2 Kings xvii. 1-6, and
xviii. 9-12) which deal with the close of the kingdom of
Israel, have been interpreted in such a way as to give us
two campaigns by Shalmaneser against Hoshea: (1) Hoshea
having failed to pay the tribute imposed upon him by
Tiglath-pileser, Shalmaneser made war upon him and compelled
him to resume its payment (2 Kings xvii. 1-3); (2) Hoshea
having intrigued with Egypt, and declined to pay tribute,
Shalmaneser again took the field against him, made him
prisoner, and besieged Samaria for three years (2 Kings
xvii. 4-6; xviii. 9-12). The first expedition must, in this
case, have taken place in 727, while the second must have
lasted from 725-722. Most modern historians believe that the
Hebrew writer has ascribed to Shalmaneser the subjection of
Hoshea which was really the act of Tiglath-pileser, as well
as the final war against Israel. According to Winckler, the
two portions of the narrative must have been borrowed from
two different versions of the final war, which the final
editor inserted one after the other, heedless of the
contradictions contained in them.