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but of Jeroboam, his protégé and friend, whom his expedition was doubtless intended to assist, and the further fact that these towns were chiefly Levitical or Canaanite, would seem to show that Jeroboam, in the earlier part of his reign, had considerable opposition to encounter within the limits of his own kingdom. The disaffection of those Levites whose possessions lay within his territories is sufficiently indicated in Chronicles by the account which is there given (2 Chron. xi. 13, 14) of a number of them leaving their possessions and "resorting to Rehoboam throughout all their coasts." It is probable that such as remained were equally hostile, and that Jeroboam used the arms of his ally to punish them. At the same time, he was enabled by Egyptian aid to reduce a few Canaanite cities which still maintained their independence, as Gezer had done until conquered by the Pharaoh who gave his daughter to Solomon (2 Kings ix. 16).

The army with which Sheshonk invaded Palestine is more numerous than we should have anticipated, and some corruption in the numbers may be suspected. It is composed, however, exactly as the monuments would have led us to expect, almost wholly of foreign mercenaries (2 Chron. xii. 3), Libyans, Ethiopians, and others. The Egyptian armies at this time consisted, for the most part, of Maxyes and other Berber tribes. from the north-west, and of Ethiopians and negroes from the south.' Sheshonk, who was himself of

1 Lenormant, "Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne," vol. ii., pp. 340, 341.

foreign descent, placed far more dependence on these foreign troops than on the native Egyptian levies.

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"Asa had an army of men that bare targets and spears. And there came out against them Zerah the Ethiopian with an host of a thousand thousand and three hundred chariots, and came unto Mareshah. Then Asa went out against him, and they set the battle in array in the valley of Zephathah at Mareshah. And Asa cried unto the Lord, . . . and the Lord smote the Ethiopians before Asa and before Judah, and the Ethiopians fled. And Asa and the people that were with him pursued them unto Gerar; and the Ethiopians were overthrown, that they could not recover themselves."-2 CHRON. xiv. 9–13.

The Egyptians do not record unsuccessful expeditions, and thus the monuments contain no mention of this attack on Asa. It appears to have been provoked by Asa's rebellion, which is glanced at in 2 Chron. xiv. 6. The Egyptian monarch who sent or led the expedition was probably Osorchon (Uasarkan) II., whose name the Hebrews contracted into Zerach (7). He was, perhaps, an Ethiopian on his mother's side. Asa's defeat of his vast army is the most glorious victory ever obtained by an Israelite monarch, and secured his country from any Egyptian attack for above three centuries.

CHAPTER XX.

NOTICES OF EGYPT IN THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS.

"In the twelfth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, began Hoshea, the son of Elah, to reign in Samaria. Against him came up Shalmaneser, king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents. And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year; therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison."—2 KINGS Xvii. 1–4.

It is not very easy to identify the "king of Egypt” here mentioned, as one with whom Hoshea, the son of Elah, sought to ally himself, with any of the known Pharaohs. "So" is a name that seems at first sight very unlike those borne by Egyptian monarchs, which are never monosyllabic, and in no case end in the letter o. A reference to the Hebrew text removes, however, much of the difficulty, since the word rendered by "So" in our version is found to be one of three letters, No, all of which may be consonants. As the Masoretic pointing, which our translators followed, is of small authority, and in proper names of scarcely any authority at all, we are entitled to give to each of the three letters its consonant force, and, supplying short vowels, to render the Hebrew D by "Seveh." Now Seveh" is very near indeed to the Manethonian

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"Sevech-us," whom the Sebennytic priest makes the second monarch of his twenty-fifth dynasty; and "Sevech-us" is a natural Greek equivalent of the Egyptian "Shebek" or "Shabak," a name borne by a well-known Pharaoh (the first king of the same dynasty), which both Herodotus and Manetho render by "Sabacôs." It has been generally allowed that So (or Seveh) must represent one or other of these, but critics are not yet agreed which is to be preferred of the two. To us it seems that both the name itself and the necessities of the chronology point to the first king rather than to the second; and we consequently regard Hoshea as having turned in his distress to seek the aid of the monarch whom the Egyptians knew as Shabak, and the Greeks as Sabacôs or Sabaco.2

The application implies an entire change in the condition of political affairs in the East, and in the relations of state to state, from those which prevailed when Egyptian monarchs last figured in the sacred narrative, two hundred or two hundred and fifty years earlier. Then Egypt was an aggressive power, bent on establishing her influence over Palestine, and from time to time invading Asia with large armies in the hope of making extensive conquests. She was the chief enemy feared by the petty kingdoms and loosely aggregated tribes of South-western Asia, the only

1 The general opinion is in favour of Shabak; but some, like Hekekyan Bey ("Chronology of Siriadic Monuments," p. 106), prefer Shabatok.

2 Herod. ii. 139; Manetho ap. Syncell. "Chronograph.,” p. 74, B. 2 Chron. xii. 3; xiv. 9.

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power in their neighbourhood that possessed large
bodies of disciplined troops and an instinct of self-
aggrandisement.
But all this was now altered.
Egypt, from the time of Osarkon II., had steadily
declined in strength; her monarchs had been inactive
and unwarlike, her policy one of abstention from all
enterprise. The inveterate evil of disintegration with
which her ill-shaped territory was naturally threat-
ened, and which had from time to time shown itself in
her history, once more made its appearance. There
arose a practice of giving appanages to the princes
of the royal house, which tended to become hereditary,
and trenched on the sovereignty of the nominal mon-
arch. 'Egypt found herself divided into a certain
number of principalities, some of which contained
only a few towns, while others extended over several
adjacent cantons. Ere long the chiefs of these prin-
cipalities were bold enough to reject the suzerainty
of the Pharaoh; relying upon their bands of Libyan
mercenaries, they not only usurped the functions of
royalty, but even the title of king, while the legitimate
reigning house, relegated to a corner of the Delta,
with difficulty preserved a remnant of its old autho-
rity." By the close of the twenty-second dynasty,
"Egypt had arrived at such a point of disintegration
as to find herself portioned out among nearly twenty
princes, of whom four at least assumed the cartouche
and the other emblems of royalty." 2

1 Lenormant, "Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne," vol. ii., p. 341.
2 Ibid., p. 342.

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