story of egypt 21st dynasty

STORY OF EGYPT 21ST DYNASTY

 THIS INTERMEDIATE PERIOD COMPRISES THE 31ST DYNASTY TO THE 26TH DYNASTY

KINGS OF YJR 21ST DYNASTY:
 1.  SMENDES - 28 YEARS REIGN
2  PSUSENNES I- 46 YEARS REIGN

3.  NEPHERCHERES - 4 YEARS
 4   AMENOPHTHIS  - 9 YRS
5   OSORCHOR =  6 YRS
6  PSINACHES  =   9 YRS
7  PSUSENNES II-  14 YEARS REIGN












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SMENDES


 
 PSUSENNES I


 
 AMENOPHTHIS


 
 OSORCHOR



 
 PSINACHES ALSO KNOWN AS SIAMUN






PSUSENNES II




 
CAPITAL CITY  MEMPHIS



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 OBSERVATION BY ANCIENT EGYPT:

ABOIT THE HEBREWS AND THE PHILISTINES—DAMASCUS

The Israelites in the land of Canaan: the judges—The Philistines and the Hebrew kingdom—Saul, David, Solomon, the defection of the ten tribes—the XXIst Egyptian dynasty—Sheshonq—Damascus.

 Both clans and tribes were designated by the name of some ancestor from whom they claimed to be descended, and who appears in some cases to have been a god for whom they had a special devotion; some writers have believed that this was also the origin of the names given to several of the tribes, such as Gad, "Good Fortune," or of the totems of the hyena and the dog, in Arabic and Hebrew, "Simeon" and "Caleb."* Gad, Simeon, and Caleb were severally the ancestors of the families who ranged themselves under their respective names, and the eponymous heroes of all the tribes were held to have been brethren, sons of one father, and under the protection of one God. He was known as the Jahveh with whom Abraham of old had made a solemn covenant; His dwelling-place was Mount Sinai or Mount Seîr, and He revealed Himself in the storm;** His voice was as the thunder "which shaketh the wilderness," His breath was as "a consuming fire," and He was decked with light "as with a garment." When His anger was aroused, He withheld the dew and rain from watering the earth; but when His wrath was appeased, the heavens again poured their fruitful showers upon the fields

 The tribal organisation had not reached its full development at the time of the sojourn in the desert. The tribes of Joseph and Judah, who subsequently played such important parts, were at that period not held in any particular estimation; Reuben, on the other hand, exercised a sort of right of priority over the rest.
 The territory which they occupied soon became insufficient to support their numbers, and they sought to exchange it for a wider area, such as was offered by the neighbouring provinces of Southern Syria. Pharaoh at this time exercised no authority over this region, and they were, therefore, no longer in fear of opposition from his troops; the latter had been recalled to Egypt, and it is doubtful even whether he retained possession of the Shephelah by means of his Zakkala and Philistine colonies; the Hebrews, at any rate, had nothing to fear from him so long as they respected Gaza and Ascalon. They began by attempting to possess themselves of the provinces around Hebron, in the direction of the Dead Sea, and we read that, before entering them, they sent out spies to reconnoitre and report on the country.* Its population had undergone considerable modifications since the Israelites had quitted Goshen. The Amorites, who had seriously suffered from the incursions of Asiatic hordes, and had been constantly harassed by the attacks of the Aramæans, had abandoned the positions they had formerly occupied on the banks of the Orontes and the Litany, and had moved southwards, driving the Canaanites before them; their advance was accelerated as the resistance opposed to their hordes became lessened under the successors of Ramses III., until at length all opposition was withdrawn. They had possessed themselves of the regions about the Lake of Genesareth, the mountain district to the south of Tabor, the middle valley of the Jordan, and, pressing towards the territory east of that river, had attacked the cities scattered over the undulating table-land. This district had not been often subjected to incursions of Egyptian troops, and yet its inhabitants had been more impressed by Egyptian influence than many others.

 The Amorites were everywhere victorious, but our information is confined to this bare fact; soon after their victory, however, we find the territory they had invaded divided into two kingdoms: in the north that of Bashan, which comprised, besides the Haurân, the plain watered by the Yarrnuk; and to the south that of Heshbon, containing the district lying around the Arnon, and the Jabbok to the east of the Dead Sea.* They seem to have made the same rapid progress in the country between the Jordan and the Mediterranean as elsewhere. They had subdued some of the small Canaanite states, entered into friendly relation with others, and penetrated gradually as far south as the borders of Sinai, while we find them establishing petty kings among the hill-country of Shechem around Hebron, on the confines of the Negeb, and the Shephelah.** When the Hebrew tribes ventured to push forward in a direct line northwards, they came into collision with the advance posts of the Amorite population, and suffered a severe defeat under the walls of Hormah.*** The check thus received, however, did not discourage them. As a direct course was closed to them, they turned to the right, and followed, first the southern and then the eastern shores of the Red Sea, till they reached the frontier of Gilead

 There again they were confronted by the Amorites, but in lesser numbers, and not so securely entrenched within their fortresses as their fellow-countrymen in the Negeb, so that the Israelites were able to overthrow the kingdoms of Heshbon and Bashan



 
 GAD TERRITORY
 Gad received as its inheritance nearly the whole of the territory lying between the Jabbok and the Yarmuk, in the neighbourhood of the ancient native sanctuaries of Penuel, Mahanaim, and Succoth, associated with the memory of Jacob.* Reuben settled in the vicinity, and both tribes remained there isolated from the rest. From this time forward they took but a slight interest in the affairs of their brethren: when the latter demanded their succour, "Gilead abode beyond Jordan," and "by the watercourses of Reuben there were great resolves at heart," but without any consequent action.** It was not merely due to indifference on their part; their resources were fully taxed in defending themselves against the Aramæans and Bedawins, and from the attacks of Moab and Ammon. Gad, continually threatened, struggled for centuries without being discouraged, but Reuben lost heart,*** and soon declined in power, till at length he became merely a name in the memory of his brethren

 

 
Two tribes having been thus provided for, the bulk of the Israelites sought to cross the Jordan without further delay, and establish themselves as best they might in the very heart of the Canaanites. The sacred writings speak of their taking possession of the country by a methodic campaign, undertaken by command of and under the visible protection of Jahveh* Moses had led them from Egypt to Kadesh, and from Kadesh to the land of Gilead; he had seen the promised land from the summit of Mount Nebo, but he had not entered it, and after his death, Joshua, son of Nun, became their leader, brought them across Jordan dryshod, not far from its mouth, and laid siege to Jericho

 
 The sudden intrusion of a new element naturally alarmed the worshippers of the surrounding local deities; they at once put a truce to their petty discords, and united in arms against the strangers. At the instigation of Adoni-zedeck, King of Jerusalem, the Canaanites collected their forces in the south; but they were routed not far from Gibeon, and their chiefs killed or mutilated.* The Amorites in the north, who had assembled round Jabin, King of Hazor, met with no better success; they were defeated at the waters of Merom, Hazor was burnt, and Galilee delivered to fire and sword




 The country having been thus to a certain extent cleared, Joshua set about dividing the spoil, and assigned to each tribe his allotted portion of territory.* Such, in its main outlines, is the account given by the Hebrew chroniclers; but, if closely examined, it would appear that the Israelites did not act throughout with that unity of purpose and energy which they [the Hebrew chroniclers] were pleased to imagine. They did not gain possession of the land all at once, but established themselves in it gradually by detachments, some settling at the fords of Jericho,** others more to the north, and in the central valley of the Jordan as far up as She-chem





 The descendants of Rachel and her handmaid received as their inheritance the regions situated more to the centre of the country, the house of Joseph taking the best domains for its branches of Ephraim and Manasseh. Ephraim received some of the old Canaanite sanctuaries, such as Ramah, Bethel, and Shiloh, and it was at the latter spot that they deposited the ark of the covenant. Manasseh settled to the north of Ephraim, in the hills and valleys of the Carmel group, and to Benjamin were assigned the heights which overlook the plain of Jericho. Four of the less important tribes, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, and Zebulon, ventured as far north as the borders of Tyre and Sidon, behind the Phoenician littoral, but were prevented by the Canaanites and Amorites from spreading over the plain, and had to confine themselves to the mountains. All the fortresses commanding the passes of Tabor and Carmel, Megiddo, Taanach, Ibleam, Jezreel, Endor, and Bethshan remained inviolate, and formed as it were an impassable barrier-line between the Hebrews of Galilee and their brethren of Ephraim. 

 
The Danites were long before they found a resting-place; they attempted to insert themselves to the north of Judah, between Ajalon and Joppa, but were so harassed by the Amorites, that they had to content themselves with the precarious tenure of a few towns such as Zora, Shaalbîn, and Eshdol. The foreign peoples of the Shephelah and the Canaanite cities almost all preserved their autonomy; the Israelites had no chance against them wherever they had sufficient space to put into the field large bodies of infantry or to use their iron-bound chariots. Finding it therefore impossible to overcome them, the tribes were forced to remain cut off from each other in three isolated groups of unequal extent which they were powerless to connect: in the centre were Joseph, Benjamin, and Dan; in the south, Judah, Levi, and Simeon; while Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, and Zebulon lay to the north.

 The period following the occupation of Canaan constituted the heroic age of the Hebrews. The sacred writings agree in showing that the ties which bound the twelve tribes together were speedily dissolved, while their fidelity and obedience to God were relaxed with the growth of the young generations to whom Moses or Joshua were merely names.


 
 CULTS OF CANAANITES
The conquerors "dwelt among the Canaanites: the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite: and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods. And the children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord their God, and served the Baalim and the Asheroth











 When they had once abandoned their ancient faith, political unity was not long preserved. War broke out between one tribe and another; the stronger allowed the weaker to be oppressed by the heathen, and were themselves often powerless to retain their independence. In spite of the thousands of men among them, all able to bear arms, they fell an easy prey to the first comer; the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and the Philistines, all oppressed them in turn, and repaid with usury the ills which Joshua had inflicted on the Canaanites. "Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had spoken, and as the Lord had sworn unto them: and they were sore distressed. And the Lord raised up judges, which saved them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. And yet they hearkened not unto their judges, for they went a-whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves down unto them: they turned aside quickly out of the way wherein their fathers walked obeying the commandments of the Lord; but they did not so. And when the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the judge, and saved them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the Lord because of their groaning by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them. But it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they turned back, and dealt more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their doings, nor from their stubborn way."* The history of this period lacks the unity and precision with which we are at first tempted to credit it

 The Israelites, when transplanted into the promised land, did not immediately lose the nomadic habits they had acquired in the desert. They retained the customs and prejudices they had inherited from their fathers, and for many years treated the peasantry, whose fields they had devastated, with the same disdain that the Bedawin of our own day, living in the saddle, lance in hand, shows towards the fellahîn who till the soil and bend patiently over the plough. The clans, as of old, were impatient of all regular authority; each tribe tended towards an isolated autonomy, a state of affairs which merited reprisals from the natives and encouraged hatred of the intruders, and it was only when the Canaanite oppression became unendurable that those who suffered most from it united themselves to make a common effort, and rallied for a moment round the chief who was ready to lead them. Many of these liberators must have acquired an ephemeral popularity, and then have sunk into oblivion together with the two or three generations who had known them; those whose memory remained green among their kinsmen were known by posterity as the judges of Israel
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JUDGES OF ISRAEL


The destruction of the Amorite kingdoms of Heshbon and Bashan had been as profitable to the kinsmen of the Israelites, Ammon and Moab, as it had been to the Israelites themselves. 

 The Moabites had followed in the wake of the Hebrews through all the surrounding regions of the Dead Sea; they had pushed on from the banks of the Arnon to those of the Jabbok, and at the time of the Judges were no longer content with harassing merely Reuben and Gad

 They were a fine race of warlike, well-armed Beda-wins. Jericho had fallen into their hands, and their King Eglon had successfully scoured the entire hill-country of Ephraim,* so that those who wished to escape being pillaged had to safeguard themselves by the payment of an annual tribute.



 
 Ehud the Left-handed concealed under his garments a keen dagger, and joined himself to the Benjamite deputies who were to carry their dues to the Moabite sovereign. The money having been paid, the deputies turned homewards, but when they reached the cromlech of Gilgal,* and were safe beyond the reach of the enemy, Ehud retraced his steps, and presenting himself before the palace of Eglon in the attitude of a prophet, announced that he had a secret errand to the king, who thereupon commanded silence

 "And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of his seat. And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly: and the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, for he drew not the sword out of his belly; and it came out behind." Then Ehud locked the doors and escaped. "Now when he was gone out, his servants came; and they saw, and, behold, the doors of the parlour were locked; and they said, Surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber." But by the time they had forced an entrance, Ehud had reached Gilgal and was in safety. He at once assembled the clans of Benjamin, occupied the fords of the Jordan, massacred the bands of Moabites scattered over the plain of Jericho, and blocked the routes by which the invaders attempted to reach the hill-country of Ephraim. Almost at the same time the tribes in Galilee had a narrow escape from a still more formidable enemy.* They had for some time been under the Amorite yoke, and the sacred writings represent them at this juncture as oppressed either by Sisera of Harosheth-ha-Goyîm or by a second Jabin, who was able to bring nine hundred chariots of iron into the field.** At length the prophetess Deborah of Issachar sent to Barak of Kadesh a command to assemble his people, together with those of Zebulon, in the name of the Lord;*** she herself led the contingents of Issachar, Ephraim, and Machir to meet him at the foot of Tabor, where the united host is stated to have comprised forty thousand men. Sisera,**** who commanded the Canaanite force, attacked the Israelite army between Taanach and Megiddo in that plain of Kishon which had often served as a battle-field during the Egyptian campaigns.
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 EGYPT AGAINST PHILISTINES


By a decree of Pharaoh, a new country had been assigned to the remnants of each of the maritime peoples: the towns nearest to Egypt, lying between Raphia and Joppa, were given over to the Philistines, and the forest region and the coast to the north of the Philistines, as far as the Phoenician stations of Dor and Carmel,* were appropriated to the Zakkala. The latter was a military colony, and was chiefly distributed among the five fortresses which commanded the Shephelah

 Gaza and Ashdod were separated from the Mediterranean by a line of sand-dunes, and had nothing in the nature of a sheltered port—nothing, in fact, but a "maiuma," or open roadstead, with a few dwellings and storehouses arranged along the beach on which their boats were drawn up. Ascalon was built on the sea, and its harbour, although well enough suited for the small craft of the ancients, could not have been entered by the most insignificant of our modern ships. The Philistines had here their naval arsenal, where their fleets were fitted out for scouring the Egyptian waters as a marine police, or for piratical expeditions on their own account, when the occasion served, along the coasts of Phoenicia. Ekron and Gath kept watch over the eastern side of the plain at the points where it was most exposed to the attacks of the people of the hills—the Canaanites in the first instance, and afterwards the Hebrews. These foreign warriors soon changed their mode of life in contact with the indigenous inhabitants; daily intercourse, followed up by marriages with the daughters of the land, led to the substitution of the language, manners, and religion of the environing race for those of their mother country. The Zakkala, who were not numerous, it is true, lost everything, even to their name, and it was all that the Philistines could do to preserve their own. At the end of one or two generations, the "colts" of Palestine could only speak the Canaanite tongue, in which a few words of the old Hellenic patois still continued to survive. Their gods were henceforward those of the towns in which they resided, such as Marna and Dagon and Gaza,* Dagon at Ashdod,** Baalzebub at Ekron,*** and Derketô in Ascalon;**** and their mode of worship, with its mingled bloody and obscene rites, followed that of the country. 

 Gaza enjoyed among them a kind of hegemony, alike on account of its strategic position and its favourable situation for commerce, but this supremacy was of very precarious character, and brought with it no right whatever to meddle in the internal affairs of other members of the confederacy. Each of the latter had a chief of its own, a Seren,* and the office of this chief was hereditary in one case at least—Gath, for instance, where there existed a larger Canaanite element than elsewhere, and was there identified with that of "melek,"** or king.
 
 Their war tactics were probably similar to those of the Egyptians, who were unrivalled in military operations at this period throughout the whole East. Under able leadership, and in positions favourable for the operations of their chariots, the Philistines had nothing to fear from the forces which any of their foes could bring up against them. As to their maritime history, it is certain that in the earliest period, at least, of their sojourn in Syria, as well as in that before their capture by Ramses III., they were successful in sea-fights, but the memory of only one of their expeditions has come down to us: a squadron of theirs having sailed forth from Ascalon somewhere towards the end of the XIIth dynasty,* succeeded in destroying the Sidonian fleet, and pillaging Sidon itself





These cities had also to reckon with Ephraim, and the tribes which had thrown in their lot with her. Dan had cast his eyes upon the northern districts of the Shephelah—which were dependent upon Ekron or Gath—and also upon the semi-Phoenician port of Joppa; but these tribes did not succeed in taking possession of those districts, although they had harassed them from time to time by raids in which the children of Israel did not always come off victorious. One of their chiefs—Samson—had a great reputation among them for his bravery and bodily strength. But the details of his real prowess had been forgotten at an early period. The episodes which have been preserved deal with some of his exploits against the Philistines, and there is a certain humour in the chronicler's account of the weapons which he employed: "with the jawbone of an ass have I smitten a thousand men;" he burned up their harvest also by letting go three hundred foxes, with torches attached to their tails, among the standing corn of the Philistines. Various events in his career are subsequently narrated; such as his adventure in the house of the harlot at Gaza, when he carried off the gate of the city and the gate-posts "to the top of the mountain that is before Hebron." By Delilah's treachery he was finally delivered over to his enemies, who, having put out his eyes, condemned him to grind in the prison-house. On the occasion of a great festival in honour of Dagon, he was brought into the temple to amuse his captors, but while they were making merry at his expense, he took hold of the two pillars against which he was resting, and bowing "himself with all his might," overturned them, "and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein.

 The tribe of Dan at length became weary of these unprofitable struggles, and determined to seek out another and more easily defensible settlement. They sent out five emissaries, therefore, to look out for a new home. While these were passing through the mountains they called upon a certain Michah in the hill-country of Ephraim and lodged there. Here they took counsel of a Levite whom Michah had made his priest, and, in answer to the question whether their journey would be prosperous, he told them to "Go in peace: before the Lord is the way wherein ye go." Their search turned out successful, for they discovered near the sources of the Jordan the town of Laish, whose people, like the Zidonians, dwelt in security, fearing no trouble. On the report of the emissaries, Dan decided to emigrate: the warriors set out to the number of six hundred, carried off by the way the ephod of Micah and the Levite who served before it, and succeeded in capturing Laish, to which they gave the name of their tribe. "They there set up for themselves the ephod: and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land."* The tribe of Dan displayed in this advanced post of peril the bravery it had shown on the frontiers of the Shephelah, and showed itself the most bellicose of the tribes of Israel. 

 Their departure, however, left the descendants of Joseph unprotected, with Benjamin as their only bulwark. Benjamin, like Dan, was one of the tribes which contained scarcely more than two or three clans, but compensated for the smallness of their numbers by their energy and tenacity of character: lying to the south of Ephraim, they had developed into a breed of hardy adventurers, skilled in handling the bow and sling, accustomed from childhood to use both hands indifferently, and always ready to set out on any expedition, not only against the Canaanites, but, if need be, against their own kinsfolk.* They had consequently aroused the hatred of both friend and foe, and we read that the remaining tribes at length decreed their destruction; a massacre ensued, from which six hundred Benjamites only escaped to continue the race.** Their territory adjoined on the south that of Jerusalem, the fortress of the Jebusites, and on the west the powerful confederation of which Gibeon was the head. It comprised some half-dozen towns—Ramah, Anathoth, Michmash, and Nob, and thus commanded both sides of the passes leading from the Shephelah into the valley of the Jordan. The Benjamites were in the habit of descending suddenly upon merchants who were making their way to or returning from Gilead, and of robbing them of their wares; sometimes they would make a raid upon the environs of Ekron and Gath, "like a wolf that ravineth:" realising the prediction of Jacob, "in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at even he shall divide the spoil

 The Philistines never failed to make reprisals after each raid, and the Benjamites were no match for their heavily armed battalions; but the labyrinth of ravines and narrow gorges into which the Philistines had to penetrate to meet their enemy was a favourable region for guerilla warfare, in which they were no match for their opponents. Peace was never of long duration on this ill-defined borderland, and neither intercourse between one village and another, alliances, nor intermarriage between the two peoples had the effect of interrupting hostilities; even when a truce was made at one locality, the feud would be kept up at other points of contact. All details of this conflict have been lost, and we merely know that it terminated in the defeat of the house of Joseph, a number of whom were enslaved. The ancient sanctuary of Shiloh still continued to be the sacred town of the Hebrews, as it had been under the Canaanites, and the people of Ephraim kept there the ark of Jahveh-Sabaoth, "the Lord of Hosts."* It was a chest of wood, similar in shape to the shrine which surmounted the sacred barks of the Egyptian divinities, but instead of a prophesying statue, it contained two stones on which, according to the belief of a later age, the law had been engraved.** Yearly festivals were celebrated before it, and it was consulted as an oracle by all the Israelites. Eli, the priest to whose care it was at this time consigned, had earned universal respect by the austerity of his life and by his skill in interpreting the divine oracles.