of a kingdom in Palestine was not likely to disturb the thoughts, even if it came to the knowledge, of an Assyrian monarch.  Shamas-Vul would no doubt have regarded with utter contempt the petty sovereign of so small a territory as Palestine, and would have looked upon the new kingdom as scarcely more worthy of his notice than any other of the ten thousand little principalities which lay on or near his borders.  Could he, however, have possessed for a few moments the prophetic foresight vouchsafed some centuries earlier to one who may almost be called his countryman, he would have been astonished to recognize in the humble kingdom just lifting its head in the far West, and struggling to hold its own against Philistine cruelty and oppression, a power which in little more than fifty years would stand forth before the world as the equal, if not the superior, of his own state.  The imperial splendor of the kingdom of David and Solomon did, in fact, eclipse for awhile the more ancient glories of Assyria.  It is a notable circumstance that, exactly at the time when a great and powerful monarchy grew up in the tract between Egypt and the Euphrates, Assyria passed under a cloud.  The history of the country is almost a blank for two centuries between the reigns of Shamas-Vul and the second Tiglathi-Nin, whose accession is fixed by the Assyrian Canon to B.C. 889.  During more than three-fourths of this time, from about B.C. 1070 to B.C. 930, the very names of the monarchs are almost wholly unknown to us.  It seems as if there was not room in Western Asia for two first-class monarchies to exist and flourish at the same time; and so, although there was no contention, or even contact, between the two empires of Judaea and Assyria, yet the rise of the one to greatness could only take place under the condition of a coincident weakness of the other.

It is very remarkable that exactly in this interval of darkness, when Assyria would seem, from the failure both of buildings and records, to have been especially and exceptionally weak, occurs the first appearance of her having extended her influence beyond Syria into the great and ancient monarchy of Egypt.  In the twenty-second Egyptian dynasty, which began with Sheshonk I., or Shishak, the contemporary of Solomon, about B.C. 900, Assyrian names appear for the first time in the Egyptian dynastic lists.  It has been supposed from this circumstance that the entire twenty-second dynasty, together with that which succeeded it, was Assyrian; but the condition of Assyria at the time renders such a hypothesis most improbable.  The true explanation would seem to be that the Egyptian kings of this period sometimes married.  Assyrian wives, who naturally gave Assyrian names to some of their children.  These wives were perhaps members of the Assyrian royal family; or perhaps they were the daughters of the Assyrian nobles who from time to time were appointed as viceroys of the towns and small states which the Ninevite monarchs conquered on the skirts of their empire.  Either of these suppositions is more probable than the establishment in Egypt of a dynasty really Assyrian at a time of extraordinary weakness and depression.