to strengthen himself on the throne by adapting the monarchy to the temperament of the tribes over which he ruled, Rehoboam took measures to regain his lost ground and restore the unity which he himself had destroyed.  He recruited the army which had been somewhat neglected in the latter years of his father, restored the walls of the cities which had remained faithful to him, and fortified the places which constituted his frontier defences against the Israelites.** His ambition was not as foolish as we might be tempted to imagine.  He had soldiers, charioteers, generals, skilled in the art of war, well-filled storehouses, the remnant of the wealth of Solomon, and, as a last resource, the gold of the temple at Jerusalem.  He ruled over the same extent of territory as that possessed by David after the death of Saul, but the means at his disposal were incontestably greater than those of his grandfather, and it is possible that he might in the end have overcome Jeroboam, as David overcame Ishbosheth, had not the intervention of Egypt disconcerted his plans, and, by exhausting his material forces, struck a death-blow to all his hopes.

* 1 Kings xii. 25-32; chaps, xii. 33, xiii., xiv. 1-18 contain, side by side with the narrative of facts, such as the death of Jeroboam’s son, comments on the religious conduct of the sovereign, which some regard as being of later date.

** 1 Kings xii. 21-24; cf. 2 Ghron. xi. 1-17, where the list of strongholds, wanting in the Boole of Kings, is given from an ancient source.  The writer affirms, in harmony with the ideas of his time, “that the Levites left their suburbs and their possession, and came to Judah and Jerusalem; for Jeroboam and his sons cast them off, that they should not execute the Priest’s office unto the Lord.”

The century and a half which had elapsed since the death of the last of the Ramessides had, as far as we can ascertain, been troubled by civil wars and revolutions.*

* I have mentioned above the uncertainty which still shrouds the XXth dynasty.  The following is the order in which I propose that its kings should be placed:—­

[Illustration:  393.jpg TABLE OF KINGS]

The imperious Egypt of the Theban dynasties had passed away, but a new Egypt had arisen, not without storm and struggle, in its place.  As long as the campaigns of the Pharaohs had been confined to the Nile valley and the Oases, Thebes had been the natural centre of the kingdom; placed almost exactly between the Mediterranean and the southern frontier, it had been both the national arsenal and the treasure-house to which all foreign wealth had found its way from the Persian Gulf to the Sahara, and from the coasts of Asia Minor to the equatorial swamps.  The cities of the Delta, lying on the frontier of those peoples with whom Egypt now held but little intercourse, possessed neither the authority nor the resources of Thebes; even Memphis, to which