Сн. ХХІІІ.]

DURATION OF THE DYNASTY.

415

were satisfied to apply themselves generally to useful trades and productive employments; they were no longer assailed either from the west or from the north, since the Libyans had been taught a lesson, and the war of Troy' had changed the condition of the powers of the Mediterranean; they were safe upon the side of the east, since they had a bulwark in the new empire raised up by the kings of Israel; and on the side of the south the Ethiopians as yet gave no sign. Cloud and tempest were gathering, and would burst in fury upon the land at a not very distant future; but as yet the atmosphere was serene-thunder did not even mutter in the distance the calm prevailed which is generally thought to portend a storm.

The duration of the dynasty is calculated by Manetho at 130 years; and, having regard to the synchronism between Sheshonk and Solomon, we may assign it, without much chance of serious error, the space between B.C. 1100 and B.C. 975.

1 Ap. Syncell. Chronograph. p. 73, c.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE TWENTY-SECOND AND CONTEMPORARY DYNASTIES

(ABOUT B.C. 975-750).

The Twenty-second Dynasty not Assyrian, but Bubastite. Ancestors of Sheshonk I.-his Royal Descent-his Marriage with a Tanite Princess. His Reception of Jeroboam-his great Expedition into Palestine -his Arabian Conquests. His Bas-reliefs and Buildings. His two sons -Death of the elder, and Accession of Osarkon I. Peaceful Reign of Osarkon. Reigns of Takelut I. and Osarkon II. Expedition of 'Zerah the Ethiopian. Reigns of Sheshonk II., Takelut II., Sheshonk III., Pimai, and Sheshonk IV. Other Contemporary Kings. Rise of Piankhi. Disappearance of Art and Literature under the Sheshonks. 'If the history of the twenty-first dynasty is obscure, that of the twentysecond, or Bubastite dynasty, as it has been called, is not less difficult.'BIRCH, Egypt from the Earliest Times, p. 155.

WE are asked to see in the establishment of the twenty-second dynasty the effect of the absolute conquest of Egypt by the Assyrians,' which resulted in the establishment of a junior branch of the Assyrian royal family upon the Egyptian throne, and the subjection of the country for nearly two centuries to a foreign yoke. But a large number of important considerations oppose themselves to the reception of this novel theory, which has not, so far as we are aware, been accepted by any Egyptologist of repute, except its propounder. In the first place, the Assyrians appear to have been at the time in question exceptionally weak; 2 and whereas, rather more than a century earlier

Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 197-206, 1st ed."

2 See the author's Ancient Monarchies, vol. ii. p. 81. 2nd ed.

CH. XXIV.] THE TWENTY-SECOND DYNASTY.

417

(B.C. 1100), they carried their victorious arms across the Euphrates into Northern Syria, and a century later (B.C. 875) reduced the Phoenician towns to subjection, in the interval-from B.C. 1100 to B.C. 900-they were in a depressed and debilitated condition, quite incapable of making extensive foreign conquests. Secondly, it is certain that the Egyptians neither speak with any distinctness of any foreign attack upon their independence at this time, nor use the term 'Assyrian '—with which they were well acquainted in any connection with the kings of this dynasty. The term used in such connection, and supposed to designate Assyria,' is Mat, which may perhaps mean the peoples,' but which has no more connection with the word Assyria than with Palestine, or Babylon, or Persia. Further, the new names which now come into Egyptian history, and which are thought to support the Assyrian theory, are decidedly non-Assyrian, and, so far as is known, were never borne by any Assyrian person.5

1 See the author's Ancient Mon- | never an Assyrian name, and could archies, vol. ii. p. 66, 2nd ed.

2 Ibid. p. 89.

" Assyria appears as Assuru,

tions of Thothmes III. (See above, p. 235.)

ii.

Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. pp. 192-3, 1st ed.

not be, since it means 'adoration,' and requires a suffix-'adoration to some one,' e.g. Ninip, Pal-tsira, &c. Nimrod is never found as an Assyin the inscriprian name, and indeed is a word whereof it is difficult to find any representative either in Assyria or Babylonia. Sargon, it is true, was an old Babylonian name, and came into use in Assyria about B.c. 720. 5 The names on which especial reliance is placed are those of Ta-But is Osarkon Sargina or Sargon ? If so, why the unnecessary prefix, kelot, Osarkon, and Namrut, which are identified with Tiglath, Sargon, Ua or O, 8, which is not at all and Nimrod. Sheshonk is paral- common at the beginning of words leled with the mystic name of in Egyptian? Sheshonk, as Lepsius Babylon, Sheshach (Jer. xxv. 26, has shown (Ueber die XXII. Köli. 41); and a name, Nebnesha, nigsdynastie, p. 288), is more likely among those of the ancestors of the Jewish proper name Shishak Sheshonk, is read as Nabo-nasi, and (1 Chr. viii. 14,25) than the mystical called Chaldæan or Babylonian. city name Sheshach (which is Babel Now, of these, Tiglath, alone, is spelt mystically by reversing the

Manetho, who, living under the Ptolemies, had no false shame leading him to conceal the subjection of Egypt by her neighbours-who called the seventeenth dynasty Phoenician or Arabian,1 the twenty-fifth Ethiopian,2 and the twenty-seventh Persian 3-declared the twenty-second to be Bubastite, and therefore native Egyptian. His statement is confirmed by the fact, that two of the kings called themselves Si-Bast, or 'Son of Bast'-the goddess from whom Bubastis took its name, and who was especially worshipped there. It appears 6 that a certain Sheshonk, a Bubastite contemporary with one of the later kings of the twentyfirst dynasty, took to wife a princess of the Tanite house, named Meht-en-hont or Meht-en-usekh,8 and had by her a son, Namrut, who became the father of a second Sheshonk,. This second Sheshonk, having royal blood in his veins, was selected by a later Tanite king as a fitting husband for his daughter, Keramat, and was thus led to raise his

thoughts to the crown. Whether he usurped it, or succeeded, in right of his wife, on the failure of heirs

by M. Mariette. (See his work Le Sérapéum de Memphis, p. 22.) An excellent comment on this inscription will be found in the small brochure of Lepsius, Ueber die XXII. Königsdynastie, pp. 265 et seqq.

letters of the alphabet). Nebnesha, | by one of the Apis stela discovered read as Nabo-nasi, has a Babylonian look, but, read as Nebnesha, is not even necessarily Semitic. Dr. Birch, who is an advocate of the Semitic origin of the Sheshonks, yet allows that they were possibly 'Libyans' and not Semites (Ancient Egypt, p. 155).

1 See above, p. 189.

2 Ap. Syncell. Chronograph. p.

Her rank is shown by the prefix suten sat, -, which occurs before her name. (Lepsius, p. 268, line 11.)

Lepsius uses the first, Brugsch the second, of these forms. Mehtenhont was probably a daughter of Men-khepr-ra or Pasebensha (Psusennes).

CH. XXIV.]

REIGN OF SHESHONK I.

419

male in the Tanite line,' is doubtful; but perhaps it is most probable that he was regarded as the rightful heir. Shortly after his accession, he took the thronename of Hut-khepr-ra-sotep-en-ra, and bore this name in his second shield on most occasions."

It was probably not long after his accession that he received a fugitive of importance from the neighbouring country of Palestine, where Solomon still occupied the throne of his father David. This was Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, an officer who had held high employment under Solomon, but had become an

1 So Wilkinson (in the author's Herodotus, vol. ii. p. 374, 3rd ed.) and Lenormant (Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne, vol. i. p. 452).

2 Denkmäler, pt. iii. pls. 252-4; Rosellini, Mon. Storici, pl. cxlviii. 3 1 Kings xi. 28.