Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/391

 EGYPT

341

EGYPT

Egypt, in Syria and in Palestine, where, later, one of their tribes, the Peleset, or Philistines, offered a stub- born resistance to the invasion of the Hebrews. On the other hand the great Hittite confederation had been very much weakened, if not entirely disinte- grated, as a result of the invasion. Ramses III had to repel another in- vasion of the Lib- yans, impelled this time by the Mesh- wesh (the Maxyes of Herodot us), and shortly after he found it necessary to appear again with his army in Northern Pales- tine, where rebel- lion had broken out among some of his vassals. The boundary remain- ed, probably, where it was under the NineteenthDy- nasty, including the whole course of the River Leon- tes (or Litany) and possibly a small portion of the up- per Orontes, ex- cluding Kadesh. Ramses III had no further trouble with his Asiatic vassals.

With the suc- cessors of Ramses III, nine weak pharaohs of the same name (Ram- ses IV-XII), na- tional decay sets in. Egj'pt entirely loses her prestige abroad, particularly in Asia, where Assj-ria is expand- ing under Tiglath-Pileser I; at home everything is confusion. Priests, officials, and mercenaries, whose wealth and prerogatives have been steadily growing at the expense of both pharaoh and his people, now fight among themselves for the controlling political influence, the pharaoh being reduced to a mere puppet. Such a .state of disorganization prevails everywhere that, in the necropolis of Thebes, in sight of the temple of Amon, where the high-priest is so powerful, the tombs of the pharaohs are desecrated and plundered by a gang of robbers, and the royal mimimies despoiled of all their most costly ornaments.

At some period during the Nineteenth Dynasty the pharaohs had their capital at Tanis (San-el-Hagar) in the Delta, Thebes remaining the religious capital of the empire. There Ramses XII resided when a local noble, Nesubenebded, seized the power (111.3 B. c.) and es- tablished himself as king over the Delta. The weak pharaoh retired to Thebes, where he was soon over- shadowed by Hrihor, the high-priest of Amon, who, when Ramses XII died as ingloriously as he had lived, was finally proclaimed supreme ruler of Egj'pt by an oracle of Khonsu followed by the approval of Amon (1090). Hrihor's rule, in fact, never extended over Lower Egypt, and his independence was not even sus- pected by Manetho who, after Ramses XII, introduces the Twenty-first Dynasty, with Nesubenebded as its founder. The division between the two countries was to continue, save for short intervals, for about four hundred and fifty years. Thebes, however, rarely

during that time enjoj'ed complete independence, and still more rarely ruled over the whole coimtry. Her relations to the Delta were usually those of a vassal to a suzerain. Her influence was particularly felt in Nubia, whither descendants of Hrihor seem to have retired at an early period, eventually founding an in- dependent kingdom at Napata. Confusion and dis- order still prevailed all over the land. To save them from further desecration, the royal mummies had to be concealed in an old, and proliably imused, tomb of Amenhotep I, near the temple of Deir el-Bahri, where they remained hidden until they were rifled some thirty-five years ago by the Arabs. Most of them are now at the Museum of Cairo. The capital of this dy- nasty was at Tanis. Its last king, Psibkhenno II, may be the pharaoh mentioned in III Kings, xi, 18; iii, 1 ; ix, 16 (see below). AssjTia was then on the decline and we can best represent to ourselves David and .Solomon as at least nominal vassals of Egj-pt.

Sheshonk (945-924), foimder of the Twentj^-second Dynasty, was a powerful mercenary prince, or chief of hired troops, of Heracleopolis, where his ancestors, of Libyan origin, had settled early in the Twenty- first Dynasty. In 945 B. c. he proclaimed himself king, establishing his residence at Bubastis, in the Delta. Sheshonk seems to have been an ambitious and energetic ruler. He certainly led a successful campaign in Palestine, perhaps the same mentioned in III Kings, xiv, 25 (cf. II Paralip., xii, 2 sqq.), where it is said that he came to Jerusalem in the fifth year of Roboam, and took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, although Jerusalem is not among the one hundred and fiftj- six Palestinian cities recorded in his inscription. In Solomon's time Sheshonk had given hospitality to Jeroboam (III Kings, xi, 40). Ac- cording to Profes- sor Breasted (An- cient Egyptians, 362), Sheshonk is also to be identi- fied with the phar- aoh who gave his daughter as a wife to Solomon (III Kings, iii, 1) and later on conquered Gezer and turned it over to his daughter, Soln- mon's wife, as a dowry (III King-, ix, 16) while Pro- fessor M a s p e r I > (Hist. Anc, 416) refers these epi- sodes and that of Hadad (III Kings, xi, 14 sqq.) to Psibkhenno II, the last king of the Twenty-first Dy- nasty. During

the following reigns of this dynasty history records nothing but endless civil wars between the two prin- cipalities of Thebes and Heracleopolis, and feuds be- tween the mercenarj' lords of the Delta. On the other hand, Assyria was more powerful than ever. Shal- maneser defeated, at Karkar on the Orontes, a Syriaa

.MrMMT OF Seti I (Bulak Museum)