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Rh river Euphrates." This covenant is renewed in more precise terms in Deuteronomy, and grants to the Israelites the whole countries of the caravan route from the Euphrates on the east to the Mediterranean on the west, with Lebanon in Phoenicia as their northern, and the desert as their southern, boundary. The emporiums on the main branches of the Syrian route find mention in the Pentateuch, from Tyre, Sidon, and Damascus, down through Rabbah, Bozrah, and Edom toward the Egyptian and Red Sea end.

The political achievement of the Hebrew monarchy was to convert this promise, for a time, into a fact. The seventy-three years assigned to the reigns of David and Solomon saw both the process of conquest and its full commercial development. When David made Jerusalem his capital (about 1049, according to the generally accepted Biblical date), he found himself able from that stronghold to seize the positions which commanded the caravan route. On the north he occupied Damascus, the outlet of the desert track, and the key to the two branches of the Syrian trade westward to Tyre and southward to Egypt and the Red Sea. The King of Tyre sought friendly relations with him. David garrisoned Damascus together with the surrounding country, through which the spice caravans passed west to the Levant, and captured the great halting-place of Rabbah, about half-way down the eastern frontier route. His general, according to correct oasis strategy, had first secured the water-supply on which the town depended. David also completed the conquests begun