xii. 18), and Rezon, who had fled from Zobah when David conquered the

country, was ‘an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon’ (1 Kings xi. 24, 25). No clue is given by the statement of Rehoboam’s age in 1 Kings xiv. 21, since when it is said that he was ‘forty and one years’ at the time of his accession this is merely equivalent to ‘_x_ + 1.’

The length of David’s reign is more accurately fixed. Seven years and a half did he reign in Hebron, and thirty-three years over Israel and Judah (2 Sam. iv. 5), or forty and a half years in all. Approximately, therefore, we may date his reign from B.C. 1000 to 960. Saul’s accession may have been ten or fifteen years earlier.

David’s palace at Jerusalem, it is stated in 2 Sam. v. 11, was built by the artisans of Hiram of Tyre, who also furnished him with cedar wood. The fragment of Tyrian annals quoted by Josephus from Menander[522] throws some light on the chronology of the time. Hiram, we are told, was the son of Abibal, and the names of his successors are recorded one after the other, together with the length of their reigns. But unfortunately the sum of the reigns does not agree with their total as twice given by Josephus, nor indeed are our authorities agreed among themselves in regard to the length of certain of them. The fact, however, that Josephus twice gives the same total raises a presumption in its favour, more especially when we find that it is possible by a little manipulation to make the sum of the several reigns harmonise with it.[523] This total is one hundred and forty-three years and eight months, which, it is said, elapsed from the building of Solomon’s temple in the twelfth year of Hiram down to the foundation of Carthage in the seventh year of Pygmalion. But the date of the foundation of Carthage is itself not a wholly certain quantity, though B.C. 826 is probably that which was assigned to it by the native historians.[524] A hundred and forty-three years and eight months reckoned back from 826 would bring us to B.C. 969 or 970. As the temple was begun in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign (1 Kings vi. 1), this would give B.C. 973 for the accession of Solomon, and B.C. 1013 for that of David. The palace constructed for David at Jerusalem by the workmen of Hiram must have been erected at the very end of David’s life, after the suppression of the revolt of Absalom, unless, indeed, the author of the books of Samuel has mistaken the name of the Tyrian king, and written Hiram instead of Abibal.

There is yet another synchronism between Hebrew and profane history which must not be overlooked. Jerusalem was captured in the fifth year of Rehoboam by Shishak I., the founder of the twenty-second Egyptian dynasty. But Egyptian chronology is more disputable even than that of Israel, and we do not know in what year of the Pharaoh’s reign the invasion of Palestine took place. Boeckh, on the authority of Manetho, places the commencement of his reign in B.C. 934; Unger, on the same authority, in B.C. 930; while Lepsius pushes it back to B.C. 961.

On the whole, then, we must be content with approximate dates for the founders of the Hebrew monarchy. The revolt of the Ten Tribes will have taken place somewhere between B.C. 940 and 930; the accession of David somewhere between B.C. 1010 and 1000. It coincided with the period when the older kingdoms of the Oriental world—Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt—were in their lowest stage of weakness and decay.

Solomon succeeded to a brilliant heritage. The nations which surrounded him had been conquered or forced into alliance with Israel; there was none among them adventurous or strong enough to attack the newly risen power. The caravan-roads which brought the merchandise of both north and south to the wealthy states of Western Asia passed through Israelitish territory; Edom, which communicated with the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, was in Jewish hands, as well as Zobah, which commanded the road to the Euphrates. The tolls levied on the trade which thus passed through the empire filled the treasury at Jerusalem with abundant riches, while the products and luxuries of the whole eastern world flowed into the Hebrew market. The alliance with the Tyrians gave Solomon a port in the Mediterranean; the possession of Edom gave him ports of his own in the Gulf of Aqaba. In return for the use of the Edomite harbours by the ships of Phœnicia, he was allowed to send forth merchantmen of his own from the havens of Hiram on the Phœnician coast. The ships themselves were manned with Phœnician sailors; like the Assyrian kings in later days he had to turn to the experienced mariners of Phœnicia to work his fleet.

At home the kingdom had been fully organised. There were an army of veterans, a foreign bodyguard, who had no interests beyond those of the master who paid them, a well-selected capital, and a fiscal administration. The revolts which had disturbed the later years of David had been suppressed with a heavy hand, and such murmurs as may have been raised against the enfeebled government and neglected justice of the late reign were hushed in presence of a young and well-educated prince, the _protégé_ of priests and prophets, whose very name promised his people the blessings of peace. The wars of David, with their tax of blood and treasure, were at an end. Those who had conspired against the elevation of Solomon to the throne had been put to death at the outset of his reign: the grey hairs of Joab were stained with his own blood as he clung to the unavailing altar; Adonijah was executed on the ground that he had asked to have Abishag for a wife, and it was not long before a pretext was found for removing Shimei out of the way. Benjamin and Judah had alike lost their leaders, and Solomon henceforth did his utmost to win them to himself.

Abiathar was banished to the priests’ city of Anathoth, and the glory of the high priesthood was left to Zadok and his descendants alone. They alone were allowed to serve before the ark of the covenant, and the doom pronounced upon the house of Eli was thus fulfilled. The act placed the religion of Israel for many generations to come under the domination of the king. Solomon declared by it his supremacy in the church as well as in the state. It meant that the king claimed the power and the right to appoint and dismiss the ministers of the Mosaic law. The central sanctuary became the royal chapel rather than the temple of the national God, and its priests were the paid officials of the sovereign rather than the administrators and interpreters to the people of the divine law. The democratic element passed out of Hebrew religion, and the king more than the high priest came to stand at the head of it. The erection of the temple completed the work which the deposition of Abiathar had begun; sanctuary, services, and priesthood were all alike under the royal control. The family of Eli had preserved the tradition of the days when the priests of Shiloh exercised independent authority, and interpreted the law which all were called upon to obey. With the banishment of Abiathar came a break with the past; no venerable memories were connected with the rival house of Zadok, no recollection of a time when the word of the priest of Shiloh had been a teacher in Israel. Under Zadok and his successors the old meaning of the high priesthood gradually faded out of sight; as in Assyria or Southern Arabia the priests of an earlier age were supplanted by kings, so too in Israel the place and influence of the high priest were absorbed by the Davidic dynasty. Even a Jeroboam could assert his right to establish sanctuaries and appoint the priests who should serve them.

Solomon had been brought up under the eye and instruction of Nathan, and to Nathan, therefore, we must probably trace his religious policy. There was much to be said in favour of it. It prevented friction between the priesthood and the monarchy; it guaranteed the stability of the dynasty of David by extending to it the sanction of religion; above all, it secured the maintenance of the religion itself. It gave it as it were a local habitation in a costly sanctuary built and endowed out of the royal revenues, and attached to the royal palace. The ark ceased to be national, and became instead the sacred treasure of the chapel of the king. While the monarchy lasted, the religion of the monarchy would last also, and Nathan and Zadok might be pardoned if they believed that the Davidic monarchy would last for ever.

The administration of the country next claimed the attention of the new king. It was organised on an Assyrian model, Palestine being divided into districts, each of which was placed under a governor who was responsible for the taxes as well as for the civil and judicial government of it. Hitherto, it would appear, the old system of tribal government had been preserved, the tribes owning allegiance to hereditary chieftains or ‘princes,’ who, like the chieftains of a Highland clan, represented the tribe, and led its members to war. David seems to have modified this system for military purposes, if we may judge from the list of ‘captains’ given in 1 Chron. xxvii., but no attempt was made to carry out a general system of taxation, or appoint governors with fiscal powers. The conquered provinces alone were required to furnish an annual tribute to the treasury, and for this a single officer, Hadoram, was found sufficient.

The territory of the Israelites themselves was now formed into fiscal districts. Twelve officers were appointed, who were required to provide in turn for the necessary expenses of the royal household during the twelve months of the year. A list of them, extracted from some official document, is given in 1 Kings iv. 8-19. In the earlier part of the list the names of the officers have been lost, those only of their fathers having been preserved. Two of them were married to daughters of Solomon, indicating that the list must have been drawn up towards the end of Solomon’s life. One of the king’s sons-in-law was the governor of Naphtali; the other presided over the Phœnician coast-land south of Tyre. Here, at Dor, in a country occupied by the Zakkal kinsmen of the Philistines, and in proximity to Tyre, it was needful that the prefect should be connected with the king by closer ties than those of officialism. The direction of the Mediterranean trade was mainly in his hands, and the resources which were thus at his disposal, as well as the neighbourhood of Hiram, might have tried the loyalty of any but a relative of the king. The plateau of Bashan was under the jurisdiction of one governor who had his residence at Ramoth-gilead; Gilead was under a second, while a third governor had Mahanaim. We may, therefore, gather that Ammon and Moab, as well as Geshur, had been absorbed into Israelitish territory. This may in part explain why at the revolt of the Ten Tribes Moab went with Israel rather than with Judah.

It is noticeable that there was no governor in Judah. Here, in fact, the king himself ruled in person. It would seem that Judah was exempt from the taxes levied on the rest of Palestine. This was in accordance with the policy which made Solomon court the goodwill of his father’s tribe, and identify with its interests those of himself and his house. So far as the continuance of the Davidic dynasty was concerned, the policy succeeded. Judah identified itself with the house of David, and rallied faithfully round its king. There was no longer any talk of rebellion, or of transporting the capital to Hebron; from henceforth Judah and its kings were one. But the fact only made the breach between Judah and the rest of Israel wider and more visible, and alienated the other tribes from the reigning house. They were treated like the conquered Gentiles; the place of their old hereditary princes and leaders was taken by governors appointed by the crown, and fixed taxes were rigorously exacted from them for the support of the royal treasury. They derived no benefit, however, from the royal expenditure; it was lavished upon Jerusalem and the Jewish towns which lay near to it. They were too far off to see even a reflection of that royal glory of which they may have heard, and for which they certainly had to pay. The same causes which strengthened the ties of allegiance of Judah to the reigning dynasty weakened those of Israel.

Throughout the reign of Solomon, Hadoram remained ‘over the tribute,’ and his duties were enlarged by the supervision of the home taxation and _corvée_ being added to that of the foreign tribute.[525] Jehoshaphat still continued ‘recorder,’ but the secretary Shisha had been succeeded by his two sons. The literary correspondence of the empire was increasing, and one chief secretary was no longer sufficient for it. The family of Nathan, as might have been expected, was well provided for. One son was made Vizier; the other became the royal chaplain as well as ‘the king’s friend.’ The latter title, which had been given to Hushai in the time of David (1 Chron. xxvii. 33), had been borrowed from Egypt; the title of the Vizier, or ‘head of the officers,’ corresponded with the Assyrian Rab-saki or Rabshakeh, ‘the chief of the princes.’ Another office which may have been borrowed from Assyria was that of royal steward, which was held by Ahishar; along with him the Septuagint associates a second steward Eliak, and a captain of the bodyguard called Eliab, the son of Saph or Shaphat.[526] Like the list of governors, the list of officials must have been drawn up at the end of Solomon’s reign, since Azariah has already taken the place of his grandfather Zadok as high priest (see 1 Chron. vi. 9, 10, where a confusion has been made between Ahimaaz the son of Zadok and Johanan or Jonathan the son of Abiathar). It is significant that the list begins with the ‘priest,’ not with the general of the army as in the warlike days of David.

The fame of Solomon’s wealth and magnificence was spread through the Oriental world. Foreign sovereigns sought his alliance or courted his favour. Even the Queen of Sheba came to visit him. Modern criticism has long since banished the Queen to the realm of fiction, but archæological discovery has again restored her to history. Sheba or Saba was already a flourishing kingdom in the time of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III.; its territories extended from the spice-bearing coasts of Southern Arabia to the borders of Babylonia and Palestine. If Glaser and Hommel are right in their interpretation of the south Arabian inscriptions, it had entered on the older heritage of the kingdom of Ma’ân. The Minæan kings of Ma’ân had ruled not only in the south but in the north as well; their records are found near Teima, and they had command of the great highroad of commerce which led from the Indian Ocean to Egypt and Gaza. Egypt and Gaza, indeed, are mentioned in Minæan inscriptions.[527] From an early period the kingdoms of Southern Arabia had been in commercial contact with Canaan.

The conquest of Edom by David and the Hebrew fleets which sailed from the Gulf of Aqaba must soon have acquainted the merchant princes of Ma’ân and Saba with the fact that a new power had risen in Western Asia, and a new market been opened for their goods. The road to Palestine was well-known and frequently travelled, and Minæan or Sabæan settlements existed upon it almost as far as the frontiers of Edom. What more natural, therefore, than that a Sabæan queen should visit her wealthy neighbour whose patronage had become important for Sabæan trade? That queens might rule in the Arabian peninsula we know from the annals of Tiglath-pileser III., which refer to Zabibê and her successor Samsê, each of whom is called a ‘queen of the land of the Arabs.’

Even the Pharaoh of Egypt condescended to mingle the blood of the solar race with that of the grandson of a Hebrew _fellah_. Solomon married the daughter of the Egyptian monarch. But it was a monarch of the twenty-first dynasty, who, though acknowledged as the sole legitimate representative of the line of the Sun-god Ra, had nevertheless been sadly shorn of his ancient rights and authority. His power was confined to the Delta, where he held his court in the old Hyksos capital of Tanis or Zoan, close to the Asiatic frontier, and as far removed as possible from the rival dynasty which ruled in Upper Egypt. He was doubtless glad to secure a son-in-law who could defend him from his enemies at home in case of need, and whose friendship was preferable to his hostility.

The Egyptian princess had brought with her as dowry the Canaanitish city of Gezer. That it should have been in the power of the Pharaoh to give it is at first sight surprising. It shows that Egypt had never relinquished in theory her old claims to be mistress of Canaan. Like the title of ‘king of France,’ which so long lingered in the royal style of England, they were never abandoned, but were ready to be revived whenever an opportunity occurred. Towards the close of the period of the Judges, but before the Philistines had become formidable, Assyria and Egypt had met on friendly terms on the coast of Palestine. The Assyrian conqueror, Tiglath-pileser I. (in B.C. 1100), had found his way to the Phœnician city of Arvad, and there received from the Egyptian Pharaoh various presents which included a crocodile and a hippopotamus. The campaign of the Assyrian king had brought him to the edge of the territory which the Egyptian rulers of the twenty-first dynasty still regarded as their own, and they hastened accordingly to propitiate the invader, and thus to stay his further advance. The embassy and gifts further show that the occupation of the coast by the Philistines did not prevent the Egyptians from maintaining their old relations with Phœnicia, though they may have done so by sea rather than by land. At all events an expedition sent to Gebal by Hir-Hor, the high priest of Thebes, at the beginning of the twenty-first dynasty, was despatched in ships.[528] Had the coast-road been free from danger, the Egyptians would doubtless have asserted their right to march along it. They seized the first occasion to do so, when the Philistines had been conquered by David, and the successor of David was the Pharaoh’s ally.

Solomon engaged in no wars of his own. He was no general himself, and it may be that he feared to intrust a subject with an army. Joab had taught him how easily the commander-in-chief might defy his master, Abner how readily he might betray him. In the list of officials given in the Hebrew text, Benaiah indeed is stated to have been ‘over the host’ (1 Kings iv. 4), but Benaiah was actually the commander of the bodyguard, so that his command of the army must have been merely nominal. Practically the army which had played so large a part in the history of David had ceased to exist. Hence it was that Rezon was able to establish an independent kingdom in Damascus, and that when the Ten Tribes revolted there was no army at hand with which to suppress the rebellion. Hence, too, the curious fact that just as Solomon sought the help of Hiram in fitting out his merchant fleet in the Gulf of Aqaba, so also he sought the help of the Egyptian king in subduing the one Canaanitish city of importance which still preserved its freedom. Gezer had maintained its Canaanitish continuity from the days when as yet the Israelites had not entered Canaan, and the mounds of Tel Jezer which mark its site must still conceal beneath them the records of its early history. Doubtless the Egyptian court was gratified at the arrangement with the Hebrew king. It admitted the Egyptian claim of suzerainty over Palestine, and admitted the right of its armies to march along its roads. But the substantial advantages remained with Solomon. He gained Gezer without either expense or trouble, and at the same time he allied himself by marriage with the oldest and most exclusive royal race in the Oriental world. Like the kings of Mitanni in the age of the eighteenth dynasty, the son-in-law of the Pharaoh was on a footing of equality with the proudest princes of Asia.

The alliance with Hiram was no less advantageous. Hiram had done for Tyre what Solomon was doing for Jerusalem. It has been conjectured that his father Abibal, or Abi-Baal, was the founder of a dynasty; at all events the accession of Hiram ushered in a new era for the Tyrian state. He succeeded to the throne at the age of nineteen years, and during his long reign of thirty-four years he raised Tyre to an unprecedented height of prosperity and power, and rebuilt the city itself. The ancient ‘rock’ from which it had derived its name was connected by an embankment with another rocky islet close to it, and a new and splendid city was erected upon the space thus won from the sea. Excellent harbours were constructed, massive walls built round the city, and the venerable temple of Melkarth restored from its foundations, and decorated with all the sumptuous splendour of Phœnician art.

Tyre had always been famous for its sailors and its ships, and its wealth is celebrated even in the letters of Tel el-Amarna. But under Hiram its maritime trade underwent an enormous development. The conquest of the Philistines by David, and the consequent disappearance of piracy from the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, were the immediate causes of this. Tyrian ships could now venture into the bays and havens of the Greek seas in quest of slaves, or the precious purple-fish, and their merchants could make voyages in safety as far as Tarshish. Riches poured into ‘the merchant-city,’ and Hiram had resources in abundance for his public works.

The Hebrew king was eager to follow the example of his Tyrian neighbour. It was true that his subjects were neither sailors nor traders; it was true, also, that the harbours on the Mediterranean coast which the conquest of the Philistines had added to his dominions were few and poor. But the conquest of Edom had given him the entrance to the spice-lands of Southern Arabia, and the gold-mines which recent discovery has found in Central Africa.[529] An agreement was therefore come to with Hiram which was to the profit of both. Hiram gave Solomon sailors and boat-builders, as well as the use of his Mediterranean ports; in return he received from Solomon the right of using the harbours of the Red Sea. While the products of Europe made their way to Solomon through Tyre, the products of the south passed to Hiram from the Edomite havens of Elath and Ezion-geber.

Hiram was useful to Solomon in yet another way. The age of empire-building was over; the time had come to create a capital which should be worthy of the empire. Like Ramses II. of Egypt, Solomon made himself an imperishable name as a builder. Jerusalem was strongly fortified; royal palaces were erected; above all, a temple was raised to Yahveh that vied in splendour with those of Phœnicia and the Nile. But the architects and artisans had to be brought from the dominions of the Tyrian king; the Israelites had been too much barbarised by the long struggle for existence they had had to wage for another Bezaleel to be born among them, as in the days when they had but just quitted the cultured land of the Delta. It is true that the master-artificer in bronze, who designed the bronze-work of the temple, was a Hebrew on his mother’s side, but he bore the Tyrian name of Hiram, and his father was ‘a man of Tyre.’ Even for his carpenters and masons Solomon was indebted to his Tyrian ally; it was only the gangs of labourers driven to their forced work among the forests and quarries of Lebanon that were levied by Hadoram out of ‘Israel.’ The Israelites had become hewers of wood and drawers of water for their king, and, as in the old days of Egyptian bondage, 3300 taskmasters were employed in keeping them to their work.[530] Like the architects, the skilled artificers were lent by Hiram; from Hiram came also the logs of cedar and fir that were needed for the buildings at Jerusalem.

In return Solomon provided his ally with wheat and oil. The island-city was dependent on others for its corn; on the rock of Tyre and on the barren crags of the opposite mainland no wheat could be grown. Twenty cities of Galilee, moreover, were ceded to Hiram. But for these Hiram had to pay one hundred and twenty talents of gold; and in the end, the wily Hebrew, like his forefather Jacob, had the best of the bargain. When the Tyrian king came to inspect his new territory, it ‘pleased him not.’ Solomon, in fact, had given him what it was not worth his own while to keep.

The royal palace was thirteen years in building. Attached to it was the armoury, or House of the Forest of Lebanon as it was called from the cedar used in its construction. Here the three hundred shields and two hundred targets of gold were stored, which were made for the bodyguard, and served also as a reserve fund in case of need. The architecture of the palace itself culminated, as in Persia, in the audience-chamber with its throne of ivory overlaid with gold, and approached by six steps which were guarded on either side by the images of lions. Another palace was erected for the Egyptian queen; like the palace of the king it was in the Upper City, close to the spot on which the temple was destined to stand.

The old palace of David, in the lower town or ‘City of David,’ was deserted; as soon as the new buildings were completed on Moriah, the king moved to them with his harîm and court. The palace which had satisfied the simple tastes of the father was no longer sufficient for the luxury and display of the more cultured son. The ‘City of David’ was left to the Jews and Benjamites; the court and the priesthood settled above them by the side of the old Jebusite population, which had been reduced to serfdom (1 Kings ix. 20). None but slaves and serfs might dwell where the monarch lived surrounded by his armed bodyguard; the free Israelite was confined to another quarter of the town.

The palace was protected by a huge fortress called the Millo, which was connected with the new walls of Jerusalem, and begun as soon as the palace of the Egyptian princess had been finished. Whether it stood on the eastern or western side of the city is doubtful; the topography of pre-exilic Jerusalem is unfortunately still involved in obscurity. The pool of Siloam, and the identification of the Upper Gihon or ‘Spring’ with the Virgin’s Fountain, the only natural spring of water in the immediate neighbourhood of the city, are almost the only two points which can be fixed with certainty. If the subterranean tunnel which conveys the water of the Virgin’s Fountain to the pool of Siloam is the conduit made by Hezekiah when he ‘stopped the upper water-course of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David’ (2 Chron. xxxii. 30), the west side will be that which overlooks the Tyropœon valley, where the tunnel ends. In this case the city of David, which is stated in 2 Sam. v. 7 to have been on Mount Zion, will be the so-called southern hill or ‘Ophel,’ which lies south of the Mosque of Omar, and the Tyropœon valley will be the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom so often referred to in the Old Testament. The Jerusalem of the kings will thus have been, like most of the cities of the ancient Oriental world, of no great size according to our modern conceptions; its population will have been as closely packed together as it is to-day in the native quarters of Cairo, and the fortifications which surrounded it would not have occupied too wide a circumference for a Jewish army to defend. The Tyropœon valley is choked with the rubbish of ancient Jerusalem to a depth of more than seventy feet; but under it must lie the tombs of the kings of Judah. The recent excavations of Dr. Bliss have thrown but little light on the question, since the walls he has found seem mostly of a late date; but if the rock-cut steps he has discovered north of the pool of Siloam are really ‘the stairs that go down from the city of David’ (Neh. iii. 16), a striking verification will have been given of the theory which sees in the southern hill the Zion of Scripture, and in the valley of ‘the Cheesemakers’ the gorge of the sons of Hinnom.[531]

The crown of all the building activity of Solomon was the temple, even though it did not take so long to construct as his own palace. Materials for it had already been accumulated by David, and the architects and workmen came from Tyre. It was built of large blocks of square stone, the edges of which were probably bevelled as in early Phœnician work, and the walls inside were covered with panels of cedar. Walls and doors alike were profusely decorated with the designs of Phœnician art. Cherubs and palms, lotus flowers and pomegranates were depicted on them in the forms that have been made familiar to us by the relics of ancient Phœnician workmanship. The temple itself was of rectangular shape, not unlike the chapel of King’s College at Cambridge, and in front of it were two large courts, one of which—the ‘inner’ or ‘upper’ court—stood on a higher level than the other. The whole design, in fact, was purely Phœnician; in form and ornamentation the building exactly resembled the temples of Phœnicia. Like them, it must have looked externally like a huge rectangular box, which was further disfigured by chambers, in sets of three, being built one over the other against the walls. The great temple of Melkarth, which Hiram had just completed at Tyre, probably served as the model for the temple of Jerusalem.

The entrance was approached by steps, and consisted of a porch, on either side of which were two lofty columns of bronze, called Jachin and Boaz.[532] Similar columns were planted before the entrance of a Phœnician temple where they symbolised the fertilising power of the Sun-god, and Herodotos (ii. 44) states that the two which stood in front of the temple at Tyre were made of gold and emerald glass. Two similar columns of stone, though of small size, have been found in the Temple of the Giants in the island of Gozo, one of which still remains in its original place. In the outer court was a bronze ‘sea’ or basin, thirty cubits in circumference, and supported on twelve oxen. The ‘sea’ had been imported into the West from Babylonia, where it similarly stood in the court of a temple, and represented the _apsu_ or ‘watery abyss,’ out of which Chaldæan philosophy taught that all things had been evolved. A Babylonian hymn which describes the casting of a copper ‘sea’ for the temple of Chaos tells us that, like the ‘sea’ at Jerusalem, it rested on the heads of twelve bulls.[533] Along with the ‘sea’ bronze lavers and basins were provided for the ablutions of the priests and the vessels of the sanctuary.

The temple was but a shell for enclosing the innermost shrine or Holy of Holies where, as in a casket, the ark of the covenant was placed under the protecting wings of two gilded cherubim. What they were like we may gather from the Assyrian sculptures, in which the two winged cherubs are depicted on either side of the sacred tree.[534] The over-shadowing wings formed a ‘mercy-seat,’ the _parakku_ of the Babylonian texts, whereon, according to Nebuchadrezzar, Bel seated himself on the festival of the new year, while the other gods humbly ranged themselves around him bowing to the ground.[535] At Babylon, moreover, the table of shewbread which stood before Bel was of solid gold, like the table which Solomon made for the service of Yahveh.[536] Indeed, the description of the lavish use of gold in the temple of Jerusalem finds its echo in the description given by Nebuchadrezzar of the temples he reared in Babylon. The altar of Yahveh, it is said, was of gold, so too were the candlesticks and lamps and vessels; even the hinges of the doors that opened into the Holy of Holies were of the same precious metal, while the cedar work was richly gilded, and the floor itself was overlaid with golden plates. In similar terms Nebuchadrezzar describes his decoration of Ê-Sagila, the temple of Bel, at Babylon. Here too, the beams and panels of cedar were overlaid with gold, the gates were gilded, and the vessels for the service of the sanctuary were of solid gold.[537] There was one point, however, in which the temples of Jerusalem and Babylon differed from one another; in the shrine of Ê-Sagila was the image of Bel: the Hebrew shrine contained no likeness of a god. The only graven figures within it were the cherubim whose wings overshadowed the ark.

The temple was finished in seven (or more exactly seven and a half) years. Perhaps an effort was made to restrict the years of building to the sacred number. At all events, it was in the seventh month of the Hebrew year, the Ethanim of the Phœnicians, that the feast of the dedication was kept.[538] It coincided with the ancient festival of the Ingathering of the Harvest, a fitting season for commemorating the completion of the work.

The dedication of Solomon’s temple is the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the Jewish state and of Hebrew religion. It became the visible centre round which the elements of the Israelitish faith gathered and cohered together until the terrible day came when the enemy stormed the walls of the capital and laid its temple in the dust. But it had already exercised a profound influence upon the history of Judah. It had helped to unify the kingdom; to bind the population of southern Palestine, mixed in blood though it were, into a single whole. Unlike the northern tribes with their two great sanctuaries at Dan and Bethel, Judah and Benjamin had a common centre in the one sanctuary of Jerusalem. Around it, moreover, were grouped all the traditions and memories of a venerable past. It alone was connected with the traditions of the Mosaic Law and the priesthood of Shiloh, with the rites and ceremonies that had come down from the primeval days of the Israelitish people, and with the foundation of the monarchy itself. It was the dwelling-place on earth of Yahveh of Israel; here was the sacred ark of the covenant which had once been carried before the invaders of Canaan, and was still the outward sign and symbol of God’s presence among His people. With the preservation of the temple the preservation of the Jewish religion itself seemed to be bound up, as well as of the Jewish state.

But the temple did something more than help to unify the southern monarchy and preserve the traditions of the Mosaic law. It served also to strengthen and perpetuate the Davidic dynasty, and to keep alive in the hearts of the people their allegiance to the line of Solomon. The temple, as we have seen, was not only a national sanctuary, it was also a royal chapel. It formed, as it were, part of the royal palace, in which the king overshadowed the high priest himself. The halo of veneration which surrounded the temple was thus communicated to the royal line. The temple and the descendants of David became parts of the same national conception; the one necessarily implied the other. When the throne of David fell, the temple also fell with it. While the temple lasted, Judah remained a homogeneous state, yielding willing obedience to its theocratic monarchy, and gradually gaining a clearer idea of the meaning and practice of the Mosaic Law. The temple of Solomon made Jewish religion conservative, but it was a conservatism which, as time went on, evolved the consequences of its own principles, and sought how best to carry them out in ritual and practice.

Jerusalem had become one of the great capitals of the world. Its public buildings were worthy of the empire which had been created by David, of the wealth that had poured into the coffers of Solomon from the trade of the whole Orient, of the culture and art which the young king had done his best to introduce. But the necessities of defence were not forgotten. The fortifications of the city were pushed on—though, it would seem, not with sufficient rapidity to allow them to be finished before the king’s death—and horses and chariots were imported from Egypt and the land of the Hittites in the north. With these Solomon equipped a standing force of 1400 chariots and 12,000 horsemen, who served as garrisons in Jerusalem and the other fortresses of the country.

Nor were the other cities of the empire neglected in favour of Jerusalem. Gezer was rebuilt and fortified; so too were ‘Beth-horon the nether and Baalath’ in Judah, and ‘Tadmor in the wilderness,’ the Palmyra of later days.[539] It is true that modern criticism would see in Tadmor the Tamar of the southern desert of Judah which is referred to by Ezekiel (xlvii. 19, xlviii. 28) as a future border of the Holy Land. But, though the Kethîbh or text of the Hebrew Scriptures has Tamar, the reading is corrupt, and has been corrected by the Massoretic scribes themselves.[540] The Chronicler (2 Chron. viii. 4) shows that Tadmor was the reading of the text in his time, and he shows further that it was known to be the desert-city which afterwards became the seat of empire of the merchant prince Odenathus and his queen, Zenobia. We learn from him that Solomon had put down a rising in that part of Zobah which adjoined Hamath, that he had founded ‘store-cities’ in Hamath, and had built Tadmor in the wilderness beyond. It is strange only that no allusion is made to building operations in Israel: perhaps Solomon was disinclined to establish fortresses among the northern tribes which might be used against his own authority, perhaps David had already put the cities of northern Israel in a thorough state of defence. At all events, little danger from abroad was to be apprehended in this part of the Israelitish dominions; Solomon was in alliance with Tyre, and presumably also with Hamath, and Zobah was included in his empire.

We gather from the Assyrian inscriptions that Zobah extended from the neighbourhood of Hamath and Damascus eastward across the desert towards the Euphrates. Midway stood Palmyra, approached by roads from both Damascus and Homs, which there united and then led to the ford across the Euphrates at Thapsacus or Tiphsakh. It was the shortest route from Palestine to Mesopotamia, and avoided the tolls and possible hostility of the Hittites in their strong fortress of Carchemish. The conquest of Zobah would necessarily have laid Palmyra and the roads that passed through it at the feet of David, and the importance of the place for commercial purposes could not have failed to strike the mind of Solomon ever ready to discover fresh channels of trade. Its fortification would naturally have been one of his first cares; even if there had been no mention of the fact in the Old Testament, the historian would have been almost compelled to assume it. It opened to him the merchandise of Mesopotamia, of Babylonia, and Assyria, and brought him into touch with the old monarchies of the Asiatic world. For the trade of the east, Palmyra was to Solomon what the ports of Edom were for the trade of the south.

To the north his dominions touched on those of the Hittites, who were still settled in Kadesh on the Orontes, even if Hamath had long since passed out of their possession. Lenormant was the first to point out that in 1 Kings x. 28 there is an allusion to the importation of horses into Judah, not only from Egypt, but also from the Hittite regions on the Gulf of Antioch. Here lived the Quê of the Assyrian monuments, who are named in the Hebrew text, though it needed the revelations of Oriental archæology to discover the fact. Solomon, it is there said, ‘had horses brought out of Egypt and out of Quê; the royal merchants received it from Quê at a price.’ In the later days of the Assyrian empire Nineveh obtained its supply of horses and stallions from the same part of the world, and there are numerous letters to the king which relate to their importation. The chariots came from Egypt, the value of each being as much as 600 shekels of silver, or £90; it was only the horses that were brought from ‘the kings of the Hittites’ and ‘the kings of Aram.’ The trade in both horses and chariots was a monopoly which Solomon kept jealously in his own hands; the merchants were those ‘of the king,’ and none of his subjects was allowed to import materials of war which might be employed against himself.

It was the trade with the south which introduced into Jerusalem the greatest novelties and the most costly articles of luxury. In imitation of the kings of Egypt and Assyria, Solomon established zoological and botanical gardens where the strange animals and plants that had been brought from abroad were kept. Such collections had been made by Thothmes III. at Thebes, and on the foundations of a ruined chamber in his temple at Karnak we may still see pictures of the trees and plants and birds which he sent home from his campaigns in Syria and the Soudan. In Assyria a botanical garden had been similarly planted by Tiglath-pileser I. (B.C. 1100), and stocked with foreign plants.[541] Solomon’s collections were therefore no new thing in the Oriental world, though they were a novelty in Palestine; and his subjects went to gaze and wonder, like the Cairenes of to-day, at the apes which had come from the far south, or the peacocks whose name (_thukîyîm_) betrayed their Indian origin. It is even said that he composed books on the animal and vegetable collections he had made.[542]

Gold and silver and ivory were also brought, with the apes and peacocks, by the merchant vessels whose voyages of three years’ duration carried them along the Somali coast, and even, it may be, to the mouths of the Indus. The gold probably came, for the most part, from the mines of the Zambesi region, where foreign mining settlements are now known to have been established at an early date, and where objects have been found, such as birds carved out of stone, which remind us of the civilisation of southern Arabia. But the greater part of the silver, which we are told became as plentiful as ‘stones,’ must have been derived from Asia Minor. Here were the mines from which the Hittites extracted the metal for which they seem to have had a special fancy, and it was through them that it probably made its way to Jerusalem. Copper would have come from Cyprus, and been brought in the ships which trafficked in the Mediterranean. It was the Mediterranean trade, moreover, which supplied the tin needed for the vast quantities of bronze that was used in the Solomonic age. We know of no source of it equal to such a demand except the peninsula of Cornwall; but if it really was Cornish tin that found its way to the eastern basin of the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age it must have travelled like amber across Europe until it reached the Adriatic or the Gulf of Lyons. The amber found by Dr. Schliemann in the prehistoric tombs of Mykenæ is of Baltic origin, and amber beads have been discovered by Dr. Bliss at Lachish, belonging to the century before the Exodus; if amber could travel thus far from northern Europe, the tin might have done the same.

Future generations looked back upon the reign of Solomon as the golden age of Israel. But there was a reverse side to the picture. The combination of culture and arbitrary power produced in him the selfish luxury of an Oriental despot, which is bent on satisfying its own sensuous desires at the expense of all around it. Solomon’s extravagance was like that of the Khedive Ismail in our own day, and it led to the same amount of misery and impoverishment in the nation. He found on his accession a treasury well filled by the thrifty government of his father; and his trading monopolies and alliances brought him an apparently inexhaustible supply of wealth. But a time came when even this supply began to fail, and to cease to suffice for his reckless expenditure. Heavier taxes were laid on the subject populations; the free men of Israel were compelled to work as unpaid serfs under the lash of the taskmaster, and the older population of the land, who were still numerous, were turned into veritable bond-slaves. To the Gibeonites, who had long been the serfs of the Levitical sanctuary, were now added the Nethinim, a part of whom went under the name of ‘Solomon’s slaves’ (Ezra ii. 55, 58). The building of the temple had cost the people dear: the Israelites had been robbed of their freedom to provide for it stone and wood; the Canaanites had been given to it as actual slaves.

Doubtless the policy of Solomon was partly determined by the same considerations as those which had moved the Pharaoh of the Oppression. He mistrusted the Canaanites, he was afraid of the northern tribes. In either case he endeavoured to break their spirit, and render them powerless to revolt. But in the case of the Hebrew tribesmen he did not succeed. Discontent was smothered for awhile, but it was none the less dangerous on that account. And towards the end of Solomon’s life an incident occurred which led eventually to the division of the kingdom. Jeroboam the son of Nebat—in whom Dr. Neubauer has seen the name of a ‘Nabathean’—and whose mother belonged to the tribe of Ephraim, had distinguished himself by his activity and abilities. Solomon had finished the Millo or Fort, and was now at work on the other fortifications of Jerusalem. His notice was drawn to Jeroboam, and he made the young man the ‘taskmaster’ or overseer of the _corvée_ of Ephraimites employed upon the walls. Like Moses in old days, Jeroboam’s sympathy was aroused by the sufferings of his fellow-tribesmen, which found a mouthpiece in Ahijah the prophet of Shiloh. Ahijah was himself one of the dispossessed. The glory of Shiloh had passed away from it; Jerusalem had taken its place. The tabernacle of Shiloh had been rejected in favour of the temple of the Jewish king. The centre of Hebrew religion and power had departed from the house of Joseph, and been transferred to the mixed parvenus of Judah.

In Jeroboam the prophet recognised the leader who should restore the lost fortunes of Ephraim and revenge its injuries. Jeroboam listened to the counsels of revolt, but the time for making use of them had not yet come. His plans and plotting became known to Solomon, and, once more like Moses, he had to fly for his life. He made his way to the Egyptian court, where a ready welcome awaited him.

A new dynasty had arisen there. The Libyan mercenaries had dethroned their feeble masters, and seated Shishak or Sheshanq, their general, upon the throne of the Pharaohs. The Tanitic dynasty which ruled the Delta was swept away; so also was the rival dynasty of high-priests who reigned at Thebes and held possession of Upper Egypt. With the rise of the twenty-second dynasty at Bubastis, a new and unaccustomed vigour was infused into the government of Egypt. Shishak proved himself an able and energetic king. His earlier years were occupied in putting down opposition at home, and restoring order and unity throughout the country. When once the task was accomplished, he began to turn his attention elsewhere. Egypt had never relinquished its theoretical claims to sovereignty in Canaan; and the new power that had arisen there menaced the safety of the Asiatic frontier. Solomon, it is true, had allied himself by marriage with the Pharaohs; but it was with a Pharaoh of the fallen dynasty, and this in itself made him all the more dangerous a neighbour. At present Israel was too powerful to be attacked; but a time might come when the Egyptian monarch might venture to march again along the roads that had once conducted the armies of Egypt to the conquest of Syria. Meanwhile Shishak could stir up disaffection and rebellion in the Israelitish empire, and could harbour pretenders to the throne who might hereafter undermine the very existence of the new power.

As long as Solomon lived Jeroboam did not dare to stir. But he was not the only ‘adversary’ of the Jewish king. Hadad, the representative of the old kings of Edom, had also found a refuge in the Egyptian court, and had there married the sister-in-law of the Pharaoh. In spite of the Pharaoh’s remonstrances he had returned to the mountains of Edom when David and Joab were dead, and had there carried on a guerilla warfare with the Israelitish garrisons. Throughout the lifetime of Solomon he had maintained himself in the fastnesses of Seir, and had been, as it were, a thorn in the side of the conquerors of his country. But he never succeeded in seriously injuring the caravan trade that passed through Edom, or in shaking off the Israelitish yoke. The male population of Edom had been too mercilessly exterminated for this to be possible, and all that he could do was to molest the trade with the Red Sea. But even in this he does not seem to have been successful.

A more formidable opponent of Israel was Rezon of Zobah. He, it would seem, had established himself at Damascus even before the death of David, and all the efforts to dislodge him were of no avail. It is possible that the insurrection in Zobah, which led to the construction of fortified posts on the borders of Hamath (2 Chron. viii. 3), was connected with his revolt. At any rate, Rezon founded a kingdom and a dynasty in the old Syrian capital, which in years to come was to shake the monarchy of northern Israel to its base. ‘He abhorred Israel,’ we are told, ‘and reigned over Aram.’

The Jewish historian traces the misfortunes of Solomon to the religious indifferentism of his later years. His wives were many, his concubines innumerable. They had been added to his harîm from all parts of the known world; and they brought with them the worship of their native deities. Solomon had none of that intense belief in the national God which had distinguished Saul and David, or which made the Assyrian kings conquer and slay the unbelievers who would not acknowledge the supremacy of Assur.[543] He was a cultured and selfish epicure, catholic in his tastes and sympathies, and doubtless inclined to stigmatise as narrow-minded fanaticism the objections of those who would have forbidden him to indulge his wives in their religious beliefs. On the hill opposite Jerusalem they were allowed to worship in the chapels of their own divinities, and the king himself did not refuse to bow himself with them in the house of Rimmon. Shrines were erected and altars blazed to Ashtoreth of the Sidonians, to Milcom of Ammon, and to Chemosh of Moab.

Modern criticism has averred that all this was only in accordance with the general ideas and practice of the time, and that not Solomon alone but the rest of his people saw little or no difference between Yahveh and Baal. The Song of Deborah, which reflects the feelings of so much earlier an epoch, is a sufficient answer to such an assertion. The whole history of Saul and David points unmistakably to the contrary, and the temple bears witness that there was a time when Solomon also shared the belief that Yahveh alone was God in Israel, and that He would brook the presence of no other god beside Himself. The character of Solomon, his habits and alliances,—above all, the seductions of the harîm, are quite enough to account for a gradual change in his views. It is probable, moreover, that the death of his old guide and instructor Nathan may have had much to do with what an undogmatic theology might call emancipation from the narrow and exclusive circle of Hebrew religious ideas; we know that such was the case with Jehoash after the death of Jehoiada the priest. The king who began by sending to Phœnicia for the architects and builders of the temple, ended not unnaturally with the erection of sanctuaries to a Phœnician goddess.

In fact, the artistic tastes of Solomon ran counter to the puritanical tendencies and restrictions of the Mosaic Law. It had been made for the wanderers in the desert, for hardy warriors intent on the conquest of a foreign land, for the simple peasantry of Palestine. It was directed against the cultured vices and artistic idolatries of Egypt and Canaan: on its forefront was the command: ‘Thou shalt not make the likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the water that is under the earth.’ The temple at Jerusalem, with its costly decoration and graven images, was in itself a violation of the letter of the Law. Solomon was called indeed to be king over Israel, but his heart and his sympathies were with Phœnicia.

He had been carefully educated, and, like our own Henry VIII., was a learned as well as a cultivated prince. His wisdom was celebrated above that of the wisest men of his day (1 Kings iv. 30, 31), and he left behind him a large collection of proverbs. Some of these were re-edited by the scribes of Hezekiah’s library (Prov. xxv. 1), the foundation of which may possibly go back to him. Indeed, he showed himself so anxious to imitate the civilised monarchs of his day that it is hard to believe he established no library at Jerusalem. The library had been for untold centuries as essential to the royal dignity in Western Asia or Egypt as the temple or palace, and the annals of Menander imply that one existed at Tyre in the age of Hiram. Archæology has vindicated the authenticity of the letters that passed between Solomon and the Tyrian king (2 Chron.