In his struggle with these tribes Ramses III was compelled to carry the war into Asia, where he overcame and defeated them. In commemoration of this event he has left a list of places which he conquered in Asia. Most of them, so far as they can be identified, were further north than Palestine, but the following are names of places mentioned in the Bible:[120] Seir (Gen. 14:6, etc.), Caineh (Amos 6:2), or Calno (Isa. 10:9), Tyre, Carchemish, Beth-Dagon (Josh. 15:41), Kir-Bezek, probably the same as Bezek (Judges 1:5), Hadashah (Josh. 15:37), Ardon (1 Chron. 2:18), Beer (cf. Num. 21:16), Senir (Deut. 3:9), Zobebah (1 Chron. 4:8), Gether (Gen. 10:23), and Ar (Num. 21:15; Isa. 15:1, etc.). After Ramses III the Egyptian empire became too weak to interfere in Palestinian affairs. In the chronology followed by many scholars today it was about this time that the Hebrews completed their conquest of the country and the age of the Judges began. =7. The Hebrews.=--On their way into Palestine the Hebrews, as already noted, invaded and conquered a kingdom of the Amorites which lay to the east of the Jordan and had its capital at Heshbon. (See Num. 21:21 and Deut. 1:4, etc.). This kingdom was a survival of the ancient Amorite occupation of the land. The Amorites composing it had not been absorbed or displaced by more recent pre-Hebrew invaders. It is stated in Judges 1:27-36 that there were a number of cities from which the Israelites did not, at the time of their conquest, drive out the inhabitants. The principal excavations in Palestine have had to do with cities which were not conquered by Hebrews at this time--Taanach, Megiddo, and Gezer. We are told in Josh. 10:33 that when Horam, King of Gezer, came to the aid of the king of Lachish, Joshua “smote him and his people till he left none remaining.” As nothing is said of the capture of Gezer, this must refer only to the force which went to the aid of Lachish. This view is confirmed by the fact that in the time of David, Gezer was in the hands of the Philistines. (See 1 Chron. 20:4.) Gezer did not come into the hands of the Hebrews until the time of Solomon, when Solomon’s Egyptian father-in-law conquered it and gave it to him. Mr. Macalister found evidence that at about this time there was a considerable increase of the population of Gezer, which seems to confirm the statement of Judges 1:29 that Canaanites and Israelites dwelt together there. This evidence consisted in the crowding together of houses, so that, as many new ones were built, they became smaller. New houses also encroached upon the land of the “high place.”[121] There was evidently an increase of the population such as an influx of Hebrews would account for. Evidence of Hebrew conquest seems also to have come to light in the capture and burning of Jericho[122] and Bethshemesh,[123] which the excavations have revealed.