* 1 Kings xii. 25-32; chaps, xii. 33, xiii., xiv. 1-18 contain, side by side with the narrative of facts, such as the death of Jeroboam’s son, comments on the religious conduct of the sovereign, which some regard as being of later date. ** 1 Kings xii. 21-24; cf. 2 Ghron. xi. 1-17, where the list of strongholds, wanting in the Boole of Kings, is given from an ancient source. The writer affirms, in harmony with the ideas of his time, “that the Lévites left their suburbs and their possession, and came to Judah and Jerusalem; for Jeroboam and his sons cast them off, that they should not execute the Priest’s office unto the Lord.” The century and a half which had elapsed since the death of the last of the Ramessides had, as far as we can ascertain, been troubled by civil wars and revolutions.* * I have mentioned above the uncertainty which still shrouds the XXth dynasty. The following is the order in which I propose that its kings should be placed:-- [Illustration: 393.jpg TABLE OF KINGS] The imperious Egypt of the Theban dynasties had passed away, but a new Egypt had arisen, not without storm and struggle, in its place. As long as the campaigns of the Pharaohs had been confined to the Nile valley and the Oases, Thebes had been the natural centre of the kingdom; placed almost exactly between the Mediterranean and the southern frontier, it had been both the national arsenal and the treasure-house to which all foreign wealth had found its way from the Persian Gulf to the Sahara, and from the coasts of Asia Minor to the equatorial swamps. The cities of the Delta, lying on the frontier of those peoples with whom Egypt now held but little intercourse, possessed neither the authority nor the resources of Thebes; even Memphis, to which the prestige of her ancient dynasties still clung, occupied but a secondary place beside her rival. The invasion of the shepherds, by making the Thebaid the refuge and last bulwark of the Egyptian nation, increased its importance: in the critical times of the struggle, Thebes was not merely the foremost city in the country, it represented the country itself, and the heart of Egypt may be said to have throbbed within its walls. The victories of Ahmosis, the expeditions of Thûtmosis I. and Thûtmosis III., enlarged her horizon; her Pharaohs crossed the isthmus of Suez, they conquered Syria, subdued the valleys of the Euphrates and the Balîkh, and by so doing increased her wealth and her splendour. Her streets witnessed during two centuries processions of barbarian prisoners laden with the spoils of conquest. But with the advent of the XIXth and XXth dynasties came anxious times; the peoples of Syria and Libya, long kept in servitude, at length rebelled, and the long distance between Karnak and Gaza soon began to be irksome to princes who had to be constantly on the alert on the Canaanite frontier, and who found it impossible to have