southern Canaan taken by Ramses II. was Shalama or Salem. But if so, there could have been no massacre of the population and burning of the town; the passages of the Old Testament which describe the Jebusites as living uninterruptedly in their city are too clear and definite to admit of such a supposition. On the contrary, the Jebusites lived in peace and harmony along with both Jews and Benjamites; and were it not for the words of the Levite (Judg. xix. 11), that Jerusalem was still ‘the city of a stranger,’ we could well believe that the fate which overtook it in the time of David had been anticipated in an earlier century. But neither Benjamin nor Judah could ‘drive out the Jebusites that inhabited’ the great fortress-city of Southern Palestine. The rise of Judah dated from the overthrow of Adoni-bezek, ‘Afterwards,’ we read, ‘the children of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites that dwelt in the mountain, and in the Negeb of the south, and in the plain.’ It was all long subsequent to the death both of Joshua and of Caleb. The last survivors of the first attempt to penetrate into that part of Canaan had passed away before it at last fell—if only partially—into Israelitish hands. The first dreams of conquest had long since made way for a sober and disappointing reality. Canaan had proved for Israel a more difficult prize to secure than Britain proved for the Saxons. It was only in the mountains and a few isolated cities that the invaders succeeded in holding their own. Elsewhere the walls and chariots of the Canaanites kept them at bay, while the strongholds of the Philistines and Phœnicians barred them from the coast. The children of Israel were compelled to dwell ‘among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites,’ and there was little cause for wonder that ‘they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods’ (Judg. iii. 5, 6). Before Joshua died the tabernacle was set up at Shiloh, on the slopes of Mount Ephraim, in the heart of the newly-conquered land. That the central sanctuary should thus be under the protection of Ephraim was a token that ‘the house of Joseph’ was paramount among the tribes of Israel. A further token was the burial of the mummy of Joseph at Shechem. Here, too, at Shechem were the two mountains Ebal and Gerizim, on which the curses and the blessings of the Law had been ordered to be pronounced. History has left no record of the conquest of the place, and the name of the king of Shechem is not even found in the list of the kings vanquished by Joshua. But the city must have fallen during the early period of the invasion, and the narrative in Josh. viii. 33 would imply that its capture followed closely upon the destruction of Ai.