The field was bought from Hamor the father of Shechem, the founder of the city which was destined to become the seat of the first monarchy in Israel, and on it was raised the first altar consecrated to the God of Israel. El-elohê-Israel, ‘El is the God of Israel,’ the altar was termed, a declaration that the El whom the Canaanites worshipped was the God of Israel as well. But though the field was bought for one hundred ‘pieces of money’—an expression, be it noted, which is not Babylonian—we are assured also that Jacob had gained land at Shechem by the right of conquest. In blessing Joseph he declared to him that to the tribe of his favourite son there was given ‘a Shechem above’ his ‘brethren which’ he had taken ‘out of the hand of the Amorite with’ his ‘sword and bow’ (Gen. xlviii. 22); and the story of the ravishment of Dinah recounts how the sons of the patriarch massacred the men of the city, how they enslaved their women and carried away their goods. The terrible tale of vengeance was never forgotten; it is alluded to in the Blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix. 5-7), and the disappearance of Simeon and Levi as separate tribes was looked upon as a punishment for the deed. It would seem that after the Israelitish conquest of Canaan the population of Shechem remained half Canaanite, half Israelite,[89] and the Canaanitish population would naturally remember with horror and indignation the crime of the sons of Jacob. That the deed should have been attributed to the ancestors of two of the southern tribes instead of to those of Issachar or some other tribe of the north is evidence in favour of its truthfulness. The sons of Jacob were twelve in number, like the twelve sons of Ishmael, and corresponded with the twelve tribes of Israel which were called after their names. And yet the correspondence required a little forcing. It is questionable whether, at any one time, there ever were exactly twelve Israelitish tribes. In the Song of Deborah Judah does not appear at all, Ephraim taking its place and, along with Benjamin, extending as far south as the desert of the Amalekites, while Machir is substituted for Manasseh and Gad. Levi never possessed a territory of its own; had it done so, the tribes would have been thirteen in number and not twelve. At the same time, it had just as much right to be considered a separate tribe as Dan, whose cities were in the north as well as in the south, where, however, they were absorbed by Judah; more right perhaps than Simeon, which hardly existed except in name. The territory of Reuben lay outside the boundaries of Palestine, and was merely the desert-wadis and grazing-grounds of the kingdom of Moab; the country can be said to have belonged to the tribe only in the sense that the wadis east of the Delta belong to the Bedâwin, whom the Egyptian government at present allows to live in them. Manasseh, lastly, was divided into two halves, in order to bring the number of tribes up to the requisite figure.