The Egyptian wife of Solomon was the daughter of one of the last Pharaohs of the twenty-first dynasty. She brought with her as a dowry the Canaanitish city of Gezer. Gezer had been one of the leading cities of Palestine in the days of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, and through all the years of Israelitish conquest it had remained in Canaanitish hands. It was a Pharaoh of Tanis, and not an Israelite, into whose possession it was destined finally to fall. The waning power of Solomon in Israel coincided with the waning power of the twenty-first dynasty. Long before the death of the Hebrew monarch, a new dynasty was reigning over Egypt. Shishak, its founder, was of Libyan origin. His immediate forefathers had commanded the Libyan mercenaries in the service of the Pharaoh, and inscriptions lately discovered in the Oasis of El-Khargeh write the name Shashaka. The Egyptians slightly changed its pronunciation and made it Shashanq, but in the Old Testament the true form is preserved. Shishak brought new vigour into the decaying monarchy of the Nile. The priest-kings of Thebes went down before him, along with the effete Pharaohs of Tanis. It may be that Solomon attempted to assist his father-in-law; if he did so, the only result was to bring trouble upon himself. His rebel subject Jeroboam fled to Egypt, and found shelter and protection in Shishak’s court. Shishak must have looked on with satisfaction while the neighbouring empire of Israel fell to pieces, until eventually the central power itself was shattered in twain. The rebel he had so carefully nurtured at his own court was the instrument which relieved him of all further fear of danger on the side of Asia. So far from being a menace to Egypt, Jerusalem now lay at the mercy of the Egyptian armies, and in the fifth year of Rehoboam, Shishak led his forces against it. The strong walls Solomon had built were of no avail; its temple and palace were plundered, and the golden shields in its armoury were carried away. A record of the campaign was engraved by the conqueror on the southern wall of the temple of Amon at Karnak. There we read how he had overthrown the Amu or Asiatics, and the Fenkhu or people of Palestine, and underneath are the cartouches, each with the head of a captive above it, which contain the names of the conquered places. At the outset come the names of towns in the northern kingdom of Israel. But, as Professor Maspero remarks, this does not prove that they were actually among the conquests of Shishak. If Jeroboam had begged his aid against Judah, and thereby acknowledged himself the vassal of the Pharaoh, it would have been a sufficient pretext for inserting the names of his cities among the subject states of Egypt. But it may be that the campaign was directed quite as much against Israel as against Judah, and that Judah suffered most, simply because it had to bear the brunt of the attack.