It is very remarkable that exactly in this interval of darkness, when Assyria would seem, from the failure both of buildings and records, to have been especially and exceptionally weak, occurs the first appearance of her having extended her influence beyond Syria into the great and ancient monarchy of Egypt. In the twenty-second Egyptian dynasty, which began with Sheshonk I., or Shishak, the contemporary of Solomon, about B.C. 900, Assyrian names appear for the first time in the Egyptian dynastic lists. It has been supposed from this circumstance that the entire twenty-second dynasty, together with that which succeeded it, was Assyrian; but the condition of Assyria at the time renders such a hypothesis most improbable. The true explanation would seem to be that the Egyptian kings of this period sometimes married. Assyrian wives, who naturally gave Assyrian names to some of their children. These wives were perhaps members of the Assyrian royal family; or perhaps they were the daughters of the Assyrian nobles who from time to time were appointed as viceroys of the towns and small states which the Ninevite monarchs conquered on the skirts of their empire. Either of these suppositions is more probable than the establishment in Egypt of a dynasty really Assyrian at a time of extraordinary weakness and depression. When at the close of this long period of obscurity, Assyria once more comes into sight, we have at first only a dim and indistinct view of her through the mists which still enfold and shroud her form. We observe that her capital is still fixed at Kileh-Sherghat, where a new series of kings, bearing names which, for the most part, resemble those of the earlier period, are found employing themselves in the repair and enlargement of public buildings, in connection with which they obtain honorable mention in an inscription of a later monarch. Asshur-dayan, the first monarch of this group, probably ascended the throne about B.C. 930, shortly after the separation of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. He appears to have reigned from about B.C. 930 to B.C. 911. He was succeeded in B.C. 911 by his son Vul-lush II., who held the throne from B.C. 911 to B.C. 889. Nothing is known at present of the history of these two monarchs. No historical inscriptions belonging to their reigns have been recovered; no exploits are recorded of them in the inscriptions of later sovereigns. They stand up before us the mere “shadows of mighty names”--proofs of the, uncertainty of posthumous fame, which is almost as often the award of chance as the deserved recompense of superior merit.