passing
through the country completed the king's fiscal operations which were
based on the systems prevailing in neighbouring States, especially that
of Egypt.**

* 1 Kings iv. 26-28; the complementary passages in 1 Kings
x. 26 and 2 Chron. i. 14 give the number of chariots as 1400
and of charioteers at 12,000. The numbers do not seem
excessive for a kingdom which embraced the whole south of
Palestine, when we reflect that, at the battle of Qodshu,
Northern Syria was able to put between 2500 and 3000
chariots into the field against Ramses II. The Hebrew
chariots probably carried at least three men, like those of
the Hittites and Assyrians.

** 1 Kings x. 15, where mention is made of the amount which
the chapmen brought, and the traffic of the merchants
contains an allusion to these tolls.

Solomon, like other Oriental sovereigns, reserved to himself the
monopoly of certain imported articles, such as yarn, chariots, and
horses. Egyptian yarn, perhaps the finest produced in ancient times, was
in great request among the dyers and embroiderers of Asia. Chariots,
at once strong and light, were important articles of commerce at a time
when their use in warfare was universal. As for horses, the cities of
the Delta and Middle Egypt possessed a celebrated strain of stallions,
from which the Syrian princes were accustomed to obtain their
war-steeds.* Solomon decreed that for the future he was to be the sole
intermediary between the Asiatics and the foreign countries supplying
their requirements. His agents went down at regular intervals to the
banks of the Nile to lay in stock; the horses and chariots, by the
time they reached Jerusalem, cost him at the rate of six hundred silver
shekels for each chariot, and one hundred and fifty shekels for each
horse, but he sold them again at a profit to the Aramaean and Hittite
princes. In return he purchased from them Cilician stallions, probably
to sell again to the Egyptians, whose relaxing climate necessitated a
frequent introduction of new blood into their stables.** By these and
other methods of which we know nothing the yearly revenue of the kingdom
was largely increased: and though it only reached a total which may seem
insignificant in comparison with the enormous quantities of the precious
metals which passed through the hands of the Pharaohs of that time, yet
it must have seemed boundless wealth in the eyes of the she