Judah,
and passed for being a portrait of Rehoboam, which is
impossible. The Hebrew name was read by W. Max Millier Jad-
ham-meleh, the hand, the fort of the king. It appears to me
to be more easy to see in it Jud-liam-meleh and to associate
it with Jehudah, a town of the tribe of Dan, as Brugsch did
long ago.

** Champollion identified Osorkon I. with the Zerah, who,
according to 2 Chron. xiv. 9-15, xvi. 8, invaded Judah and
was defeated by Asa, but this has no historic value, for it
is clear that Osorkon never crossed the isthmus.

It does not appear, however, that either the Philistines, or Judah,
or Israel, or any of the petty tribes which had momentarily gravitated
around David and Solomon, were disposed to dispute Osorkon's claim,
theoretic rather than real as it was. The sword of the stranger had
finished the work which the intestine quarrel of the tribes had
begun. If Rehoboam had ever formed the project of welding together the
disintegrated elements of Israel, the taking of Jerusalem must have been
a death-blow to his hopes. His arsenals were empty, his treasury at low
ebb, and the prestige purchased by David's victories was effaced by
the humiliation of his own defeat. The ease with which the edifice so
laboriously constructed by the heroes of Benjamin and Judah had been
overturned at the first shock, was a proof that the new possessors of
Canaan were as little capable of barring the way to Egypt in her old
age, as their predecessors had been when she was in her youth and
vigour. The Philistines had had their day; it seemed by no means
improbable at one time that they were about to sweep everything before
them, from the Negeb to the Orontes, but their peculiar position in the
furthest angle of the country, and their numerical weakness, prevented
them from continuing their efforts for a prolonged period, and they were
at length obliged to renounce in favour of the Hebrews their ambitious
pretensions. The latter, who had been making steady progress for some
half a century, had been successful where the Philistines had signally
failed, and Southern Syria recognised their supremacy for the space of
two generations. We can only conjecture what they might have done if a
second David had led them into the valleys of the Orontes and Euphrates.
They were stronger in numbers than their possible opponents, and their
troops, strengthened by mercenary guards, would have p