Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/150

132 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud^a. Israel. Ho made the old Canaanite and later Ephraimite Shechem his capital ; Judah alone remaining loyal to David and his pos- terity. 1 Tims was effected the " schism of the ten tribes " (which, to be accurate, should be called " schism of the eleven "), when the unity initiated by Saul and completed by David and Solomon was destroyed for ever, and the political aspirations of the country suddenly brought to a standstill. Cut asunder, weakened by the war that immediately broke out between the rival kingdoms, all that had been gained by David and his champions was irretrievably lost by internecine wars that continued for some generations. The conquered regions to the north and east of Syria, the Aramœan tribes, and the kingdom of Damascus, that had owned the suzerainty of Solomon, refused to pay tributes on the morrow of the schism. Under the leadership of able princes, such as Benhadâr and his successors, Damascus would undoubtedly have brought within her rule the whole of Palestine, had not her forces been diverted to checking the advance of the Assyrians repeatedly encamped before her gates ; who, not content to ravage the gardens and groves that cast a green belt around the city, finally laid siege and obliged her to surrender. The kings of Nineveh, wishing for an outlet on the Mediterranean, pushed their conquests on to Phoenicia, and were met on the march by the Israelites, who tried, but in vain, to arrest their progress. Samaria, despite its position and the thickness of its walls, was taken and destroyed, whilst its inhabitants were, almost to a man, transported to the valleys of the Chebar and of Euphrates. If Judah lasted for more than one hundred years longer, it was not owing to its military strength ; but rather because the route taken by the invaders, from the Nile or Euphrates valley, lay outside it ; hence Jerusalem was able to stand aloof from the tre- mendous conflict that was being enacted by the two great powers striving for supremacy in the eastern world. The stability of the 1 This is formally attested in a passage (i Kings xii. 20) which has scarcely received the attention it deserves : " There was none that followed the house of David, but the tribe of Judah only." Benjamin, from whom Saul had sprung, was, as a natural consequence, most hostile to David, and formed part of the Northern kingdom down to its fall, with the exception of a few families whose land was close to Jerusalem. When Samaria was taken, such of the Benjamites that were not carried into captivity, cast in their lot with the kingdom of Judah, as the sole remnant of Jewish nationality. This circumstance has led late writers to assume somewhat too hastily that amicable relations had always existed between the two tribes.