Page 363 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

310 Bronze and Iron [1300-1230 b.c.]

the valley and the Ainorites in the hills were of the same stock
and spoke almost identical dialects. And who ruled whom was
immaterial. Admittedly the Israeli confederacy made up a
stronger and more united entity than was customary among these
quarrelsome minor princes, but they could never be a threat to
Egypt. And the garrison troops were intended for guarding the
coastal route and could not be dissipated in futile punitive
expeditions against the desert tribes in the interior.
The Canaanites of the coast were heartened by the ordering
of a state of readiness in the garrison troops and by the token
arrival of a squadron of Egyptian warships. They watched the
situation in the hills closely, and sold munitions to the princes
while it was still possible.
It was an attack on Gideon that set the hills aflame. The ruler
of Jerusalem, at the head of an alliance of five cities, determined
to affirm the necessity of a united front against the invaders,
and led the attack on the traitor city which had made an al­
liance with Joshua. But Joshua had been waiting for just this
move. He entered the hills and engaged and defeated the allied
army. Thereafter he did not leave the hills. One after the other in
the course of the next two years, he invested and reduced the
cities of the alliance. Only Jerusalem, with its sheer walls rising
from the steep escarpment, held out against him.
Israeli troops now patrolled as far as the edge of the foothills
overlooking the plains that belonged to Ascalon itself. But they
made no attempt to provoke the Egyptian forces by entering the
plains. Instead they consolidated their gains, expropriating
and enslaving the conquered Amorites and distributing the cap­
tured lands, cattle, and booty among their own people. And
Joshua made preparations to campaign northward.
His attack, when it came, was as brilliantly successful as his
earlier raids. Pushing beyond the Sea of Galilee, he met and de­
feated the combined forces of the northern princes at Lake Merom.
During the three years that Joshua and the main Israeli
army were absent in the north, the burghers of Ascalon breathed
more easily. Admittedly news came down the road of the taking
of one city after another, and of the occupation by the Israelis
of an ever-widening area of the hill country as far as Mount