During more than three-fourths of this time, from about B.C.1070 to B.C.930, the very names of the monarchs are almost wholly unknown to us.

It seems as if there was not room in Western Asia for two first-class monarchies to exist and flourish at the same time; and so, although there was no contention, or even contact, between the two empires of Judaea and Assyria, yet the rise of the one to greatness could only take place under the condition of a coincident weakness of the other.
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.