The condition of the Israelites in Egypt after the death of Joseph, and during the period of their sojourn, it is difficult to determine.  There is a doubt among the critics as to the length of this sojourn,—­the Bible in several places asserting that it lasted four hundred and thirty years, which, if true, would bring the Exodus to the end of the nineteenth dynasty.  Some suppose that the residence in Egypt was only two hundred and fifteen years.  The territory assigned to the Israelites was a small one, and hence must have been densely populated, if, as it is reckoned, two millions of people left the country under the leadership of Moses and Aaron.  It is supposed that the reigning sovereign at that time was Menephtah, successor of Rameses II.  It is, then, the great Rameses, who was the king from whom Moses fled,—­the most distinguished of all the Egyptian monarchs as warrior and builder of monuments.  He was the second king of the eighteenth dynasty, and reigned in conjunction with his father Seti for sixty years.  Among his principal works was the completion of the city of Rameses (Raamses, or Tanis, or Zoan), one of the principal cities of Egypt, begun by his father and made a royal residence.  He also, it appears from the monuments, built Pithon and other important towns, by the forced labor of the Israelites.  Rameses and Pithon were called treasure-cities, the site of the latter having been lately discovered, to the east of Tanis.  They were located in the midst of a fertile country, now dreary and desolate, which was the object of great panegyric.  An Egyptian poet, quoted by Dr. Charles S. Robinson, paints the vicinity of Zoan, where Pharaoh resided at the time of the Exodus, as full of loveliness and fertility.  “Her fields are verdant with excellent herbage; her bowers bloom with garlands; her pools are prolific in fish; and in the ponds are ducks.  Each garden is perfumed with the smell of honey; the granaries are full of wheat and barley; vegetables and reeds and herbs are growing in the parks; flowers and nosegays are in the houses; lemons, citrons, and figs are in the orchards.”  Such was the field of Zoan in ancient times, near Rameses, which the Israelites had built without straw to make their bricks, and from which place they set out for the general rendezvous at Succoth, under Moses.  It will be noted that if Rameses, or Tanis, was the residence of the court when Moses made his demands on Menephtah, it was in the midst of the settlements of the Israelites, in the land of Goshen, which the last of the Shepherd Kings had assigned to them.

It is impossible to tell what advance in civilization was made by the Israelites in consequence of their sojourn in Egypt; but they must have learned many useful arts, and many principles of jurisprudence, and acquired a better knowledge of agriculture.  They learned to be patient under oppression and wrong, to be frugal and industrious in their habits, and obedient to the voice of their leaders.  But unfortunately