But the conquest of Asia brought with it the introduction of Asiatic influences into the country of the conqueror.  The Pharaohs married Asiatic wives, and their courts became gradually Asiatised.  At length Amenophis iv., under the tutelage of his mother, attempted to abolish the national religion of Egypt, and to substitute for it a sort of pantheistic monotheism, based on the worship of the Asiatic Baal as represented by the Solar Disk.  The Pharaoh transferred his capital from Thebes to a new site farther north, now known as Tel el-Amarna, changed his own name to Khu-n-Aten, “the Glory of the Solar Disk,” and filled his court with Asiatic officials and the adherents of the new cult.  The reaction, however, soon came.  The native Egyptians rose in revolt; the foreigner fled from the valley of the Nile, and the capital of Khu-n-Aten fell into ruin.  A new dynasty, the Nineteenth, arose under Ramses I., whose grandson, Ramses ii., reigned for sixty-seven years, and crowded Egypt with his buildings and monuments.

One of the cities he built has been shown by the excavations of Dr. Naville to have been Pa-Tum, the Pithom of the Old Testament.  Ramses ii., therefore, must have been the Pharaoh of the Oppression.  The picture set before us in the first chapter of Exodus fits in exactly with the character of his reign.  The dynasty to which he belonged represented the reaction against the domination and influence of the foreigner from Asia, and the oppression of the Israelites would naturally have been part of its policy.  Such of the Asiatics as still remained in Egypt were turned into public serfs, and measures were taken to prevent them from multiplying so as to be dangerous to their masters.  The free spirit of the Bedawin was broken by servitude, and every care was used that they should be unable to help their brethren from Asia in case of another “Hyksos” invasion.  The incessant building operations of Ramses needed a constant supply of workmen, and financial as well as political interests thus suggested that merciless corvee of the Israelites which rendered them at once politically harmless and serviceable to the state.

In spite of all repression, however, the oppressed people continued to multiply, and eventually escaped from their “house of bondage.”  The stela of Meneptah, on which the name of “Israelites” occurs, implies that they had already been lost to sight in the desert.  The other nationalities over whom Meneptah is said to have triumphed all have the term “country” attached to their names; the “Israelites” alone are without local habitation.  Egyptian legend, as reported by the native historian Manetho, placed the Exodus in the reign of Meneptah, and as Meneptah was the son and successor of Ramses ii., the correctness of the statement is antecedently probable.  It was in the fifth year of his reign that the Delta was attacked by a formidable combination of foes.  The Libyans