editerranean with the Red Sea. He added to the temple of
Karnak, built the Memnonium on the western side of the Nile, opposite to
Thebes, and enlarged the temple of Ptah, at Memphis, which he adorned by a
beautiful colossal statue, the fist of which is (now in the British
Museum) thirty inches wide across the knuckles. But the Rameseum, or
Memnonium, was his greatest architectural work, approached by an avenue of
sphinxes and obelisks, in the centre of which was the great statue of
Ramesis himself, sixty feet high, carved from a single stone of the red
granite of Syene.

(M77) The twentieth dynasty was founded by Sethee II., B.C. 1220 (or 1232
B.C., according to Wilkinson), when Gideon ruled the Israelites and
Theseus reigned at Athens and Priam at Troy. The third king of this
dynasty--Ramesis III.--built palaces and tombs scarcely inferior to any of
the Theban kings, but under his successors the Theban power declined.
Under the twenty-first dynasty, which began B.C. 1085, Lower Egypt had a
new capital, Zoan, and gradually extended its power over Upper Egypt. It
had a strong Shemetic element in its population, and strengthened itself
by alliances with the Assyrians.

The twenty-second dynasty was probably Assyrian, and began about 1009 B.C.
It was hostile to the Jews, and took and sacked Jerusalem.

(M78) From this period the history of Egypt is obscure. Ruled by
Assyrians, and then by Ethiopians, the grandeur of the old Theban monarchy
had passed away. On the rise of the Babylonian kingdom, over the ruins of
the old Assyrian Empire, Egypt was greatly prostrated as a military power.
Babylon became the great monarchy of the East, and gained possession of
all the territories of the Theban kings, from the Euphrates to the Nile.

Leaving, then, the obscure and uninteresting history of Egypt, which
presents nothing of especial interest until its conquest by Alexander,
B.C. 332, with no great kings even, with the exception of Necho, of the
twenty-sixth dynasty, B.C. 611, we will present briefly the religion,
manners, customs, and attainments of the ancient Egyptians.

(M79) Their religion was idolatrous. They worshiped various divinities:
Num, the soul of the universe; Amen, the generative principle; Khom, by
whom the productiveness of nature was emblematized; Ptah, or the creator
of the universe; Ra, the sun; Thoth, the patron of letters; Athor, the
goddess of beauty; Mu, physical light; Mat, moral light; Munt, the god of