which had much in common with that of
Israel. The language of the hymns engraved on the walls of the tombs at
Tel el-Amarna reads not unfrequently like the verses of a Hebrew Psalm.

The national reaction which found its expression in the rise of the
Eighteenth dynasty swept away the power and influence of Asia, and
brought back the gods and religion of Egypt. The Semites who had
absorbed the government of the country were expelled or slain; their
weaker brethren, the Israelites in Goshen, were enslaved. Egypt became
for them a house of bondage, and they had to toil under the lash of the
taskmaster at the cities and temples which the Pharaoh built. Ramses
held his court at Zoan, like the Hyksos of old days, but it was to keep
guard over the Asiatic frontier, not to be in touch with a kindred
people in Canaan. Canaan itself was conquered afresh, and the
Canaanitish captives--the "mixed multitude" of the Bible--assisted the
Israelites in erecting the monuments of their conqueror.

Nevertheless, the people multiplied. The memory of the Hyksos invasion
had not passed away, and the Pharaoh and his subjects alike feared the
possibility of other invaders from Asia being joined by their
disaffected kinsfolk in Egypt itself. That their fears were justified is
shown by what happened less than a century later. When the Nineteenth
dynasty fell in the midst of civil war, a Canaanite, Arisu by name,
seized the throne and made himself master of Egypt. Ramses determined to
prevent such a catastrophe by destroying as many as possible of the male
children of the Hebrews. The men were worn down in body and mind by
constant labour, the children were not allowed to live.

Egyptian testimony confirms the statement of Scripture that this policy
was actually carried out. A hymn of victory addressed to Meneptah
alludes to "the Israelites" to whom "no seed" had been left. But the
policy was ineffectual. The opportunity came at last when the serfs
could fly from their enforced labour and escape into the wilderness.

It was in the fifth year of Meneptah (B.C. 1276). Egypt was threatened
by formidable enemies. The Libyans advanced against it by land, the
nations of the Greek seas attacked it by water. Achaeans came from the
north, Lycians from Asia Minor, Sardinians and Sicilians from the
islands of the west. The Delta was overrun by swarms of barbarians, who
pitched their tents in front of Belbeis at the western end of the land
of Goshen. Plag