together in the bonds of literary intercourse, and all who were in
contact with the great nations of the East--with Egypt, with Babylonia,
or with Assyria--came of necessity under its influence and held the book
and its author in the highest reverence.

But besides thus revolutionising our ideas of the age that preceded the
Hebrew Exodus, the Tel el-Amarna letters have thrown a welcome light on
the political causes of the Exodus itself. They have made it clear that
the reaction against the reforms and government of "the Heretic King"
Khu-n-Aten was as much national as religious. It was directed quite as
much against the foreigner who had usurped the chief offices of state,
as against the religion which the foreigner was believed to have brought
with him. The rise of the Nineteenth dynasty marks the triumph of the
national uprising and the overthrow of Asiatic influence. The movement
of which it was the result resembled the revolt of Arabi in our own
days. But there was no England at hand to prevent the banishment of the
stranger and his religion; the Semites who had practically governed
Egypt under Khu-n-Aten were expelled or slain, and hard measure was
dealt out to such of their kinsfolk as still remained in the land. The
free-born sons of Israel in the district of Goshen were turned into
public serfs, and compelled to work at the buildings with which Ramses
II. was covering the soil of Egypt, and their "seed" was still further
diminished by the destruction of their male offspring, lest they should
join the enemies of Egypt in any future invasion of the country, or
assist another attempt from within to subvert the old faith of the
people and the political supremacy of the Theban priests. That the fear
was not without justification is shown by the words of Meneptah, the son
of Ramses, at the time when the very existence of the Egyptian monarchy
was threatened by the Libyan invasion from the west and the sea-robbers
who attacked it from the Greek seas. The Asiatic settlers, he tells us,