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 Bedâwin 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 _corvée_ of the
Israelites which rendered them at once politically harmless and