Egyptian Empire were fixed at the Euphrates. The Soudan, which had been
conquered by the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty, was again annexed to
Egypt, and the eldest son of the Pharaoh took the title of “Prince of
Cush.”
One of the later kings of the dynasty, Amenophis IV., or Khu-n-Aten,
endeavoured to supplant the ancient state religion of Egypt by a new faith
derived from Asia, which was a sort of pantheistic monotheism, the one
supreme God being adored under the image of the solar disk. The attempt
led to religious and civil war, and the Pharaoh retreated from Thebes to
Central Egypt, where he built a new capital, on the site of the present
Tell-el-Amarna. The cuneiform tablets that have been found there
represent his foreign correspondence (about B.C. 1400). He surrounded
himself with officials and courtiers of Asiatic, and more especially
Canaanitish, extraction; but the native party succeeded eventually in
overthrowing the government, the capital of Khu-n-Aten was destroyed,
and the foreigners were driven out of the country, those that remained
being reduced to serfdom.
The national triumph was marked by the rise of the Nineteenth Dynasty,
in the founder of which, Rameses I., we must see the “new king, who
knew not Joseph.” His grandson, Rameses II., reigned sixty-seven years
(B.C. 1348-1281), and was an indefatigable builder. As Pithom, excavated
by Dr. Naville in 1883, was one of the cities he built, he must have been
the Pharaoh of the Oppression. The Pharaoh of the Exodus may have been
one of his immediate successors, whose reigns were short. Under them
Egypt lost its empire in Asia, and was itself attacked by barbarians from
Libya and the north.
The Nineteenth Dynasty soon afterwards came to an end; Egypt was
distracted by civil war; and for a short time a Canaanite, Arisu, ruled over
it.
Then came the Twentieth Dynasty, the second Pharaoh of which,
Rameses III., restored the power of his country. In one of his campaigns
he overran the southern part of Palestine, where the Israelites had not yet
settled. They must at the time have been still in the wilderness. But it was
during the reign of Rameses III. that Egypt finally lost Gaza and the
adjoining cities, which were seized by the Pulista, or Philistines.