For about seventy years the Hebrews in Egypt were under the powerful
protection of Joseph. After his death their condition was probably very
slowly and gradually changed. The invaders, the Hyksos, who for some
five centuries had been masters of Egypt, were driven out, and the old
dynasty restored. The Israelites now began to be looked down upon. They
began to be afflicted and tyrannized over. In process of time a change
appears to have taken place in the government of Egypt. A new dynasty,
the Nineteenth, as it is called, came into power under Seti I., who was its
founder. He associated with him in his government his son, Rameses II.,
when he was yet young, probably ten or twelve years of age.
Note, Professor Maspero, keeper of the museum of Bulak, near Cairo, had
his attention in 1870 directed to the fact that scarabs, i.e., stone and metal
imitations of the beetle (symbols of immortality), originally worn as
amulets by royal personages, which were evidently genuine relics of the
time of the ancient Pharaohs, were being sold at Thebes and different
places along the Nile. This led him to suspect that some hitherto
undiscovered burial-place of the Pharaohs had been opened, and that these
and other relics, now secretly sold, were a part of the treasure found there.
For a long time he failed, with all his ingenuity, to find the source of these
rare treasures. At length one of those in the secret volunteered to give
information regarding this burial-place. The result was that a party was
conducted in 1881 to Dier el-Bahari, near Thebes, when the wonderful
discovery was made of thirty-six mummies of kings, queens, princes, and
high priests hidden away in a cavern prepared for them, where they had
lain undisturbed for thirty centuries. “The temple of Deir el-Bahari stands
in the middle of a natural amphitheatre of cliffs, which is only one of a
number of smaller amphitheatres into which the limestone mountains of
the tombs are broken up. In the wall of rock separating this basin from the
one next to it some ancient Egyptian engineers had constructed the
hiding-place, whose secret had been kept for nearly three thousand years.”
The exploring party being guided to the place, found behind a great rock a
shaft 6 feet square and about 40 feet deep, sunk into the limestone. At the
bottom of this a passage led westward for 25 feet, and then turned sharply
northward into the very heart of the mountain, where in a chamber 23 feet
by 13, and 6 feet in height, they came upon the wonderful treasures of
antiquity. The mummies were all carefully secured and brought down to
Bulak, where they were deposited in the royal museum, which has now
been removed to Ghizeh.