After Rameses III., Egypt fell into decay. Solomon married the daughter of
one of the last kings of the Twenty-first Dynasty, which was overthrown
by Shishak I., the general of the Libyan mercenaries, who founded the
Twenty-second Dynasty (1 Kings 11:40; 14:25, 26). A list of the places
he captured in Palestine is engraved on the outside of the south wall of the
temple of Karnak.
In the time of Hezekiah, Egypt was conquered by Ethiopians from the
Soudan, who constituted the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. The third of them
was Tirhakah (2 Kings 19:9). In B.C. 674 it was conquered by the
Assyrians, who divided it into twenty satrapies, and Tirhakah was driven
back to his ancestral dominions. Fourteen years later it successfully
revolted under Psammetichus I. of Sais, the founder of the Twenty-sixth
Dynasty. Among his successors were Necho (2 Kings 23:29) and Hophra,
or Apries (Jeremiah 37:5, 7, 11). The dynasty came to an end in B.C. 525,
when the country was subjugated by Cambyses. Soon afterwards it was
organized into a Persian satrapy.
The title of Pharaoh, given to the Egyptian kings, is the Egyptian Per-aa,
or “Great House,” which may be compared to that of “Sublime Porte.” It
is found in very early Egyptian texts.
The Egyptian religion was a strange mixture of pantheism and animal
worship, the gods being adored in the form of animals. While the educated
classes resolved their manifold deities into manifestations of one
omnipresent and omnipotent divine power, the lower classes regarded the
animals as incarnations of the gods.
Under the Old Empire, Ptah, the Creator, the God of Memphis, was at the
head of the Pantheon; afterwards Amon, the God of Thebes, took his
place. Amon, like most of the other gods, was identified with Ra, the
sun-God of Heliopolis.
The Egyptians believed in a resurrection and future life, as well as in a
state of rewards and punishments dependent on our conduct in this world.
The judge of the dead was Osiris, who had been slain by Set, the
representative of evil, and afterwards restored to life. His death was
avenged by his son Horus, whom the Egyptians invoked as their
“Redeemer.” Osiris and Horus, along with Isis, formed a trinity, who were
regarded as representing the sun-God under different forms.