Hittite origin. In any event, large numbers of Semites came to Egypt with them, and left many Semitic names in the Delta. Some of these will be discussed below. This invasion broke up Egypt's splendid isolation and brought her into the current of world events, from which she was never afterward to free herself.

(7) The Empire Period.-At some time before 1600 B. c. a seventeenth dynasty arose at Thebes and began the struggle to expel the foreign kings. This was not accomplished until the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, Amosis I (1580-1577), achieved it. In order to secure freedom from invasion the kings of this dynasty were compelled to follow the invaders into Asia, and in time Thothmes III (1501-1447) conquered Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria to the Euphrates, and organized it into a compact empire, which held together until about 1360. The kings of this dynasty also carried the conquest of Nubia to Napata, at the Fourth Cataract. They worked the mines of Sinai, traded with Punt, and inaugurated the "empire period," which lasted in reality till well into the twentieth dynasty, about 1165, and which, for convenience, we count as extending to the fall of the twenty-first dynasty in 945 B. C.

The foreign conquests brought many immigrants to Egypt and also took many Egyptians for longer or shorter periods to foreign lands. Egyptian customs in dress as well as the Egyptian language changed rapidly during this time. The Asiatic conquests of Thothmes III brought Egypt into relations with Asiatic kings, and in time his successors, Amenophis III and Amenophis IV, had an interesting exchange of letters with kings of Babylon, Assyria, Mitanni, and Alashia (or Cyprus), as well as with Egyptian viceroys in Syria and Palestine. Some of these letters are translated in Part II, p. 344, ff.

Amenophis IV made the first attempt known in history to establish a monotheistic religion. Although it was unsuccessful, it produced a beautiful hymn, which is translated in Part II, p. 403, ff. The kings of this period were buried in tombs of a new type. These were excavated out of the solid rock, cut deep into the mountainside. They were all in the famous Valley of the Tombs of the Kings back of Thebes.

The nineteenth dynasty succeeded the eighteenth about 1350 B. C. During a period of weakness between the two, the Asiatic dominions had been lost. These were in large part reconquered by Seti I and Ramses II. The last-mentioned king ruled 67 years,

from 1292 to 1225 B. C. He did much building in all parts of Egypt and Nubia. Among his enterprises were the cities of Pithom and Raamses in the Delta. He has long been thought to have been the Pharaoh who oppressed the Hebrews. Early in his reign he fought with the Hittites, but afterward made a treaty of peace with their king and married his daughter. The text of this treaty has been preserved. It is the earliest extant international treaty, and it contained an extradition clause, though this applied to political offenders only. (For head of Ramses, see Fig. 9.)

Merneptah, the son and successor of Ramses II, has been supposed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. His hymn of victory over his enemies is translated in Part II, p. 311.

In the reign of Ramses III, of the twentieth dynasty (1198-1167 B. C.), the Philistines and other tribes, coming from across the sea, from Crete and Asia Minor, invaded Egypt. Repulsed by him, they invaded Palestine, where they secured a foothold. Ramses IV, his successor, was the last Pharaoh to work the mines in Sinai. By the reign of Ramses IX (1142-1123 B. C.), Egypt's Asiatic empire was gone and her prosperity had so declined that the natives of Thebes took to robbing the tombs of kings for a living. The records of the trials of some of these have survived. In the reign of Ramses XII (1118–1090 B. c.), Wenamon made his famous expedition to Phoenicia, a part of which is narrated in Part II, p. 352, ff.

The twenty-first dynasty (1090-945 B. c.) was a line of weak monarchs, who simply held Egypt together. During their rule David built up Israel's empire. One of them, either Siamon or Pesibkhenno II, was the Pharaoh whose daughter Solomon married. (See 1 Kings 3:1, f.; 9:16.)

(8) The Period of Foreign Dynasties (945-663 B. C.).-During the time of the twenty-first dynasty the Lybians, who for centuries had made unsuccessful attempts to invade Egypt, settled in large numbers in different parts of the country, and adopted Egyptian customs, while some of them became wealthy and powerful. In 945 B. C. one of these, named Sheshonk, founded the twenty-second dynasty. This king is the Shishak of the Bible. It was he who gave asylum to Jeroboam, when he fled from Solomon (1 Kings 1140), and who in the days of Rehoboam invaded Palestine. (See 1 Kings 14: 25-28.) The dynasty founded by Shishak lasted for two hundred years. During the first century of this time it was very flourishing. One of its kings, Osorkon II, was apparently an

ally of Ahab; at all events, a vase bearing Osorkon's name was found at Samaria in Ahab's palace. This dynasty made its capital at Bubastis in the Egyptian Delta, called Pi-beseth in Ezekiel 30: 17.

During the last century of this dynasty's rule Nubia, which had been for many centuries under Egyptian sway, gained her independence under a powerful dynasty which made Napata, at the Fourth Cataract, its capital. In 745 B. C. the twenty-second dynasty was succeeded by the twenty-third, which held a precarious existence until 718, when it was succeeded by the one king of the twenty-fourth. Egypt was during this period in great disorder, and in 712 the Nubian kings swept down from the south and conquered the country, establishing the twenty-fifth dynasty. The control thus passed from the Lybians to the Nubians. Tirhakah, the third king of this dynasty, took part in the wars against Sennacherib

alestine. (See 2 Kings 19: Isa. 37:9, and Part II, p. 375, ff.) In 670 Esarhaddon, King of Assyria, invaded Egypt, defeated Tirhakah and made all the Delta as far as Memphis an Assyrian province. Some years later, when Tanut-amon, the successor of Tirhakah, endeavored to regain the Delta, Assurbanipal, of Assyria, marched up the Nile, took Thebes, that for 1,500 years had been mistress of Egypt, and during much of that time mistress of a large part of the then known world, and barbarously sacked it. This was in 661 B. C. This event made a great impression on surrounding nations. It is referred to in Nahum 3:8, where Thebes is called No-amon, or the city of the god Amon.

(9) The Lower Empire is the name given by scholars to the period of the twenty-sixth dynasty, 663-525 в. c. This dynasty was founded by Psammetik I, who became the viceroy of Egypt under Assurbanipal, of Assyria, in 663 B. C. Psammetik was descended from a native Egyptian family of the city of Sais in the western Delta, and a number of his ancestors had been prominent in the history of Egypt during the preceding century. At first he was a vassal of Assyria, but soon troubles in the eastern part of the Assyrian dominions enabled him to make Egypt independent. The Egyptians, finding themselves once more free under a native dynasty, experienced a great revival of national feeling. Everything Egyptian interested them. They looked with particular affection upon the age of the pyramid builders, who lived more than two thousand years before them. They revived old names and old titles, and emulated the art of the olden days. They manifested

such vigor and originality withal, that the art of the lower empire rivals that of the best periods of Egyptian history.

Necho, the son and successor of Psammetichus, endeavored, as Assyria was declining to her fall, to regain an Asiatic empire. Josiah, of Judah, who sought to thwart him, was defeated by Necho and killed at the battle of Megiddo in 608 B. c. (2 Kings 23 : 29). Necho afterward deposed Jehoahaz and took him captive to Egypt (2 Kings 23:34). Four years later, when Necho made a second campaign into Asia, he was defeated by Nebuchadrezzar at Charchemish on the Euphrates, and compelled to hastily retreat to Egypt, hotly pursued by the Babylonians. Jeremiah, who perhaps caught sight of the rapidly moving armies from the Judæan hills, has given a vivid account of the flight in Jeremiah 46. Jeremiah considered this event so important that he began then to commit his prophecies to writing. (See Jeremiah 36.) After Necho devoted himself to the internal government of Egypt, though he became the patron of an enterprise for the circumnavigation of Africa, which was carried out by some Phoenicians. (See Herodotus, IV, 42.) Hophra, a later king of this dynasty (588-569 B. C.), in order to gain influence in Asia, tempted King Zedekiah to rebel against Babylon, and thus lured the little state of Judah to its destruction. During the reign of Hophra's successor, Amosis II, Cyrus the Great founded the Persian empire, and in 525 B. C. Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, overthrew the twenty-sixth dynasty, and made Egypt a Persian province.

(10) The Persian Period.-Cambyses, after conquering Egypt, attempted in vain to conquer Nubia. The Nubian monarchs at this time moved their capital from Napata, at the Fourth Cataract, to Meroe, at the Sixth Cataract. Darius (521-485 B. c.) ruled Egypt with great wisdom and tact, but under his successors there were frequent rebellions. Finally, in 406 B. C., the Egyptians actually gained their independence, which they maintained until 342 B. C. During this period three native dynasties, the twenty-eighth, the twenty-ninth, and the thirtieth, successively occupied the throne. Manetho counts the Persians as the twenty-seventh dynasty. In 342 B. C. the Persians reconquered the country and held it for ten years until it was taken by Alexander the Great. This ten years of Persian rule constitutes Manetho's thirty-first dynasty.

(11) The Ptolemaic Period (332-31 B. C.).-For eleven years

Egypt formed a part of Alexander's empire. Upon his death, in 323 B. C., it fell to the control of his general, Ptolemy Lagi, who founded a line of Ptolemies that ruled until overthrown by Augustus in 31 B. C. With the accession of the Ptolemies many Greeks settled in Egypt; Greek became one of the languages of commerce, and had a considerable influence in transforming the Egyptian language into Coptic. Until the year 198 B. C. the Ptolemies controlled Palestine. Philadelphus, the second of the line, rebuilt in the Greek style the city of Rabbah Ammon east of the Jordan, and named it Philadelphia. He, like his father, encouraged many Jews to settle in Alexandria, and, according to tradition, became the patron of the translation of the Old Testament Scriptures into Greek. At all events, the Pentateuch was translated in his time, and the translation of the other books followed. This translation is known as the "Septuagint" because of the legend that Ptolemy Philadelphus set 72 men to translate it. By the beginning of the Christian era there were so many Jews in Alexandria that it had become a second Judah.

(12) The Roman Period.-The Romans, upon conquering Egypt, disturbed in no way the internal affairs of the country. They gave it good government and fostered its internal institutions. Many old Egyptian customs persisted among the people; it is in regard to some of these that discoveries of interest to Biblical scholars have been made. From tombs and the places in the dry sands of the desert, where waste-baskets were emptied, many records have been discovered, some of which are translated in Part II, p. 432, ff., 440, ff. Meantime, a state had developed out of the old monarchy of Nubia, described above, which was ruled by woman, whose official title was Candace. It was an officer of 1 to whom Philip preached, as described in Acts 8:27-39. Recent excavations in Nubia have recovered some of the art of these people, who became Christian in the second or third century, as well as some inscriptions of theirs in a script that is not yet deciphered.

7. Egyptian Discoveries which Bear on the Bible:

(1) Texts Bearing on the Story of Joseph.-A number of texts from the Middle Kingdom and other periods present features similar to parts of the story of Joseph and afford somewhat faint parallels to certain conceptions of the Hebrew Prophets. These are translated in Part II, p. 300, ff., and p. 418, ff.

The name of Joseph's wife, Asenath (in Egyptian As- Neit,