To estimate the cost at which these things were done is now impossible. Every temple, every palace, represented a hecatomb of human lives. Slaves from Ethiopia, captives taken in war, Syrian immigrants settled in the delta, were alike pressed into the service of the state. We know how the Hebrews suffered, and to what extremity of despair they were reduced by the tasks imposed upon them. Yet even the Hebrews were less cruelly used than some who were kidnaped beyond the frontiers. Torn from their homes, without hope of return, driven in herds to the mines, the quarries, and the brick-fields, these hapless victims were so dealt with that not even the chances of desertion were open to them. The negroes from the south were systematically drafted to the north; the Asiatic captives were transported to Ethiopia. Those who labored underground were goaded on without rest or respite, till they fell down in the mines and died. That Rameses II was the Pharaoh of the captivity,[83] and that Meneptah, his son and successor, was the Pharaoh of the exodus,[84] are now among the accepted presumptions of Egyptological science. The Bible and the monuments confirm each other upon these points, while both are again corroborated by the results of recent geographical and philological research. The “treasure-cities Pithom and Raamses” which the Israelites built for Pharaoh with bricks of their own making, are the Pa-Tum and Pa-Rameses, of the inscriptions, and both have recently been identified by M. Naville, in the course of his excavations conducted in 1883 and 1886 for the Egypt Exploration Fund.