=Building the Store-Cities of Ramses and Pithom.= To effect the transformation of this region, Ramses II built two important cities. One of them bore his name and became the designation of the surrounding territory, which was known as the country of Ramses. It probably stood at the western end of the Wady Tumilat. The other, the Pithom^{(65)} of the biblical records, has been proved in the light of modern excavation to have been the ancient P-atum, that is, the House of the God Atum. This city was situated near the eastern end of the Wady Tumilat, at the present Tell el-Maskhutah, ten or twelve miles west of Lake Timsah. This was probably also the site of the older fortress known as the "Wall of the Prince." Several inscriptions have been found here containing the name P-atum. In later Egyptian geographical lists this was also the name of a local province. Here Naville discovered what appear to have been great store chambers with walls two or three yards in thickness, made of crude, sun-dried bricks. These chambers were not connected and the grain was put into them through openings in the top. Here, apparently, Ramses II gathered the vast supplies of grain necessary for his Palestinian campaigns, for these cities were built during the earlier, warlike period of his reign. =Condition of the Hebrew Serfs.= In the light of the well-established facts of Egyptian history and of the geographical background, it is easy to appreciate the condition of the nomadic Israelites. Their pasture lands were transformed into cultivated fields and occupied by Egyptian colonists. The sons of the desert, ever restive under the restraints of civil authority, were put at forced labor and compelled to build the border fortresses which made their bondage the more hopeless. Palestine was in the control of their royal Egyptian task-master. The wilderness that stretched almost from their doors far out into the wild, rocky desert, offered the one possible place of escape; but under the iron rule of Ramses II and his successor, Merneptah, the escape of large bodies of fugitives was practically impossible. =Training of Moses.= The one Hebrew, however, who dared raise his hand against the oppression of the Pharaoh, succeeded in escaping beyond the border fortresses and found a home among the nomadic kinsmen of his race in the rugged mountains that lie between southern Judah and the Sinaitic peninsula. Here, amidst the dangers and solitudes of the desert, Moses, the great prophet, leader, and founder of the Hebrew nation, received his training. Here he learned to trust the Power that guides the destinies of men and nations, and to despise the boasted strength of Egypt. In guiding the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law, through the trackless wilderness filled with wild beasts and hostile Bedouin, he had also become skilled in leading men.