=Palestine Between 1270 and 1170 B.C.= The period of half a century which immediately followed was one of peace and prosperity for Palestine. Ramses II and his son, Merneptah, kept the great empire intact by their indomitable energy and efficient organization. With the passing of the Nineteenth Dynasty there came a period of anarchy in which the Egyptian rule of Palestine was for a time relaxed. Ramses III, the great ruler of the Twentieth Dynasty, set about restoring the former bounds of the empire. For over a quarter of a century (1198-1167 B.C.) he succeeded in holding Palestine and in inflicting severe blows upon the Hittite power in the north; but his reign marked the end of Egypt's greatness. The Valley of the Nile was never fitted by nature to be the centre of a great world power. Its foreign conquests had been largely the result of the energy and personal ability of four or five great Pharaohs. Syria and Palestine, because of their central position, felt the effect of all the great world movements, not only in the south and east, but also in the west. During the beginning of the twelfth century B.C. there was a great upheaval among the Aryan peoples living along the northern coast lands of the Mediterranean. As a result, they were obliged to seek homes elsewhere and so came streaming down the coast of Syria in thousands both by land and by sea. They overran Syria and broke forever the power of the Hittites along the eastern Mediterranean. Hordes of them pressed into the Nile Delta, and were turned back only by the strong armies and activity of Ramses III. One branch, the Peleset, of the Egyptian inscriptions, overthrew the old Canaanite population and settled at this time on the coast plains south of Joppa. They were known in Hebrew history as the Philistines. =The Epoch-Making Twelfth Century.= It was also during this transitional twelfth century that the cumbersome Babylonian language and system of writing ceased to be used in Palestine. Instead, a consonantal alphabet, derived by the Phœnicians from the Egyptians and also possibly in part from the Babylonians, came into use. The same alphabet, transmitted through the Ionian Greeks, became the basis of the one now in vogue throughout Europe and the western world. This same Phœnician alphabet was used by the later Hebrew priests, prophets, and sages in conveying their immortal messages to the world. Thus the twelfth century B.C. inaugurated a new and significant era in the intellectual as well as the political history of mankind. XII THE NOMADIC AND EGYPTIAN PERIOD OF HEBREW HISTORY