One of the cities he built has been shown by the excavations of Dr. Naville to have been Pa-Tum, the Pithom of the Old Testament. Ramses II., therefore, must have been the Pharaoh of the Oppression. The picture set before us in the first chapter of Exodus fits in exactly with the character of his reign. The dynasty to which he belonged represented the reaction against the domination and influence of the foreigner from Asia, and the oppression of the Israelites would naturally have been part of its policy. Such of the Asiatics as still remained in Egypt were turned into public serfs, and measures were taken to prevent them from multiplying so as to be dangerous to their masters. The free spirit of the Bedâwin was broken by servitude, and every care was used that they should be unable to help their brethren from Asia in case of another "Hyksos" invasion. The incessant building operations of Ramses needed a constant supply of workmen, and financial as well as political interests thus suggested that merciless _corvée_ of the Israelites which rendered them at once politically harmless and serviceable to the state. In spite of all repression, however, the oppressed people continued to multiply, and eventually escaped from their "house of bondage." The stela of Meneptah, on which the name of "Israelites" occurs, implies that they had already been lost to sight in the desert. The other nationalities over whom Meneptah is said to have triumphed all have the term "country" attached to their names; the "Israelites" alone are without local habitation. Egyptian legend, as reported by the native historian Manetho, placed the Exodus in the reign of Meneptah, and as Meneptah was the son and successor of Ramses II., the correctness of the statement is antecedently probable. It was in the fifth year of his reign that the Delta was attacked by a formidable combination of foes. The Libyans threatened it on the west: on the north, bands of sea-pirates from the coasts of Asia Minor and the islands of the Mediterranean attacked it by sea and land. A mutilated inscription of Meneptah tells us how the tents of the invaders had been pitched on the outskirts of the land of Goshen, within reach of the Bedâwin shepherds who fed their flocks there, and how the troops of the Pharaoh, pressed at once by the enemy and by the disaffected population of Goshen, had been cooped up within the walls of the great cities, afraid to venture forth. The fate of the invasion was sealed, however, by a decisive battle in which the Egyptians almost annihilated their foes. But the land of Goshen was left empty and desolate; the foreign tribes who had dwelt in it fled into the wilderness under the cover of the Libyan invasion. The pressure of the invasion had forced the Pharaoh to allow his serfs a free passage out of Egypt, quite as much as the "signs and wonders" which were wrought by the hand of Moses. Egypt was protected on its eastern side by a line of fortifications, and through these