It was during the reign of his son, Meneptah, that the Hebrew Exodus is supposed to have taken place; an event that indicates the weakening of the central authority, which was continued under this king’s successors. Finally, during the reign of Rameses III, of the Twentieth Dynasty, mercenaries were not only employed but allowed to settle in the country and during the remainder of the Rameseide Dynasty the monarchs became the tools of mercenaries and priests. Thus set in the decadence of power and art, which marked the Saitic Dynasty. Then followed a short period of Persian domination, which was so hateful to the Egyptians that they welcomed Alexander as a liberator. He appointed as king one of his generals, Ptolemy, in whose family the succession continued through sixteen rulers of the same name. During this period Egypt became an intellectual centre, its splendid library being the nucleus of scholarship. It was by order or at least permission of Ptolemy Philadelphos, about 270 or 280 <small>B.C.</small>, that the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek by seventy scholars, whence the version is known as the _Septuagint_. The Ptolemies signalised their rule by the restoration of the old temples and monuments, which had suffered from the havoc of invasions. After the victory of Augustus Cæsar at Actium in <small>B.C.</small> 31 and the death of Cleopatra the following year, Egypt became, as we have already noted, a Roman province. CHAPTER II EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE The remains of monumental architecture in Egypt afford a remarkable opportunity of studying the development from primitive types of structure. The earliest, which comprise the _pyramids_, _mastabas_, and two examples of _temples_, represent developed forms of the _tumulus_ and _dolmen_, while the later temples, which began to appear in the Twelfth Dynasty, exhibit their origin in the primitive hut of the country. THE ANCIENT EMPIRE =Great Sphinx.=--Meanwhile among the earliest monuments, of uncertain date and origin, is the Great Sphinx of =Gizeh=. It is the prototype of the sphinxes that were afterwards used to form avenues of approach to the temples, being distinguished from the Greek type of Sphinx by the fact that the recumbent lion body is wingless and carries a male instead of female head and bust. The heads of the later sphinxes represented portraits of the reigning kings, the conception symbolised in the whole figure being the royal power. An inscription, however, upon a small temple, which was erected between the paws of the Great Sphinx in the Eighteenth Dynasty, records that it was made in honour of Harmachis, one of the forms of the Sun-god, Ra. Hewn out of the living rock, it faces eastward, as if on guard over the pyramids and the entrance to the Nile Valley. The dimensions, when the sand was cleared from [Illustration: SECTION OF PYRAMID SHOWING KING’S CHAMBER, QUEEN’S CHAMBER AND A THIRD ONE BELOW. P. 40] [Illustration: MODELS OF MASTABAS