Meneptah II., the Pharaoh of the Exodus, thus refers at Karnak to the arable land about Pi-Bailos, the modern Belbeis. ‘The country around it,’ he says, ‘is not cultivated, but left as pasture for cattle because of the foreigners. It has been abandoned (to them) since ancient times.’ They had settled with their herds in the neighbouring-valley of Tumilât, and the richer land which adjoined the valley was also assigned to them. Here they were in the nome of Heliopolis, the daughter of whose high-priest was married by Joseph, as well as in the near neighbourhood of Bubastis, where Dr. Naville has found Hyksos remains. When the great inscription of Meneptah II. was engraved on the walls of Karnak the Exodus would have already taken place. The ‘foreigners,’ therefore, to whom he alludes must have been the Israelites, who had now deserted the spot. The district accordingly would once more have needed inhabitants, and the Pharaoh had the power of handing it over to the first Bedâwin tribe who begged for pasturage in the Delta. He had not long to wait. Among the papyri in the British Museum there is a letter dated in the eighth year of Meneptah’s reign, and addressed to the king. In this the scribe writes as follows:—‘Another matter for the consideration of my master’s heart. We have allowed the tribes of the Shasu from the land of Edom to pass the fortress of Meneptah in the land of Thukut (Succoth), (and go) to the lakes of Pithom of Meneptah in the land of Thukut, in order to feed themselves, and to feed their herds on the great estate of Pharaoh, the beneficent sun of all countries. In the year 8.’[155] The Wâdi Tumilât was accordingly regarded as crown-land, as indeed it is to-day, and it was handed over to the Edomites by officers of the Pharaoh, just as it had been to the Israelites several centuries before. But now the Israelites had fled from it, and disappeared into the wilderness, and it was necessary to fill their place. The Biblical writer distinguishes the Pharaoh of the Oppression from the Pharaoh of the Exodus (Exod. ii. 23). It was after the death of the great royal builder of Egypt that the Hebrews were delivered from their bondage. The Pharaoh of the Oppression and not the Pharaoh of the Exodus was ‘the new king which knew not Joseph.’