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24 the king of Egypt. Later, Rameses marries a daughter of the Hittite king. All this means that the Pharaohs had met their peers in the princes of the Hittites, and that they could no longer hope to become masters of Western Asia.

It was probably the fear of an invasion by the tribes of Syria that led Rameses to reduce to a position of grinding servitude the Semitic peoples that under former dynasties had been permitted to settle in Lower Egypt; for this Nineteenth Dynasty, to which Rameses II. belongs, was the new king (dynasty) that arose "which knew not Joseph" (Ex. i. 8), and oppressed the children

of Israel. It was during the reign of his son Menephtha that the Exodus took place (about 1300 B.C.).

The Twenty-sixth Dynasty (666–527 B.C.).—We pass without comment a long period of several centuries, marked, indeed, by great vicissitudes in the fortunes of the Egyptian monarchs, yet characterized throughout by a sure and rapid decline in the power and splendor of their empire.

During the latter part of this period Egypt was tributary to Assyria. But about 666, a native prince, Psammetichus I. (666-612 ), with the aid of Greek mercenaries from Asia Minor,