The free-born sons of Israel in the district of Goshen were turned into public serfs, and compelled to work at the buildings with which Ramses II.

was covering the soil of Egypt, and their "seed" was still further diminished by the destruction of their male offspring, lest they should join the enemies of Egypt in any future invasion of the country, or assist another attempt from within to subvert the old faith of the people and the political supremacy of the Theban priests.

That the fear was not without justification is shown by the words of Meneptah, the son of Ramses, at the time when the very existence of the Egyptian monarchy was threatened by the Libyan invasion from the west and the sea-robbers who attacked it from the Greek seas.

The Asiatic settlers, he tells us, had pitched "their tents before Pi-Bailos" (or Belbeis) at the western extremity of the land of Goshen, and the Egyptian "kings found themselves cut off in the midst of their cities, and surrounded by earthworks, for they had no mercenaries to oppose to" the foe.

It would seem that the Israelites effected their escape under cover of the Libyan invasion in the fifth year of Meneptah's reign, and on this account it is that their name is introduced into the paean wherein the destruction of the Libyan host is celebrated and the Pharaoh is declared to have restored peace to the whole world.
If the history of Israel thus receives light and explanation on the one side from the revelations of Oriental archaeology, on the other side it sometimes clears up difficulties in the history of the great nations of Oriental antiquity.