In the time of Moses the Egyptian power had already passed its zenith and begun to decay. There had been an Old Empire, with the City of _This_ for its first capital and Menes as its first king. Dynasty had succeeded dynasty, during perhaps two thousand years, and the capital had been changed several times, when the Middle Empire came in, and the kings ruled from Thebes and afterwards from Xois. There had now been fourteen dynasties altogether; and the power of the kingdom was so far weakened that it was unable to keep out the invader. The Shepherd Kings, coming from Midian, or perhaps from Mesopotamia, established themselves in the Delta, and held possession for several centuries. Their conquest, however, did not extend to Upper Egypt, and so the native dynasties reigned contemporaneously, enthroned at Thebes, while the Hyksos kings were seated at Zoan.
It was probably towards the close of the Hyksos period that Joseph was made governor of Egypt, under the latest of the Shepherd Kings. The seventeenth dynasty saw the last of these foreigners, and after their expulsion the New Empire began, near the end of the eighteenth century before Christ. The eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties included several monarchs of great renown; and as the Israelitish sojourn falls chiefly within this period, it will be useful to give here a chronological list.
_Monarchs of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, with approximate dates, according to Brugsch._
Aahmes, Amosis; its founder 1700 Amenhotep I. (Amenophis) 1666 Thothmes I. (Thotmosis) 1633 Thothmes II. and his sister-wife Hatshepsu 1600 Thothmes III. Amenhotep II., Son of Thothmes III. 1566 Thothmes IV. 1533 Amenhotep III., Son of Queen Mutemna 1500 Amenhotep IV., afterwards called Khuenaten 1466
Rameses I. 1400 Seti I. (Sethos) Menephtah 1366 Rameses II. (Sesostris) Miamun 1333 Menephtah II. (Menepthes) 1300 Seti II. Menephtah III., son of Menephtah II. 1266 Setnakht-Merer-Miamun II. 1233
Rameses II. was the Pharaoh of the Oppression; and the Israelites left Egypt in the reign of his successor, Menephtah.
In 1878 the Khedive Said Pasha authorised Professor Maspero to found a Museum at Boulak (a suburb of Cairo), for the reception of all the antiquities found in the country and calculated to throw light on Egyptian history. Under the successive direction of Professor Maspero and Professor Grébaut the collection has become one of the most valuable and most instructive in the world.