n serf class by a common name. The absence of
detailed reference to the Hebrews is therefore perfectly natural.
It seems probable that not all but only part of the tribes which
ultimately coalesced into the Hebrew nation found their way to
Egypt. The stories regarding Joseph, the traditional father of
Ephraim and Manasseh, imply that these strong central tribes,
possibly together with the southern tribes of Benjamin and Judah,
were the chief actors in this opening scene in Israel's history.

The Biblical narratives apparently disagree regarding the duration
of the sojourn in Egypt. The reference in Gen. 15:16, which, some
writers think, comes from the northern Israelite group of stories,
implies that it was a period of between one hundred and one hundred
and fifty years. The same duration is suggested by the priestly
writer in Numbers 26:57-59. The later traditions tend to extend
the period. If, as seems probable, the Hebrews first found their
way to Egypt during the reign of Amenhotep IV, who reigned between
1375 and 1358 B.C., the older Hebrew chronology would make Ramses
II, who reigned between 1292 and 1225, the Pharaoh of the
oppression. Of all the Pharaohs of this period in Egypt's history
the great builder and organizer Ramses II corresponds most closely
to the Biblical description. He it was who filled Egypt from one
end to the other with vast temples and other buildings which could
have been reared only through the services of a huge army of serfs.
The excavations of the Egypt Exploration fund have identified the
Biblical Pithom with certain ruins in the Wady Tumilat near the
eastern terminus of the modern railroad from Cairo to the Suez
Canal. This probably lay in the eastern boundary of the Biblical
land of Goshen, which seems to have included the Wady Tumilat and
to have extended westward to the Nile delta. Here were found
several inscriptions bearing the Egyptian name of the city P-Atum,
house of the god Atum. The excavations also laid bare a great
square brick wall with the ruins of store chambers inside. These
rectangular chambers were of various sizes and were surrounded by
walls two or three yards in thickness. Contemporary inscriptions
indicate that they were filled with grain from the top and were
probably used for the storing of supplies to be used by the armies
of Ramses II in their Asiatic campaigns. This city was founded by
Ramses II, who during the first twenty years of his reign,