ANCIENT EGYPTIAN AND SEMITIC EMPIRES 19 Next came Amenhotep iv., or Akhenaten, a great religious reformer, who attempted to purify the existing religion, and to make it a real worship of One God, symbolised by the mmJtm u 5 .1- u u a * • Akhenaten. disc of the sun ; but though he managed to impose his own doctrines on his neighbours during his own life, the new system was very soon overthrown after his death ; and Egyptian orthodoxy was represented by the nineteenth dynasty, known as that of the Ramesides, or house of Rameses, the name of its first king. About this time, the Mitani kingdom was definitely absorbed into the main Hittite power which was now dominating Syria. The third king of this dynasty, Rameses 11., obtained from posterity credit for being one of the great rulers of the world. The Greeks called him Sesostris. As a matter of fact, although he reigned for more than sixty years, from the end of the fourteenth to the middle of the thirteenth century, his achievements were not very remarkable. But the great monuments of his great predecessors, and their doings, were all attributed to him. He waged war with the Hittites, which ended in an alliance, apparently highly favourable to the Hittites. It has been supposed that his son Meneptah was the Pharaoh of the Exodus; but by this time the Hebrews had probably been already long settled in Palestine. In these days we hear of pirates from over the sea who are clearly Appearance to be identified with the Achaeans and Danaans, of Hellenes, the . names by which the earliest certainly known Hellenic or Greek races were called. This Ramesid dynasty glorified itself greatly by the building of temples and monuments. It was upset by a brief Syrian domination, the raid of a successful captain ; but the former dynasty was apparently restored with the twentieth. In this group comes a third Rameses, who is dis- tinguished for having repelled a great naval attack by the com- bined forces of the more or less Hellenic pirates from the islands and especially from Crete. The Egyptian power expanded into Libya, but in so doing completely lost its hold on Asia. The period of the next Egyptian dynasty coincides roughly with that of the rise of the Hebrew kingdom under Saul The Hebrew and David, who broke the power of the Philistines, Kingdom, a Cretan race who had established themselves on the south of
