Gradually the Egyptians came to think of their pharaohs as gods in the flesh, and they worshiped them as such. For example, the official Egyptian history showed that when Thutmose II died (ca. 1504 B.C.), he "went forth to heaven and mingled with the gods".

Other pharaohs of the New Kingdom followed the custom of naming themselves after Amun-Re (e.g., Amenophis, Tutankhamen). When Hatshepsut assumed the power of the pharaoh after the death of Thutmose II (she was the only woman to ever do so), she called herself "Daughter of Re". She described herself as "altogether divine", and said that all the gods of Egypt promised to protect her. (She probably said that because she had taken the throne away from her young son. It was usually punishable by death for a woman to assume the throne. Saying that the gods would protect her was an ingenious political ploy.)

Her son, Thutmose III, also held this idea of divine protection for the pharaoh. When his general, Djehuti, won a great victory at Joppa, he sent a dispatch to Thutmose III that said: "Rejoice! Your god Amun has delivered to you the enemy of Joppa, all his people, and all his city. Send people to lead them off as captives, in order that you may fill the house of your father Amun-Re, king of the gods, with male and female slaves..."

The succeeding pharaohs of the New Kingdom, especially Amenhotep III (1412-1375 B.C.), constructed great tombs for themselves that extolled the powers of Amun-Re. He was their claim to immortality.

Gold coffin of Tutankhamen. Tutankhamen, who ruled Egypt for 9 years between 1366 and 1357 B.C., is sometimes known as "The Boy King". He was 18 years old when he died under mysterious circumstances. A minor pharaoh, his principal accomplishment was to restore the worship of Amun to Thebes. His modern-day fame lies in the fact that his was the only Egyptian tomb that archaeologists have discovered intact. This miniature gold coffin in the likeness of the king was one of four containing the embalmed internal organs. The lid is inlaid with semi-precious stones and colored glass, and the figure bears a crook and flail, symbols of authority. He wears a headdress featuring the vulture and the serpent, national divinities of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, respectively.

Amenhotep IV shunned the worship of Amun-Re in favor of the sun god, Aton. He renamed himself Akhnaton and founded a new capital city at Amarna, where he tried to establish Aton as the new universal god of Egypt. But when he died in 1366 B.C., his successor Tutankhamen moved the capital back to Thebes and restored Amun-Re as the leading god of the empire. Tutankhamen's tomb contained many symbols of Osiris, the god of the dead, and other evidence indicates that the worship of Osiris was becoming more prominent at this time.

The elderly king Rameses I began the nineteenth dynasty with his short one-half year reign (1319-1318 B.C.). This dynasty revived the glory of ancient Egypt for a brief time, following the political disorder that Akhnaton had caused. Rameses' son, Sethi I, began new wars of conquest that pushed into Palestine, driving out the Hittites.

The great Hypostyle Hall, Karnak. One of the greatest monuments of antiquity, the Hypostyle Hall is the largest of many massive structures at Karnak, the city of temples at Thebes. Its interior space of 6,000 square yards is enough to contain the entire Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Begun by the pharaoh Seti, it was dedicated to the sungod Amun-Re. The structure was completed by the pharaoh Rameses II. Its 134 sandstone columns are covered with hieroglyphs. The 12 largest columns line the central avenue and are 69 feet tall and 33 feet in circumference; 100 men could stand atop each.

The pharaohs of this new dynasty established their capital at Karnak in the Nile Delta. Though they still gave homage to Amun-Re, they raised the worship of Osiris to a new level of royal favor. They dedicated the city of Abydos in honor of Osiris, and glorified the god of the dead in their majestic tombs at Abu Simbel and the temples of Medinet Habu. The Rameses pharaohs also elevated the worship of Re-Harakhti, in whom they combined the qualities of Horus (the sky god) and Re (the sun god). But they still considered Amun-Re to be the chief god of their religious system.

Rameses II chose his son, Merneptah, to succeed him in 1232 B.C. Merneptah and the remaining kings of the nineteenth dynasty gradually lost the power that the Rameses kings had acquired; but Merneptah launched ruthless raids against Palestine. Archaeologists have translated an inscription from a stone column called the Israel Stele, on which Merneptah describes his victories in that area: "Carried off is Ashkelon; seized upon is Gezer; Yanoam is made as that which does not exist; Israel is laid waste, his seed is not..."

This would have been during the time of the judges; so Merneptah's description confirms the disorganized situation in Israel, where "there arose another generation...which knew not the LORD nor yet the works which he had done for Israel" (Judg. 2:10). However, Merneptah's troubles at home did not allow him to stay in Palestine, and so he left the scattered tribes of Israel at the mercy of the Philistines.

The Merneptah Stele. Merneptah ruled Egypt in the latter half of the thirteenth century B.C. He fought to defend the Egyptian Empire against the invasion of Mediterranean peoples into the Delta. The Merneptah stele commemorates the king's Palestinian campaign, in which he claims to have destroyed Israel. This is the first historical monument on which the name of Israel is inscribed.

Pharaoh Sethnakht reunited the Egyptian city-states in about 1200 B.C. His son, Rameses III (1198-1167 B.C.), fought off invasions by the "Peoples of the Sea" - Philistines who landed on the Mediterranean shores of Egypt. His artists chiseled great relief carvings in the Temple of Medinet Habu that describe these victories. But Rameses III died at the hand of an assassin, and his successors slowly lost their grip on the government. Ironically, the priests of Amun gained more prestige during the same periods.

F. Third Intermediate Period. Around 1100 B.C., a Nubian general named Panehsi appointed one of his lieutenants named Hrihor as the high priest of Amun at Karnak. Hrihor soon became commander-in-chief of the army itself, and took the throne from Rameses XI (1085 B.C.). This began a new pattern in Egyptian government: Each pharaoh appointed one of his sons to become the high priest of Amun as the boy's first step to the throne. The royal family claimed to be the high religious family from this point on, using the influence of Amun to assert their authority.

At this time, David and Solomon were building Israel to the height of its power. When David's commander-in-chief, Joab, drove young Prince Hadad of Edom out of his native land, Hadad's servants took him to Egypt (I Kings 11:14-19). One of the pharaohs took him in, and Hadad married the pharaoh's sister-in-law. Hadad then returned to harass King Solomon (I Kings 11:1`-25). So Egypt figured in the political affairs of Israel throughout this period (cf. I Kings 3:1; 9:16).

But the Egyptian empire gradually disintegrated, and princes of Nubia carved out the southern territory with their capital at Napata. These Nubian kings also claimed to have the special favor of Amun. "The state was to be considered as a model theocracy and its king the true guardian of unadulterated Egyptian character and culture." Egypt's troubles were much like Israel's during this time; both had a divided kingdom. (See "Chronology").

Kings of Libya (to the west) toppled the weak pharaoh of Thebes in the tenth century B.C. They hired soldiers from the region of the Nile Delta to keep the peace in Lower Egypt.

One of these Libyan kings, Sheshonk I, sacked the temple of Jerusalem in the fifth year of King Rehoboam (I Kings 14:25-26; note that the Bible calls him "Shishak"). Sheshonk and the other Libyan kings adopted the traditional worship of Amun-Re. But even with this symbol of national power, they failed to realize their dream of reviving the Egyptian empire.

The Nubian (Ethiopian) princes moved down the Nile and defeated the Libyan kings around 700 B.C. For the next 50 years, they attempted to reunite Egypt. One of these new kings (the Bible calls him "Zerah") attacked Judah with an enormous army. Undoubtedly, he was trying to secure his eastern border, as so many pharaohs had done before him. But Asa soundly defeated him: "...Ethiopians were overthrown, that they could not recover themselves" II Chron. 14:13).

The Assyrians attacked Judah soon afterwards. King Hoshea of Judah appealed to a new Ethiopian king for help, but the Ethiopians could do nothing. "...Therefore the king of Assyria shut him [Hoshea] up, and bound him in prison" (II Kings 17:4). The Assyrians captured Judah, then marched into Egypt and overthrew the Ethiopian monarchy in 670 B.C.

Cleopatra VII. A Macedonian by birth, Cleopatra was an ambitious, intelligent, and cultured queen. She was unique in Egypt's line of Ptolemaic rulers because she took the Egyptian religion seriously and spoke the language of the people. When her dreams of empire were lost with Antony's fleet at Actium, she committed suicide by allowing herself to be bitten by an asp, the symbol of Amun-Re.

H. The Ptolemaic Period. Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 B.C. He died nine years later and the Ptolemy family took charge of Egypt and Palestine. The Ptolemies placed members of their own family on the throne at Thebes, and they tried to recapture the grandeur of Egypt's golden age. For example, Ptolemy Euergetes II made Amenhotep I a god in 140 B.C.; by revering this pharaoh who established Egypt's New Kingdom, Euergetes hoped to pass himself off as a true Egyptian. But the native people of Egypt only gave him token loyalty. He had to depend on the Roman armies to protect him from the attacks of the Seleucid Empire north of Palestine.

The Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem in 63 B.C. and broke the back of the Seleucid threat; but Egypt was tottering on the brink of collapse. At last Cleopatra emerged from the Ptolemy family to try to save the nation by political chicanery and bribes. She courted the favor of both Augustus Caesar and Mark Antony; but when Caesar's fleet defeated hers at Actium in 30 B.C., Cleopatra committed suicide in despair. From that time, Egypt came under the shield of imperial Rome.

During their brief time on the throne, the Hellenistic rulers planted Greek cities on the coast of Egypt and brought Greek settlers into the country. Thus they added foreign elements to the Egyptian way of life, especially to Egyptian religion.

The Egyptians were more receptive to the process of Hellenization than the Jews were. (See "The Greeks and Hellenism".) Priests gave Egyptian gods the names of their Greek counterparts: Horus became Apollo; Thoth became Hermes; Amun became Zeus; Ptah became Hephaistos; Hathor became Aphrodite; and so on. Egyptians worshiped the Ptolemaic rulers and their wives, much like they had worshiped the pharaohs.

Jews who settled in Egypt during the Babylonian exile developed thriving Jewish communities there. Aramaic papyri show that there was a a prominent Jewish colony at Aswan, on the island of Elephantine. This group did not live in close conformity with the Law of Moses, and they finally abolished animal sacrifice. The community was destroyed soon after 404 B.C.

Other Jewish communities fared better, and under the Ptolemies they received legal status. The Letter of Aristeas claims that Ptolemy I carried off over 100,000 Jews from Palestine and used them as mercenaries in the Egyptian armed forces. These Jews continued to worship GOD, but they were able to adjust to the Graeco-Roman way of life.

Ancient tax receipts show that there were Jewish tax collectors in Egypt. Jews also served in other government offices. In a letter that Claudius wrote to the Alexandrines, he asked that Jewish candidates not be allowed to run for the office of gymisiarch, who was in charge of the athletic games that were offensive to strict Jews (cf. I Macc. 1:14-15).

The ancient historian Philo says that 1,000,000 Jews lived in Egypt. They knew little Hebrew or Aramaic. For this reason, the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, the Septuagint version. The Jews of Alexandria were the first to use the Septuagint; later it was read in synagogues throughout the Roman Empire.

Philo of Alexandria was a Jewish philosopher who adopted the Greek ideas of Stoicism and Platonism. He dressed Jewish beliefs in the categories of Greek philosophic thought.

From Alexandria came the allegorical interpretation of Scripture. This Egyptian city became an important center of Jewish scholarship in the intertestamental period. (See "Jews in New Testament Times.")

When Mary and Joseph hid the infant Jesus there in about 4 B.C. (Matt. 2:13-15), several Jewish communities remained in the Nile Delta area where they had settled in Jeremiah's time. We assume that Mary and Joseph found refuge in one of these villages.

Periods of Egyptian History

Period	Dates	Bible Events
I. Early Dynastic Period (Dynasties 1-2)	3100-2800 B.C.
II. The Old Kingdom (Dynasties 3-6)	2800-2250 B.C.
III. First Intermediate Period	2250-2000 B.C.	Abraham comes to Egypt
IV. The Middle Kingdom (Dynasties 9-12)	2000-1786 B.C.	Joseph and Jacob come to Egypt
V. Second Intermediate Period (Dynasties 13-17)	1786-1575 B.C.
VI. The New Kingdom (Dynasties 18-20)	1575-1085 B.C.	The Exodus
VII. Third Intermediate Period (Dynasties 21-25)	1085-663 B.C.	Sheshonk I ("Shishak") sacks the temple (927 B.C.)
VII. The Late Period (Dynasties 26-31)	663-332 B.C.	The Exile (586 B.C.); refugees flee to Egypt
IX. The Ptolemaic Period	332-30 B.C.
X. The Roman Era	30 B.C.-A.D. 395	Mary and Joseph escape to Egypt (4 B.C.)

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