Rameses II

one of the greatest of the Egyptian Pharaohs. He died 1280 B. C. He is the ruler who oppressed the Hebrews, requiring them to make bricks without straw. He extended the rule of Egypt northward into Syria and southward into Ethiopia, and occupied the country later known as Palestine. He built a defensive wall from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea east of the present line of the Suez Canal. For an account of the splendor of his capital, see article on THEBES. A glimpse of the miserable condition of the peasantry is afforded by the following paragraph from an Egyptian writer of that day:

Dost thou not recall the picture of the farmer, when the tenth of his grain is levied? Worms have destroyed half of the wheat, and the hippopotami have eaten the rest; there are swarms of rats in the fields, the grasshoppers alight there, the cattle devour, the little birds pilfer, and if the farmer lose sight for an instant of what remains upon the ground, it is carried off by robbers; the thongs, moreover, which bind the iron and the hoe are worn out, and the team has died at the plow. It is then that the scribe steps out of the boat at the landing place to levy the tithe, and there come the keepers of the doors of the granary with cudgels and the negroes with ribs of palm-leaves, crying: "Come, now, corn !" There is none, and they throw the cultivator full length upon the ground; bound, dragged to the canal, they fling him in head first to work out his tax; his wife is bound with him, his children are put into chains; the neighbors, in the meantime, leave him and fly to save their grain.

See Egypt; Pharoah