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The Dynasty of the Oppression 63

Fayum dur ing the flood sea son. This wa ter was held there by sluices, and later let out again, at will,
back to the sec tion of the Nile from Assyout down to the Med i ter ra nean Sea, REGULATING THE
HEIGHT OF THE RIVER in that area dur ing the dry sea son. This ir ri ga tion sys tem was the
PROTOTYPE for the mod ern High Aswan Dam.”

Al though Amenemhat III was in volved in sev eral great en gi neer ing works, the Bahr Yusif
en deavor is of spe cial note. For here, two 20-mile long dykes -- one straight and the other semi cir -
cu lar -- were con structed so as to aid in the ADJUSTMENT OF THE WATER LEVEL through the
use of sluices, and to re claim 20,000 acres of farm land by en rich ing the soil." (The Egyp tian Pyr a -
mids. McFarland & Com pany, Inc. Jef fer son, N.C. 1990. Pps. 217-218).

Ob vi ously, both Josephus and Diodorus Siculus are talk ing about THE SAME con struc tion
pro ject car ried out dur ing the reign of AMENEMHET III. OF THE 12TH DYNASTY!

The Strong City of Ramesses

If we go now to the book of Ex o dus in the Bi ble, we can un cover some more clues to help us
pin point the dy nasty of the op pres sion:

And there rose up an other king over Egypt, who knew not Jo seph....And he set over them
[the Is ra el ites] task mas ters, who should af flict them in their works; and THEY BUILT
STRONG CITIES FOR PHARAO, BOTH PITHO [PITHOM], AND RAMESSES, AND
ON, WHICH IS HELIOPOLIS....And the Egyp tians ty ran nised over the chil dren of Is rael
by force. And they em bit tered their life by hard la bours, IN THE CLAY AND IN
BRICK-MAKING, and all the works in the plains, ac cord ing to all the works, wherein they
caused them to serve with vi o lence. - Ex o dus 1:8, 11, 13. Sep tu a gint.

If we can de ter mine when the cit ies of Ramesses, Pithom and On were built, we can place
the Is ra el ite slaves in the right dy nasty!

Be cause one of these cit ies was named “Ramesses,” many schol ars be lieve it was named af -
ter Ramesses the Great of the 19th Dy nasty, and was there fore con structed dur ing this time -- but is
this true? No tice the fol low ing:

LONG BEFORE RAMESSES THE GREAT WAS BORN, THERE WERE SEVERAL
KINGS, NOT KNOWN BY MODERN HISTORIANS, WITH SOME FORM OF THE
NAME RAMESSES. The re cord of these kings of the delta, fool ishly re jected by ALL his -
to ri ans to day, is the KEY to this enigma in the Bi ble. The names are pre served by Syncellus
in the Book of Sothis. A list of them may be found in Waddell’s Manetho, page
235...Among these rul ers is a Ramesses WHO LIVED IN THE DAYS OF JOSEPH and the
fourth dy nasty. Many his to ri ans have been puz zled by the fact that the name of Ramesses
should ap pear on so many of the build ing blocks that went into the early build ings of the
THIRD AND FOURTH DYNASTIES. Their mis taken ex pla na tion is that the later
Ramesses had his ser vants take the time out to carve his name on ALL these stones. It
NEVER OCCURRED TO THEM that there might ac tu ally have been a Rameses who as -
sisted in the erec tion of these fab u lous mon u ments of a by-gone era. -- Com pen dium of

The Berean Voice