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The Dynasty of the Oppression 67

What, then, did the He brew slaves build with all these bricks? No tice Josephus again:
“...they [the Egyp tians] be came very abu sive to the Is ra el ites...for they en joined them...to build
walls for their cit ies...THEY SET THEM ALSO TO BUILD PYRAMIDS, and by all this wore
them out....” Not only did the Is ra el ites build walls around the cit ies they con structed, but they were
also forced to raise up great FRONTIER
BARRIERS:

Amenemhet (I.) ruled Egypt with a STRONG
HAND, re es tab lish ing law and or der through out the
realm. Un der him, the na tion un der went a re vi tal -
iza tion of pros per ity, and GREAT BUILDING
PROJECTS were again re sumed....He...es tab lished
new land marks and bound aries and ex pelled the
Asiatics from Egypt, BUILDING A GREAT
BARRIER across the Wady Tumilat to keep them
out. No trace of this wall ex ists, though, as it was
prob a bly BUILT OF MUD-BRICK. Ac counts of
this wall in di cate a pro ject on the scale of the
FRONTIER WALL OF BRITAIN, built by the Ro -
man em peror Hadrian. -- The Egyp tian Pyr a mids,
p.198.

This very wall that the Is ra el ite slaves built for Amenemhet I. was used to keep them con -
tained within the con fines of Egypt!

As well as this east ern bar rier con structed in Egypt dur ing the 12th Dy nasty, a SOUTHERN
BOUNDARY for ti fi ca tion was erected in the Su dan dur ing the reign of Amenemhet III. Re cord of
this was dis cov ered on a stele which states that one build ing alone in this bar rier re quired the lay ing
of 35,300 mud-bricks!

The ma jor ity of the bricks the He brews made would have gone into the HUGE PYRAMIDS
the pha raohs liked to con struct for them selves and their fam i lies. These pyr a mid com plexes took
the best part of a mon arch’s reign to com plete, and would have taken up most of the Is ra el ites’ la -
bor.

Why am I be la bor ing this point about the bricks used to build walls and pyr a mids? Be cause
this is a VITAL KEY to de ter min ing the dy nasty of the op pres sion! The En cy clo pe dia Bri tan nica
ex plains:

The usual con struc tion of pyr a mids is a mass of ma sonry com posed of hor i zon tal lay ers of
rough-hewn BLOCKS, with a small amount of mor tar; and this mass in the LATER
FORMS be came more and more rubbly, un til IN THE VIth DYNASTY it was merely a sys -
tem of re tain ing walls of rough stones and mud, filled up with loose chips, and IN THE XII
DYNASTY THE BULK WAS OF MUD BRICKS. -- Vol. 18, 1943 edi tion. Ar ti cle “Pyr a -
mid,” p. 792.

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