The link which connects the last monarchs of the 18th to the monarchs of the 19th dynasty has been lost; but Horus was succeeded by Rameses I.—the first of a long line of monarchs—who appears to have formed a treaty with the Khita or Hittites, and to have advanced the conquests of E. to the Wady Haifa. He was succeeded by Seti I. or Sethos, who attacked the Remenu or Armenians, the Rutennu, and the Shasu or Shep herds; who had again advanced to the Pa-khetein or Pithoum, on the confines of Egypt. Naharaina or 'Mesopotamia, and Sharu or Syria, Pant or Phoenicia, had also been invaded by his arms. The city of Atsh or Katsh, the suppoSed Cadytis, was also besieged by Sethos, whose Asiatic victories introduced into E. the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth. Tyre, Avathus, and Bethanath in Canaan, were garrisoned by his forces. E. was also embellished with many noble monuments in his reign. He was buried in a deep, exca vated rock-tomb in the Biban-el-Molook—the kings of the 18th and 19th dynasties hav ing substituted long, excavated tunnels or syringes, in the mountains of the Arabian chain of Western Thebes, for the ostentatious pyramids in use from the 4th to the 12th dynasty, which attracted the cupidity of the invaders of Egypt. Rameses II., the son of Seti I., seems to have succeeded him at the very youthful age of seven. In his fifth year, he defeated the Khita and their Syrian confederates at the battle of Katsh, in which many of the princes and officers of the Khita were drowned in the river Arunata,. or Orontes. The battle endured two days, and the panegyric of an Egyptian scribe, Pentaur, has invested Rameses with the power of a god. The war lasted till his ninth year, and the king took Shaluma or Salem, the ancient site of Jerusalem, and other cities. In his twenty-first year, a treaty of peace and extradition was established between the two countries, and Rameses married a princess of this nation. It is the tablet of this monarch which is found at the Nahr-el-Kelb, or Passes of the Lycus, near Beyrout. This monarch subjected Ethiopia, which had revolted, to his arms, reimposed the trib ute, and placed the country again under the government of the princes of Ethiopia, or Egyptian viceroys. He also established a fleet on the Mediterranean. His name and reputation formed the basis of the legendary Sesostris; the exploits of the monarchs of the 18th dynasty, and probably of his successors, being united with his fame. The reign of Rameses, although it exhibits a decline of art, yet demonstrates E. to have been in the height of its glory; and his epoch appears to have been about 1322 "Lc., a special, calendar having been sculptured to record the coincidence of the heliacal rising of the Dog-star and 1st Thoth, or commencement of the fixed and canicular year. His place of burial is uncertain—perhaps in the vaults of the Ramesseum. His thirteenth son, Merienptah or Menephthes, succeeded him upon the throne, transferred the capital to Memphis, successfully contended with the Tamahu or Libyans and the Rabu, and appears to be the Amenophis of Manetho, and the Pharaoh of the Exodus. He intro duced the heretical worship of Sut, Seth, or Typhon, and was succeeded by Sethos II., Amenmes, Sipthah, Tausri, and Setinekht, whose inglorious reigns close the 19th dynasty. The connection of Rameses III. with the previous dynasty is obscure. This monarch was chiefly at war with the Philistines, and the other maritime tribes of Greece and Asia Minor, and gained naval victories in the Mediterranean, and repeated the con quest of Ethiopia. He was followed by the splendid but inglorious line of the Ranies skls, the sixth of whom gained victories in Ethiopia; and the twelfth of whom, having married a princess of the land of Bakhten, sent the ark of the god Khous to Bakhten, at the request of the monarch of that country, for the cure of the queen's sister. The fall of this dynasty appears to have been owing to internal revolution, as their Tanite successors held the office of high-priests of Amen Re at Thebes. They held the goy.. ernment for 130 years, and entertained foreign relations, one of the monarchs having married a princess of the Rutennu. The 22d dynasty, the monumental, is rather con fused. They were also high-priests of Amen Ra. Shashank I. is the biblical Shisliak. His invasion of Israel, with 12,000 chariots and 60,000 cavalry, and the capture of Jeru salem, is recorded on the portico of the Bubastites at Karnak. The other monarchs of this line, Osorkon I., Takclot I., and their successors, have left no remarkable records: -and the dynasty, which appears of foreign origin, is more chronologically than historic ally important, the taking of Jerusalem falling between 989 and 959 B.C. The 23d. Tanite dynasty, which succeeded it, exhibits a decadence iu E., and was succeeded by the 24th dynasty, of a single monarch, the celebrated Bekenrenf or Bocchoris, who reformed the laws; but having been taken prisoner by the Ethiopian Sabaco, of the 25th dynasty, was burned alive. From this period, the history of E. becomes involved with that of Judea and Greece. Tirhaka came to the assistance of Hezekiali against Sen nacherib, and built the temple of Gebel Barka]. According to this Assyrian cuneiform inscription, the Ethiopians were expelled by the Assyrians, and the country placed under various monarchs. This state of affairs was closed by the rise of Psammitichus I. of the 26th dynasty, who, by the aid of Greek mercenaries, overthrelv the other petty princes. His age marks a revival in art, and restoration of the old constitution of the empire. His successor, Nekao or Nechos II., planned the canal across the isthmus of Suez, from which he desisted, warned by the advice of an oracle, after having lost 120, 000 men in the attempt. Under his reign, time Phoenician navigators first passed the line. After defeating Josiah, king of Judah, and conquering Palestine, he was himself defeated by Nebuchadnezzar at Karkeinish. Psammitichus II. carried his arms into Ethiopia. Apifes, his successor, having lost all the conquests, was deposed by Amasis, his successor, and strangled. Amasis favored in different ways the Greek colonies in E., and married a Cyrenean wife, and conquered Cyprus, but incurred the enmity of Cambyses, who overthrew his son and successor at the battle of Pclusium (526-527 n.c.). Cambyses treated E. with considerable moderation, but after an unsuccessful expedi tion against the Ethiopians, lost his reason, stabbed the bull Apis, and committed vari ous atrocities. His successor, Darius I., governed E. with more prudence; but Xerxes I. and Artaxerxes I. had successively to reduce it to subjection, which they did in spite of assistance rendered to it by the Athenians. The 27th dynasty of Persians was fol lowed by the Saito line, the 28th, Amyrtteus and Pausiris, who still held ground against the Persians; the 29th, Mendesian dynasty of Nepherches and Achoreus, maintained a Greek alliance; and the 30th, Sebennytic, consisted of Nectanebes I., who successfully
resisted Pharnabazus and the Iphierates; of Teos, who employed Agesilaus; and Nec tanebes II., who fled into Ethiopia before the Persians (340 B. C.).
From this time, E. remained a province of Persia till its conquest by Alexander the great, who founded Alexandria. Subsequently, E. passed under the Greek rule, and the language of the government, and the administration and philosophy, became essen tially Greek. The court of the Ptolemies became the center of learning and philosophy; and Ptolemy Philadelphus, successful in his external wars, built the museum, founded the library of Alexandria, purchased the most valuable of manuscripts, engaged the most celebrated professors, and had the Septuagint translation made of the Hebrew Scriptures, and the Egyptian of Manetho drawn up. His successor, Euergetes, pushed the southern limits of his empire to Axurn. Philopator (221-204 R. c.) warred with Antio chus, persecuted the Jews, and encouraged learning. Epiphanes (204-180 p.c.) encoun tered repeated rebellions, and was succeeded by Philometor (180-145 B. c.) and Euergetes II. (145-116 n.c.), by Soter IL and Cleopatra till 106 B.C. , and by Alexander (87 B.c.), under whom Thebes rebelled; then by Cleopatra Berenice, Alexander II. (80 n.c.), and Neos Dionysus (51 u.c.), and finally by the celebrated Cleopatra; and after the battle of Actium (30 B.c.), E. passed into the condition of a province of Rome, governed always by a Roman governor of the equestrian, not senatorial rank.
The most important events in E. under the Roman rule were—the introduction of the Julian year by Augustus (24 n.c.), the visit of Vespasian to Alexandria (70 A.D.), and that of Hadrian (122 A.D.), the development of the Gnostic heresy, the visit of Caracalla (211 A.D.), the conquest of E. by Zenobia (270 A.D.), the revolt of Firmus (272 A.D.), the persecution of Diocletian (304 A.D.), and the rise of INIanicheism, the great Arian contro versy in the reign of Constantine, the rise of asceticism, magic, and astrology, and the final destruction of paganism (379 A.D.).
At the division of the empire (395 A.D.), E. fell to the Eastern empire, and, at its fall. had become one of the great patriarchates of the Christian church; but owing to the religious feuds of the Jacobites and .Melchites, it became a province of Persia (616 A.D.) for years. The Coptic governor Makaukas, who reigned in the name of Heraclius, endeavored to make himself independent, and invited the arms of the Arabs, and Omar I. easily conquered E., in the nineteenth year of the hegira (640 A.D.).
History since the _Mohammedan Conquest —Although Alexandria was retaken by Con stantine III., the Arabs drove him out, and E. remained an appanage of the caliphat. It afterwards passed into the dynasty of the Thonlounides (868 A.D.): a new dynasty, the Akshidide, succeeded in 935 A.D., to give way to the Fatimide in 969 under which Cairo was built, and E. regained some of its prosperity, although in 1118 A.D. Bald win I. burned the maritime town of Faramah. Subsequently it passed under the Ayoubites, and Saladin, who fortified Cairo, built the citadel, excavated the well, and erected the granaries of Jusuf. In 1218 A.D. the crusaders took Damietta, but were subsequently driven back in 1221 A.D. One of the later princes, Saleh-Nedjim Eddin, built the castle of Rhodalm, and created the order of Mamelukes; but Louis IX. of France (1248 A.D.) took Damietta and gained the battle of Mansourah. In 1254, the Ayoubites entirely fell, and E. became subject to the Babarite and Bordjite Mamelukes, under whose government it flourished, and even pushed its conquests to Cyprus and Asia Minor, till, in 1517, Tomnan Bey fell into the power of Selim I., and E. became a province of the Turks. and administered by pashas. In 1601, the use of tobacco was introduced. Constant rebellions of the Mamelukes, and the violence of contending factions, distracted the country. The most remarkable event of this period was the French invasion by Bonaparte in 1798, which, by the conquest of Alexandria, and the battle of the Pyramids against the _Mamelukes, led to time entire subjection of the coun try, from which the French were finally expelled by the Turks and British in 1801, and the country restored to the Ottoman Porte. The rise of Mohammed Ali in 1806 imparted a galvanic prosperity- to E., by the destruction of the .Mamelukes, the formation of a regular army, the increase of security, the improvement of the irrigation, and time intro duction of European civilization. In 1816, Mohammed All rendered part of Arabia tributary by means of his sou-in-law, Ibrahim; and afterwards wrested Syria from the Porte, and held it as tributary by the treaty of Kutahia in 1835. The victory of Nisib, in 1839, would have elevated him to the throne of Constantinople; but the quadruple .alliance in 1840, the fall of St. Jean d'Arc to the British, and the evacuation of Syria, 'compelled him to limit his power to the pashalik of Egypt. Ismail Pasha reduced Nubia to a dependency of Egypt in 1820. In 1849, Mohammed Ali died, and was succeeded by Abbas Pasha, his grandson, replaced in turn by Said Pasha in 1854. M. de Lesseps now obtained the previously withheld co-operation of the Egyptian government in his scheme of the Suez canal (opened in 1869). Said was succeeded in 1863 by his nephew, Ismail, who, by leave of the sultan, took in 1866 the hereditary title of khedive (q.v.). The same firman made the succession to the throne of Egypt direct from father to son, instead of descending, according to Turkish law, to the eldest heir; and in 1873 the sultan granted to the khedive the right (withdrawn in 1879) of concluding treaties and that of maintaining an army. Darfur was annexed to E. in 1874, and in that and the following year further conquests were made in the south. Through sir Samuel Baker and Gordon Pasha, governor of the Soudan, the khedive has done much to suppress the slave-trade in his dominions. In 1875, the khedive sold to Great Britain 177,000 shares in the Suez canal (q.v.) for £4,000,000. The condition of the Egyptian finances was almost hopelessly involved, when in 1876 the revenue was put under the management of European commissioners. An Egyptian contingent of about 10,000 men, under the command of Prince Hassan, third son of Ismail Pasha, fought for the crescent in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. The new financial system having proved unsuccessful, another commission of inquiry was appointed; and ere long it was announced that the khedive had absolutely accepted the European system of constitutional government, and had made Nubar Pasha head of a reformed administration. The summary dismissal of this ministry in April, 1879, was followed by the interference of the European govern ments. The khedive, who declined voluntarily to abdicate, was, at the instance of the western powers, deposed by his suzerain the sultan in June, and prince Tewfik, Ismail's eldest son, was proclaimed viceroy of Egypt.