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293 son this king had was by a concubine. Thothmes II had a short reign, just nine years. So when he died, the son—the future Thothmes II]—was just a boy, too young to be a Pha- raoh. Hatshepsut was appointed Regent, and after a number of years crowned herself Queen—a female Pharaoh (who even ordered that her carved images show her with a false beard). As can be imagined, it was in such circumstances that the envy and enmity between the king's son and the queen's adopted son grew and intensified. Finally, in 1482 B.C., Hatshepsut died (or was murdered), and the concubine's son assumed the throne as Thothmes III. He lost no time in renewing the foreign conquests (some scholars refer to him as the "Napoleon of ancient Egypt") and the oppression of the Israelites. "And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown up, that he went out unto his brethren and saw their sufferings." Killing an Egyptian slavemaster, he gave the king the excuse to order his death. "So Moses fled from the Pharaoh, and tarried in the land of the Midianites," in the Sinai peninsula. He ended up mar- rying the daughter of the Midianite priest. "And it came to pass, after a long time, that the king of Egypt died; and the Children of Israel, bemoaning their bond- age, cried out unto the Elohim. And Elohim heard their la- ments, and Elohim recalled his covenant with Abraham and with Isaac and with Jacob; and Elohim beheld the Children of Israel, and Elohim found out." Almost four hundred years had passed since the Lord had last spoken to Jacob "in a nighttime vision," until he has now come to take a look at the Children of Jacob/Israel crying out of their bondage. That the Elohim intended here was Yahweh becomes clear in the subsequent narrative. Where was He during those long four centuries? The Bible does not say; but it is a question to be pondered. Be that as it may, the time was propitious for drastic action. As the biblical narrative makes clear, this chain of new devel- opments was triggered by the death of the Pharaoh "after a long time" of reign. Egyptian records show that Thothmes Ill, who had ordered that Moses be put to death, died in 1450 B.C. His successor on the throne, Amenhotep II, was a weak in The Greatest Theophany