After Amosis had expelled the Shepherds, and extended his dominion over all Egypt, his son and Successor Ammenemes or Ammon, by much greater conquests laid the foundation of the Egyptian Empire:  for by the assistance of his young son Sesostris, whom he brought up to hunting and other laborious exercises, he conquered Arabia, Troglodytica, and Libya:  and from him all Libya was anciently called Ammonia:  and after his death, in the temples erected to him at Thebes, and in Ammonia and at Meroe in Ethiopia, they set up Oracles to him, and made the people worship him as the God that acted in them:  and these are the oldest Oracles mentioned in history; the Greeks therein imitating the Egyptians:  for the [259] Oracle at Dodona was the oldest in Greece, and was set up by an Egyptian woman, after the example of the Oracle of Jupiter Ammon at Thebes.

In the days of Ammon a body of the Edomites fled from David into Egypt, with their young King Hadad, as above; and carried thither their skill in navigation:  and this seems to have given occasion to the Egyptians to build a fleet on the Red Sea near Coptos, and might ingratiate Hadad with Pharaoh:  for the Midianites and Ishmaelites, who bordered upon the Red Sea, near Mount Horeb on the south-side of Edom, were merchants from the days of Jacob the Patriarch, Gen. xxxvii. 28, 36. and by their merchandise the Midianites abounded with gold in the days of Moses, Numb. xxxi. 50, 51, 52. and in the days of the judges of Israel, because they were Ishmaelites__, Judg. viii 24.  The Ishmaelites therefore in those days grew rich by merchandise; they carried their merchandise on camels through Petra to Rhinocolura, and thence to Egypt:  and this trafic at length came into the hands of David, by his conquering the Edomites, and gaining the ports of the Red Sea called Eloth and Ezion-Geber, as may be understood by the 3000 talents of gold of Ophir, which David gave to the Temple, 1 Chron. xxix. 4.  The Egyptians having the art of making linen-cloth, they began about this time to build long Ships with sails, in their port on those Seas near Coptos, and having learnt the skill of the Edomites, they began now to observe the positions of the Stars, and the length of the Solar Year, for enabling them to know the position of the Stars at any time, and to sail by them at all times, without sight of the shoar:  and this gave a beginning to Astronomy and Navigation:  for hitherto they had gone only by the shoar with oars, in round vessels of burden, first invented on that shallow sea by the posterity