The king who didn't know Yosef

I meant to share this observation that I had after a recent visit to the Brooklyn Museum in which I had a tour guide. If you're familiar with that museum, you'll know that it has a very extensive collection of objects from Egypt. The guide showed a particular panel representing the king of Egypt who instituted what was considered a monothestic religion for the place: the worship of the sun. This was not so much about a religious awakening as a political power grab. In this setup (a bit like the Church of England) the monarch was the direct link to the deity. That increased the king's power. With the same goal in mind, the kings regularly destroyed all other temples and records connected with previous regimes and their religious orders.

It occurred to me that if that was the regular practice in Egypt, the king who enslaved the children of Israel really may not have known Yosef. It was a matter of political expediency as well as literal erasure, as the records assoicted with the previous king could well have been deleted.