Reproduced by permission from "The Rock Tombs of El-Amarna," by N. de G. Davies

so strange a thing as the creation and abandonment of a capital city within the lifetime of a single generation came

to pass.

Amenhotep III, the father of the founder of the City of the Horizon, was one of those kings who, like Ashur-banipal in Assyria, or Louis XIV in France, seem to sum up in their own persons all the glory of their race, just before it passes away forever. The great warrior-kings of his dynasty, foremost among them Thothmes III, had built up, by ceaseless wars, an Egyptian Empire, stretching from the fourth Cataract of the Nile to the great bend of the Euphrates above Carchemish, and over this great area the terror of the Egyptian arms maintained a profound, if unwilling, peace. The Pharaoh of Egypt was easily the first man in the world. Tribute from Syria, Palestine, and Ethiopia poured into his coffers with perfect regularity, and the vast temples with which he adorned Thebes blazed with gold and jewels, and all the richest products of his tributary states. In his inscriptions, he described himself, in grandiose language, as "A mighty king, whose southern boundary is as far as Karoy, and his northern as far as Naharina." His war-fleets kept the peace of the Mediterranean, and the products of Minoan art, the delicate painted ware, and the damascened bronzes of Knossos and the other Ægean centres became familiar objects in the markets and palaces of Thebes. The mightiest monarchs of the Ancient East courted the friendship and alliance of the Great King, and vied with one another in abject appeals for a share of the prosperity with which the gods had endowed their brother

of Egypt. In the Tell-el-Amarna correspondence can still be seen the proof of the proud position which Amenhotep III held among the rulers of the world. He is the Great Jove who "assumes the God, affects to nod, and seems to shake the spheres." His land is an enchanted land where "the peculiar treasure of kings" abounds as nowhere else on earth. "Let my brother send gold in very great quantity without measure, and let him send more gold to me than to my father. For in my brother's land gold is as common as dust." So writes Dushratta of Mitanni, one of the greatest potentates of the day, to Amenhotep. Abimilki of Tyre absolutely grovels before the mighty dispenser of benefits. "To my lord, the king, my gods, my sun; Abimilki, thy servant. Seven times and seven times at the feet of my lord I fall. I am the dust under the sandals of my lord, the king." Even the king of Babylon the Great submits humbly to the refusal of an Egyptian princess for his wife, and intimates that any beautiful Egyptian will do instead. "Who shall say, 'She is not a King's daughter'?"

Among his other matrimonial adventures, which embraced an alliance with the daughter of the king of Mitanni, who brought with her a train of three hundred and seventeen maids of honour, Amenhotep had married, early in his reign, a native Egyptian lady of comparatively humble origin named Tiy. She was the daughter of Yuaa, priest of Min, and his wife Tuau. The influence of this remarkable woman was completely dominant throughout the reign of her husband, and though there is no real evidence to show

that she was of North-Syrian descent, as has been claimed, there is no doubt that all her power was exerted in the direction of introducing Syrian customs and habits of thought into the Egyptian court. Particularly was this influence manifested in the direction of religious ideas. At this time the supreme god of the court, and indeed of Egypt, was Amen the great god of Thebes, whose name was borne by the king himself. But the headship of Amen had never been recognised without a grudge, for he was a comparative upstart among the ancient gods of the Egyptian Pantheon. Originally he was only the local god of Thebes, and shared in the insignificance of his city in the early days of Egyptian history. It was only with the rise to power of the Theban princes of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Dynasties, that the Theban god began to rise to a position of predominance. Gradually, however, as Thebes became supreme, the claims of Amen to a corresponding position among the gods were asserted with growing success; till at last, by the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, he was unquestionably the first god in the land. His supremacy, none the less, had never been accepted absolutely by the priesthoods and followers of the more ancient divinities. Of these the chief were Ptah, the Creator-God of Memphis, and above all Ra, the Sun-God, the chief seat of whose worship was at Heliopolis. Ra, indeed, represented the nearest approach which the Egyptian mind had yet been able to make to the idea of an universal God, as opposed to the local gods who swarmed in the land. He was, in Egyptian tradition, the father of the gods, and the proudest