United States or Italy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The tombs of Khu-n-Aten's followers are cut in the cliffs at the back of the city, while his own sepulchre is towards the end of a long ravine which runs out into the eastern desert between two lofty lines of precipitous rock. But few of them are finished, and the sepulchre of the king himself, magnificent in its design, is incomplete and mutilated.
Along with the reform in religion there had gone a reform in art. The old conventionalized art of Egypt was abandoned, and a new art had been introduced which aimed at imitating nature with realistic fidelity. The mounds which mark the site of Khu-n-Aten's city are now known as Tel el-Amarna. It had a brief but brilliant existence of about thirty years.
The cuneiform letters of Tel el-Amarna show that already before Khu-n-Aten's death his empire and power were breaking up. Letter after letter is sent to him from the governors in Canaan with urgent requests for troops. The Hittites were attacking the empire in the north, and rebels were overthrowing it within.
His own name was next changed, and Amenophis IV. became Khu-n-Aten, "the splendour of the solar disk." Khu-n-Aten's attempt to overthrow the ancient faith of Egypt was naturally resisted by the powerful priesthood of Thebes. A religious war was declared for the first time, so far as we know, in the history of mankind.
He would not confine it to glyptic art, nor indeed to art alone all the uses of life might be bettered by it. His appreciation of Khu-n-Aten's ambition had been passive before, but when his own spirit experienced the same fire and the same reproach, his sympathy became hearty partizanship. His mind wandered back again to the ruin.
It was towards the end of Khu-n-Aten's reign, when the Egyptian empire was falling to pieces, that the murder of Zimrida took place. Not a single governor remains among them to the king my lord; all are destroyed. Behold, the servants who acted against the king have slain Zimrida of Lachish. They have murdered Jephthah-Hadad thy officer in the gate of the city of Zelah."
Word Of The Day