in the discredit and the odium
which attached to Amenhotep and his immediate successors on account of
their religious reformation.

[Illustration: KHUENATEN WORSHIPPING THE SOLAR DISK.]

The aversion of the "Disk-worshippers" to the old Egyptian religion was
shown (1) in the change of his own name which the new monarch made soon
after his accession, from Amenhotep to Khu-en-Aten, whereby he cleared
himself from any connection with the old discarded head of the Pantheon,
and associated himself with the new supreme god, Aten; (2) in the
obliteration of the name of Ammon from monuments; and (3) in the removal
of the seat of government from the site polluted by Ammon-worship and
polytheism to a new site at Tel-el-Amarna, where Aten alone was
worshipped and alone represented in the temples. The enmity, however,
was not indiscriminate. Amenhotep took for one of his titles the
epithet, "Mi-Harmakhu," or "beloved by Harmachis," probably because he
could look on Harmachis, a purely sun-god, as a form of Aten; and to
this god he erected an obelisk at Silsilis. His monumental war upon the
old religion seems also not to have been general, but narrowly
circumscribed, being, in fact, confined to the erasure of Ammon's name,
especially at Thebes, and the mutilation of his form in a few instances;
but there does not appear to have been any such general iconoclasm
practised by the "Disk-worshippers" as by the "Shepherd Kings," or any
such absolute requirement that "one god alone should be worshipped in
all the land" as was put forth by Apepi. The "Disk-worshippers" did not
so much attempt to change the religion of Egypt as to establish for
themselves a peculiar court-religion of a pure and elevated character.

It has been remarked above that the motive power which brought about
the religious revolution is probably to be found in the powerful
influence and the peculiar views of the queen mother, Tii or Taia. This
princess was of foreign origin; her complexion was fair, her eyes blue,
her hair flaxen, her cheeks rosy; she probably brought her
"disk-worship" with her from her own country, whether it were Syria, or
Arabia, or any other. Already in the lifetime of her husband, Amenhotep
III., she had prevailed on him, as his wives prevailed on Solomon (i
Kings xi. 4-8), to allow her the free exercise of her own religion, and
to provide her with the means of carrying it on with all proper pomp and
ceremony. At her instance, Amenhotep III. c