the accession of Amenophis III. the warlike
spirit ceased to prevail at the Court of Thebes. Nothing more was to be
gained by Egypt in Western Asia, and the tastes of the new king lay in
other directions than war. The two celebrated Colossi of Memnon (statues
of himself), many great buildings, the important part played by his
favourite wife Teye, the well-filled harem, the cultivation of "wisdom"
(which practically, no doubt, was tantamount to what we should call
"preciosity"); last, but not least, the solemn adoration of his own divine
image--all these facts combine to indicate the altered condition of things
which came about under Amenophis III. He reigned thirty-six years, long
enough to allow the movement introduced by him to run its course. His son,
Amenophis IV., was, however, just as little inclined as his father to walk
in the steps of his warlike ancestors. Hampered apparently by bodily
defects, this Son of the Sun tried his strength in a field often far more
dangerous than the battlefield. He began a reform of the Egyptian
religion, apparently in the direction of a kind of monotheism in which the
chief worship was reserved for the disk of the sun, the symbol under which
the god Ra was adored at Heliopolis in the Delta.

Nothing being known of the life of this king as heir-apparent, probably we
shall never understand what led him to take this new departure. From his
conduct during the early years of his reign it may be concluded that he
intended to proceed gradually, but was roused to more aggressive measures
by the resistance of the powerful priests of Amon in Thebes. These men
acted, of course, for their own interests in promptly resisting even mild
attempts at reform. Perhaps also the king's aim had been from the outset
to weaken the influence of the Theban hierarchy by new doctrines and to
strengthen the royal power by steady secularisation. Open strife between
the adherents of Amon and those of the Sun's Disk, the "Aten," broke out
in the second or third year of Amenophis IV., that is, about 1380 B.C. The
immediate removal of the Court from Thebes to Tell el Amarna points to a
failure of the royal efforts, for the command to build the new city had
not long been issued, and the place was still altogether unfinished. The
official world promptly broke with the old religion. The king altered his
throne-name, "Amen-hetep," to "Akhen-Aten," "The glory of the Sun's Disk";
his young daughters received names compoun