AND HELL.
By Dr. ALFRED JEREMIAS.

POPULAR LITERATURE IN ANCIENT EGYPT.
By Professor ALFRED WIEDEMANN.

I. THE TABLETS, AND HOW THEY WERE FOUND.

As early as 1820 it was known in Europe that in Middle Egypt, on the east
bank of the Nile, in the district between Minieh and Siut, there lay the
remains of a great city of Ancient Egypt. The Prussian exploration
expedition of 1842-45 gave special attention to this site, where indeed
were found, about sixty miles south of Minieh, extensive ruins, beginning
at the village of Haggi Kandil and covering the floor of a rock-bound
valley named after the fellahin village, El Amarna. At that time the
ground-plan of the city was still easy to distinguish; the regular lines
of the streets could be traced, and enough could be seen of the great
design of the principal temple to excite the admiration of the
discoverers. This example of the laying out of an ancient Egyptian town
still remains almost unique, for of old, as now, private buildings were
constructed of flimsy material. That the Tell el Amarna remains have
escaped rapid destruction is due entirely to the sudden and violent
downfall of the original splendour of the city and the complete desolation
which succeeded. The importance of the place was revealed on examination
of the surrounding cliffs. Here were found, sculptured and inscribed in a
new and peculiar style, the rock-cut tombs of the most distinguished
inhabitants of Akhet-haten, the royal city built for himself about 1380
B.C. by Amenophis IV., and destroyed soon after his early death.

In the beginning of 1888 some fellahin digging for marl not far from the
ruins came upon a number of crumbling wooden chests, filled with clay
tablets closely covered on both sides with writing. The dusky fellows must
have been not a little delighted at finding themselves owners of hundreds
of these marketable antiquities, for which a European purchaser would
doubtless give plenty of good gold coins. To multiply their gains they
broke up the largest tablets into three or four separate pieces, often to
the grievous hindrance of the future decipherer. But very soon the matter
was fruited abroad; the Government at once intervened, almost all the find
was in due time secured, and a stop was put to any further dispersal of
separate tablets and of fragments. The political situation in Egypt is
pretty accurately indicated by the fact that about eighty of the best
preserved of the T