ited the ideas and
tendencies of his Asiatic forefathers. A plaster-cast of his face, taken
immediately after death, was discovered by Prof. Petrie at Tel
el-Amarna, and it is the face of a refined and thoughtful theorist, of a
philosopher rather than of a king, earnest in his convictions almost to
fanaticism.

Amenophis IV. undertook no less a task than that of reforming the State
religion of Egypt. For many centuries the religion of the priests and
scribes had been inclining to pantheism. Inside the temples there had
been an esoteric teaching, that the various deities of Egypt were but
manifestations of the one supreme God. But it had hardly passed outside
them. With the accession of Amenophis IV. to the throne came a change.
The young king boldly rejected the religion of which he was officially
the head, and professed himself a worshipper of the one God whose
visible semblance was the solar disk. Alone of the deities of Egypt Ra,
the ancient Sun-god of Heliopolis, was acknowledged to be the
representative of the true God. It was the Baal-worship of Syria,
modified by the philosophic conceptions of Egypt. The Aten-Ra of the
"heretic" Pharaoh was an Asiatic Baal, but unlike the Baal of Canaan he
stood alone; there were no other Baals, no Baalim, by the side of him.

Amenophis was not content with preaching and encouraging the new faith;
he sought to force it upon his subjects. The other gods of Egypt were
proscribed, and the name and head of Amon, the patron god of Thebes, to
whom his ancestors had ascribed their power and victories, were erased
from the monuments wherever they occurred. Even his own father's name
was not spared, and the emissaries of the king, from one end of the
country to the other, defaced that portion of it which contained the
name of the god. 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. On the one side a fierce persecution was directed against the
adherents of the old creed; on the other side every effort was made to
impede and defeat the Pharaoh. His position grew daily more insecure,
and at last he turned his back on the capital of his fathers, and built
himself a new city far away to the north. The priests of Amon had th