to speak, the window in heaven through which the unknown God, the "Lord
of the Disk," shed a portion of his radiance on the world. Now, given
an ignorance of the true astronomical character of the sun, we see how
eminently rational a religion this was. In effect, the sun is the source
of all life upon this earth, and so Akhunaten caused its rays to be
depicted each with a hand holding out the sign of life to the earth. The
monotheistic worship of the sun alone is certainly the highest form of
pagan religion, but Akhunaten saw further than this. His doctrine was
that there was a deity behind the sun, whose glory shone through it and
gave us life. This deity was unnamed and unnamable; he was "the Lord
of the Disk." We see in his heresy, therefore, the highest attitude
to which religious ideas had attained before the days of the Hebrew
prophets.

This religion seems to have been developed out of the philosophical
speculations of the priests of the Sun at Heliopolis. Akhunaten with
unwise iconoclastic zeal endeavoured to root out the worship of the
ancient gods of Egypt, and especially that of Amen-Ba, the ruler of the
Egyptian pantheon, whose primacy in the hearts of the people made him
the most redoubtable rival of the new doctrine. But the name of the
old Sun-god Ba-Harmaehis was spared, and it is evident that Akhunaten
regarded him as more or less identical with his god.

It has been supposed by Prof. Petrie that Queen Tii, the mother of
Akhunaten, was of Mitannian (Armenian) origin, and that she brought the
Aten religion to Egypt from her native land, and taught it to her son.
Certainly it seems as though the new doctrine had made some headway
before the death of Amenhetep III, but we have no reason to attribute it
to Tii, or to suppose that she brought it with her from abroad. There is
no proof whatever that she was not a native Egyptian, and the mummies of
her parents, Iuaa and Tuaa, are purely Egyptian in facial type. It
seems undoubted that the Aten cult was a development of pure Egyptian
religious thought.

At first Akhunaten tried to establish his religion at Thebes alongside
that of Amen and his attendant pantheon. He seems to have built a temple
to the Aten there, and we see that his courtiers began to make tombs for
themselves in the new realistic style of sculptural art, which the king,
heretical in art as in religion, had introduced. The tomb of Barnes at
Shekh 'Abd el-Kurna has on one side of the door a