Behind

the village stretch the extensive ruins (on the border of the desert), marking the capital of the “heretic” Khu-en-Aten (A me no phis IV) of the 18th Dynasty—about 1450 3c. [He is so called by Bunsen, Brugsch, and others, as a worshiper of Aten—a foreign god—and because monuments of Amen seem to have been desecrated in his time. But he used the orthodox Egyptian Book of the Dead (Renouf), and is addre ed by Burn a bur i as of Babylon as a servant of Amen.—Ep.] His mother Teie was an Asiatik—perhaps a relative of Dusratta, king of Mitani (Matiene in Armenia), whose daughter Tadukhepa was married to A me no phis IV, [His father also had Armenian and Babylonian wives, and Asiatik cults thus seem to have been introduced into Egypt—Ep.] He also married an Asiatik prince , Neferu-Aten, and called his palace, at Tell el Amarna, Khut-Aten. He regarded Aten as the Heaven-Father and Creator (the sun)—see Adon. He left Thebes, the capital of Amen, and seems to have taken with him the foreign archives of the empire. [Seals of Thothmes IV and A me no phis III were found with these, and many of the letters are to A me no phis II—Ep.] Here probably the Asiatik friends of the queen gathered round him. In 1887 the Fellahin discovered the first of these Syrian and Babylonian tablets; and, by 1892, about 320 in all were found. They are written in kune i form—not very archaik, but older than the characters used, by Tiglath Pileser I of As syria, in the 12th century Bc, Two of the letters are in Turano-Hittite dialect, the rest in a language closely like A yrian (Colonel Conder’s Tell Amarna Tablets, p. 181, 1894), There is some variety in the writing of the different scribes, who were probably Syrians or Phoenicians—excepting the two mentioned, and those of As syria and Babylon.