THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN civilization, and the manners and customs which it brought in its train. Amen-hetep III. must have spent a good deal of time in the country during the first ten years of his reign, and it is probable that of the one hundred and two lions which he boasts on his scarabs that he has shot with his own hand, the greater number were slain in the hills to the east of Wad Ba Nagaa, in the Island of Meroe. More than all the other kings of Egypt he appears to have wished to make' the Siidan prosperous, for, after the great fight which took place early in his reign, we hear nothing of raids and wars, or of the burning of crops and villages, or of the slaughtering of the natives. Egypt had been in continuous possession of the Sudan for about two hundred years, and Hillmen and Cattle-men alike had by this time learned that it was ill to attempt to obstruct the passage of slave and gold caravans, or to interfere with the administration of the country by the Princes of Kash, and that the arm of Pharaoh was long and his hand heavy.

At the death of Amen-hetep III. the kingdom of Egypt passed into the hands of his son, Amen-hetep IV., whose mother was the great Queen Thi. The inscriptions of his reign make no mention of any expedition into Nubia or Syria, and it is probable that neither the king nor his officers found it necessary to make raids or carry wars into these countries during the early years of his reign at least. It does not fall within the scope of this book to discuss the religious opinions of Amen-hetep IV., and it is onl}' necessary to say that he declared himself to be the foe of Amen, the great god of Thebes ; that he declined to call himself " Amen-hetep," because this god's name formed a part of that name, and gave himself a new name, " Khu-en-Aten " ; ' that he quarrelled with the priests of Amen, and withdrew to a place on the Nile north of Thebes, called to-day Tell al-'Amarna, and founded a new capital ; and that he built there a temple to Aten, an ancient form of the Sun-god of Heliopolis, whom he proclaimed to be the greatest of the gods and the creator of the universe.

The greater part of his reign of twenty years was occupied by him in religious controversy, and in carrying out his own peculiar views concerning Aten and his worship, but in passing • I.e., "Spirit of Aten."

622