AMEN-HETEP IV.

judgment upon him it should be remembered that he came of a family which had for fenerations held opinions about the origin and nature of its members of such overweening pride and arrogance that they appear ludicrous to modern students of mankind. Amen-hetep I. was y blind adherent of the god Amen, and founder of the great college of the priests of this god at Thebes. Hatshepset declared that she was the veritable •daughter of i\men by Queen Aahmes, and was incarnate of this od. Thothmes IV. cleared away the sand from the Sphinx, and rebuilt the temple of Heru-em-khut, or Harmachis, as the result of the appearance of this god to him one afternoon after a hunt near the Pyramids of Giza. Amen-hetep III. believed that one portion of his nature was divine, and built a temple to his Khent V 2k or Image, and worshipped it therein. His son denounced Amen and all his works, and proclaimed A ten to be the true god, though he tolerated the worship of certain solar •deities, among them being Harmachis, for whose temple his grandfather had done so much. Nearly all the kings of the XVIIIth Dynasty were religious enthusiasts of one kind or another, but none of them allowed their opinions to affect their rule over Egypt, and none shirked their dut\' to the state of making Syria and Nubia pay tribute at the appointed times, €xcept Amen-hetep IV.

Amen-hetep III., his father, certainly had a decided leaning to the cult of x\ten, but he avoided a break with the priests of Amen, and, in Nubia at least, allowed that god precedence over his divine counterpart. His son, unfortunately for him, did break wiih the priests of Amen, and whilst he was leading a life of artistic luxury in Khut-en-Aten, the new capital which he built, the great empire which his ancestors had made in Syria and Nubia began to fall to pieces. The royal treasurer of Amen-hetep IV. says that he brought back tribute for his master from Syria, from the Islands of the Mediterranean, and from Nubia but, when we remember the evidence of the Tell al-'Amarna tablets, it is clear that he was a courtier who told his lord only what was acceptable to him. The letters found at Tell al-"•Amarna are full of appeals by Syrian governors for help which 623'