EXCAVATIONS IN EGYPT BOECHARDT. 449 



what musty. There are instances, however, in Thebes where the 

 officially walled-up tombs served merely as a cover for the pillagers 

 of reliefs to perform their work of destruction. Every method for 

 securit}^ leads to devising a corresponding method for breaking in. 



The largest and best preserved house excavated this year, and 

 which, because of its excellent condition, permitted the reproduction 

 in a colored drawing of one of the main rooms, the deep hall, was 

 that of General Ra'-mose and his housekeeper 'Jnet (House P 47, 9), 

 where the incomplete tombs, already known for some time, lie in 

 the row of the so-called southern tombs in the eastern mountain of 

 Tell el-Amarna. The house is of special interest because its owner 

 is known, and the more so since it supplies some information about 

 his personal historj^ Under the father of the king he had been 

 active in the high administrative position of " superintendent of the 

 house of King Amenophis III." His name at that time was Ptah- 

 mose, but under the young king he became " General of the king of 

 both lands," and after he had moved with his master to Tell el- 

 Amarna he changed the name to Ra'-mose (pi. 4). With the con- 

 stantly growing emphasis of the sun-cult, names in which other than 

 solar deities played a part became unfashionable in good society. 



This custom of altering names, which has its foundation in the 

 persecution of those gods who were not affiliated with the sun-cult, 

 and therefore must have originated at the time of the highest de- 

 A'elopment of the Aten cult, is important in the chronology of this 

 remarkable religious movement. The house of this " General " is 

 quite close to the confines of the city, which was not founded before 

 the fourth year of Amenophis IV, and was therefore probably built 

 a considerable time after the court had moved to Tell el-Amarna. 

 The name was changed when the house was nearly finished, perhaps 

 even considerably later. Hence the opposition to the names of the 

 nonsolar divinities, as we see it in the above alteration of the name 

 Ptah-mose, regarded as characterizing the period of Amenophis IV, 

 may be considered the last acute stage of the " reformation " of that 

 king, which took place in the last decades of his reign. The intro- 

 duction of the Aten cult was therefore not an abrupt, sudden phe- 

 nomenon, but a gradual development, beginning probably far earlier 

 than the time of Amenophis IV. In fact, there is in the British 

 Museum a statue belonging to the time of the father of the king, 

 bearing a regiment's name, " the god Aten sheds his rays upon King 

 Amenophis III." Thus the so-called new god of Amenophis IV 

 must already have been highly respected under Amenophis III, else 

 a regiment would hardly have been named for him. Thus, after all, 

 Amenophis IV, both as the ruler of a gigantic empire and as the 

 founder of a religion, Avas only an heir, and, as the results in both 

 spheres has shown, not a fortunate heir. 

 18618°— SM 1915 29 



