2 REV. A. H. SAYCE, M.A., LL.D. 



Syria. It was here that the Sun-god was the central object 

 of worship, adored, though he may have been, under various 

 manifestations and forms. It was here, too, that his special 

 symbol was the solar disk, with wings issuiug from either side 

 to denote his omnipresent energy. The winged solar disk 

 may have been originally of Babylonian invention, but it 

 passed at an early time to the other Semitic populations of 

 the Bast. We find it above the figure of a king on a monolith 

 from Birejik, now in the British Museum, and it is specially cha- 

 racteristic of the monuments of the Hittites. It is true that 

 the same symbol is occasionally met with in Egypt ; Mr. 

 Flinders Petrie has found it ona monument of the Fifth Dynasty, 

 and it surmounts the inscription of a king of the Eleventh 

 Dynasty which is preserved in the Boulaq Museum. But its 

 rarity indicates that it was borrowed from abroad, and it is 

 not until the epoch of the Hyksos invaders, and the age when 

 the Asiatic wars of the Eighteenth Dynasty brought the 

 Egyptians into contact with Syria and Mesopotamia, that we 

 find it occupying a recognised place in Egyptian art. Like 

 the religious ideas with which it was associated, it was an 

 importation from Semitic Asia. 



We now know that the mother of Amenophis IV. was 

 of Asiatic birth. The conquests of Amenophis III., one of 

 the greatest of the great monarchs of the Eighteenth 

 Dynasty, had extended the empire of Egypt as far as the 

 banks of the Euphrates. Here his dominions bordered on 

 those of Tuisratta, called in the cuneiform tablets King of 

 Mitana, a district which is described by Tiglath-pileser I. as 

 lying on the eastern shore of the Euphrates, opposite the 

 Hittite fortress of Carchemish .* The Egyptians called it the 

 land of Nahrina or the "Rivers," and included under the 

 designation the country westward of the Euphrates as far as 

 the streamland of the Orontes. It is the Aram Naharaim, or 

 " Syria of the two rivers," of Scripture, and it was from 

 thence that Chushan-rish-athaim came to oppress Israel in the 

 days of Othniel (Judges iii. 8-10). Chushan-rish-athaim must 

 have been a successor of the grandfather of Amenophis IV. 



For awhile after his father's death, Amenophis IV. con- 

 formed outwardly to the State religion of Egypt, or, at all 

 events, made no endeavour to suppress or supersede it. But 

 a time came when the smouldering hostility of the king 

 and the powerful priesthood of Thebes burst into a flame. 

 Amenophis found it difficult, if not impossible, to remain in 



* In one of the cuneiform tablets at Boulaq the name of the district is 

 written Mitana-nanu. 



