12 ANNUAL ADDRESS—PROFESSOR SAYCE. 
THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS OF TEL EL- 
AMARNA. By the Rev. A. H. Saycz, M.A., LL.D., 
Deputy Professor of Comparative Philology in the 
University of Oxford. 
fl ioe winter before last, one of the most extraordinary and 
unexpected archeological discoveries of modern times 
was made in Upper Egypt. Egypt has always been the land 
of archeological surprises, but its last surprise is, perhaps, 
the greatest that it has ever afforded us. About midway 
between Minieh and Assiout, but on the eastern bank of 
the Nile, are the extensive mounds of an ancient city, now 
known under the name of Tel el-Amarna. They cover the 
remains of the capital built by Amenophis IV. or Khu-en-Aten, 
*‘the heretic king,” as he is familiarly called in the histories 
of monumental Egypt. Alone among the Pharaohs of his 
country he deserted the religion and traditions of his fathers, 
and endeavoured to impose upon his unwilling subjects a new 
form of faith. Forsaking the worship of Amen of Thebes, 
of Ra of Heliopolis, of Ptah of Memphis, he professed 
himself the devoted adorer of the radiant solar disk, in which 
he saw the image and symbol of the Supreme Deity. 
The worship of the solar disk points unmistakably to 
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 issuing 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 Hast. 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 
