THE RESURRECTION OF ANCIENT EGYPT 



991 



the presence of Sir G. Maspero and oth- 

 ers. The face was of the characteristic 

 family type already seen in the mummies 

 of his father, Rameses II, and his grand- 

 father, Sety I — high-bred and aristo- 

 cratic in its lines, with pronouncedly 

 aquiline nose and strong, determined jaw. 

 Surely in such discoveries the pure ro- 

 mance of exploration reaches its highest 

 point, as we are brought face to face 

 with the actual bodily presence of men 

 whose actions have formed one of the 

 most familiar and striking stories of his- 

 tory to countless thousands of readers. 



The explorer, however, is but slightly 

 concerned with the mere romance of his 

 work ; it is a byproduct. What he is 

 searching for is the actual historical evi- 

 dence, which will enable' him to fill up 

 gaps in his scheme of history, or the 

 archeological evidence, which will help 

 him to reconstruct the life of ancient 

 times. In these respects modern explo- 

 ration has given us several discoveries 

 which have been of very high importance 

 in their bearing upon our knowledge of 

 the central period of the Egyptian empire, 



A TREASURE THAT WAS NEARI^Y LOST 



By the first of these, the discovery of 

 the Tell-el-Amarna letters, archeology 

 can scarcely be said to have reaped any 

 great credit, though it has been, perhaps, 

 the most far-reaching of all recent dis- 

 coveries in its influence upon our con- 

 ception of the life of the great nations 

 of the world in the second millennium 

 B. C, and the most valuable for the re- 

 construction of the lines of history. 



About the end of the year 1887 a wo- 

 man who was digging out dust for top 

 dressing from among the ruins of the 

 former palace of Amenhotep IV (Ak- 

 henaten) at Tell-el-Amarna came upon a 

 heap of little tablets made of baked clay 

 and inscribed with arrow-headed writing. 

 She disposed of her interest in the find 

 to a friend for the sum of ten piastres 

 (half a dollar) ! The tablets were hawked 

 about from dealer to dealer, offered to 

 at least two archeologists, and refused by 

 them as being probably forgeries. Many 

 were smashed or ground to dust in the 

 process of being carried in sacks from 

 place to place. 



Finally, when an amount of priceless 

 material, whose importance can never 

 now be estimated, had been forever lost, 

 the scientific world tardily awakened to 

 some conception of the value of the tab- 

 lets, and the bulk of what remained was 

 acquired by the museums of Berlin and 

 Cairo and the British Museum, a few 

 scattered tablets finding their way into 

 private collections. The loss incurred by 

 the apathy of official archeology can 

 scarcely be overestimated, for the tablets 

 proved to be from the archives of the 

 Egyptian Foreign Office of the fifteenth 

 century B. C, and contained correspond- 

 ence from the kings of Mesopotamia and 

 the vassal princes and residents repre- 

 senting Egypt in Syria during precisely 

 that period of Egyptian history which is 

 being more and more recognized as the 

 crisis of the fortunes of the empire. 



The earlier letters date from the reign 

 of Amenhotep III, the most magnificent 

 king of the great eighteenth dynasty, and 

 are full of interest as revealing the close 

 and constant communication which pre- 

 vailed among the kingdoms of the an- 

 cient East ; but the greater part of the 

 correspondence belongs to the reign of 

 Akhenaten, the son and successor of 

 Amenhotep III and the most interesting 

 and pathetic figure of Egyptian history. 



Amenhotep III, a luxurious, broad- 

 minded, and lavish monarch, who ex- 

 pended in works and habits of splendor 

 the great resources of the empire ac- 

 quired by his warlike ancestors, had im- 

 bibed a great liking for the Semitic cus- 

 toms and ideas brought into the land 

 by the numerous captives and hostages 

 drawn from the Syrian tribes during the 

 long wars and developed by the years of 

 peaceful intercourse which followed. He 

 married an Egyptian lady, not of royal 

 birth. Queen Tyi, a woman who deserves 

 to rank with Queen Hatshepsut as one 

 of the two most remarkable women 

 whom Egypt has produced (see page 

 978) . Even during the lifetime of Amen- 

 hotep III Syrian conceptions of religion 

 began to assert their hold, evidently 

 largely because of the influence of Queen 

 Tyi, and indications are not wanting that 

 the cult of a form of solar deity called 



