THE RESURRECTION OF ANCIENT EGYPT 



999 



enemies, moves the heart even yet, across 

 all the centuries : 



*'And now Dunip, your city, weeps, 

 and her tears are running, and there is 

 no help for us. For twenty years we 

 have been sending to our Lord, the King, 

 the King of Egypt ; but there has not 

 come to us a word from our Lord, not 

 one." 



The letters drew no answer, or none 

 that availed. Akhenaten was entirely 

 engrossed with spiritual interests. One 

 by one the Egyptian vassals, deserted 

 and despairing, succumbed to the pres- 

 sure of their enemies ; and before the 

 king died, still in early manhood, broken- 

 hearted, one may imagine, by the failure 

 of his life's work, practically the whole 

 of the Egyptian empire in Syria had 

 passed away from the rule of the Pha- 

 raohs. Within a generation or two his 

 new capital had been abandoned and was 

 falling into ruins, his name had become 

 a hissing and an execration in Egypt, 

 and the land had gone back to its old 

 gods. 



the: city of thi: heretic king 



One of the most brilliantly successful 

 chapters of modern excavation is con- 

 nected with the heretic king, his mother, 

 and his capital of Tell-el-Amarna. Flin- 

 ders Petrie's excavations on the aban- 

 doned site revealed a palace whose in- 

 closure measured 1,500 by 500 feet and 

 whose decoration showed the develop- 

 ment of a naturalistic form of art un- 

 known in Egypt save during this reign, 

 while the great temple of the Aten proved 

 to be a building 250 feet square and 

 standing in an inclosure nearly half a 

 mile long. The relics of the adornment 

 of the palace were exceedingly striking — • 

 a love for brilliant color, for all forms 

 of open air and plant life, and a desire to 

 represent them not formally or conven- 

 tionally, but in all the truth of nature, 

 being the chief characteristics of the 

 work. 



In February, 1905, the American ex- 

 plorer, Mr. T. M. Davis, whose extraor- 

 dinary good fortune had already led him 

 to the discovery of the tombs of King 

 Tahutmes IV and the great Queen Hat- 

 shepsut, discovered the tomb of Yuaa 



and Thuaa, the father and mother of 

 that Queen Tyi whose influence played 

 so great a part in Akhenaten's religious 

 reformation. It had become almost an 

 accepted belief that Tyi, whose influence 

 was so pronouncedly pro-Mesopotamian, 

 must have been herself of Mesopotamian 

 origin. The tomb of Yuaa and Thuaa, 

 however, revealed the fact that her par- 

 ents were purely Egyptian; and the 

 wealth of its occupants showed that, 

 though probably not of royal rank. Queen 

 Tyi's parents were at least people of 

 considerable importance. 



The tomb was intact and the objects it 

 contained were as perfectly preserved as 

 though they had only been shut up a few 

 weeks before. Mr. Weigall describes 

 his sensations on entering the place as 

 being very much like those of a man who 

 enters a town house which has been shut 

 up for the summer. Armchairs stood 

 about, beautifully carved and decorated 

 with gold, the cushions on one of them 

 stuflPed with down, and covered with 

 linen so perfectly preserved that they 

 might have been sat upon or tossed about 

 without injury. Two beds of fine de- 

 sign decorated with gold occupied an- 

 other part of the chamber, while a light 

 chariot in perfect preservation stood in a 

 corner. 



I^RESH HONEY 3,000 YEARS OLD 



Most startling of all was the discovery 

 of a jar of honey, still liquid and still 

 preserving its characteristic scent after 

 3,300 years! "One looked," says Mr. 

 Weigall, ''from one article to another 

 with the feeling that the entire human 

 conception of time was wrong. These 

 were the things of yesterday, of a year 

 or two ago." 



But a still more brilliant gift of for- 

 tune was yet awaiting Mr. Davis's ef- 

 forts. In 1907 he discovered in the Val- 

 ley of the Kings a tomb whose inscrip- 

 tions stated that King Akhenaten had 

 made it for his mother, Queen Tyi. Toi- 

 let articles lying in the tomb also bore 

 the queen's name, and the Canopic jars, 

 or jars for holding the viscera of the de- 

 ceased, bore, instead of the usual heads- 

 of the Canopic deities, four portraits of 

 a female face of peculiar charm — evi- 



