of five carefully planned campaigns he consolidated his conquests in southern Syria and secured the ports of Phoenicia (q.v.). Kadesh fell in the sixth campaign. In the next year Tethmosis revisited the Phoenician ports, chastised the rebellious and received the tribute of Syria, all the while preparing for further advance, which did not take place until another year had gone by. Then, in the thirty-third year of his reign, he marched through Kadesh, fought his way to Carchemish, defeated the forces that opposed him there and crossed over the Euphrates into the territory of the king of Mitanni. He set up a tablet by the side of that of Tethmosis I. and turned southward, following the river as far as Niy. Here he stayed to hunt a herd of 120 elephants, and then, marching westwards, received the tribute of Naharina and gifts from the Hittites in Asia Minor and from the king of Babylon. In all he fought seventeen campaigns in Syria until the spirit of revolt was entirely crushed in a second capture of Kadesh. The wars in Libya and Ethiopia were of less moment. In the intervals of war Tethmosis III. proved to be a wonderfully efficient administrator, with his eye on every corner of his dominions. The Syrian expeditions occupied six months in most of his best years, but the remaining time was spent in activity at home, repressing robbery and injustice, rebuilding and adorning temples with the labour of his captives and the plunder and tribute of conquered cities, or designing with his own hand the gorgeous sacred vessels of the sanctuary of Ammon. In his later years some expeditions took place into Nubia. Tethmosis died in the fifty-fourth year of his reign. His mummy, found in the cachette at Deir el Bahri, is said to be that of a very old man. He was the greatest Pharaoh in the New Empire, if not in all Egyptian history.
Tethmosis III. was succeeded by his son Amenophis II., whom he had associated on the throne at the end of his reign. One of the first acts of the new king was to lead an army into Syria, where revolt was again rife; he reached and perhaps crossed the Euphrates and returned home to Thebes with seven captive kings of Tikhsi and much spoil. The kings he sacrificed to Ammon and hanged six bodies on the walls, while the seventh was carried south to Napata and there exposed as a terror to the Ethiopians. Amenophis reigned twenty-six years and left his throne to his son Tethmosis IV., who is best remembered by a granite tablet recording his clearance of the Great Sphinx. He also warred in northern Syria and in Cush. His son Amenophis III., c. 1400 B.C., was a mighty builder, especially at Thebes, where his reign marks a new epoch in the history of the great temples, Luxor being his creation, while avenues of rams, pylons, &c., were added on a vast scale to Karnak. He married a certain Taia, who, though apparently of humble parentage, was held in Amenophis III. great honour by her husband as afterwards by her son. Amenophis III. warred in Ethiopia, but his sway was long unquestioned from Napata to the Euphrates. Small objects with his name and that of Taia are found on the mainland and in the islands of Greece. Through the fortunate discovery of cuneiform tablets deposited by his successor in the archives at Tell el-Amarna, we can see how the rulers of the great kingdoms beyond the river, Mitanni, Assyria and even Babylonia, corresponded with Amenophis, gave their daughters to him in marriage, and congratulated themselves on having his friendship. The king of Cyprus too courted him; while within the empire the descendants of the Syrian dynasts conquered by his father, having been educated in Egypt, ruled their paternal possessions as the abject slaves of Pharaoh. A constant stream of tribute poured into Egypt, sufficient to defray the cost of all the splendid works that were executed. Amenophis caused a series of large scarabs unique in their kind to be engraved with the name and parentage of his queen Taia, followed by varying texts commemorating like medals the boundaries of his kingdom, his secondary marriage with Gilukhipa, daughter of the king of Mitanni, the formation of a sacred lake at Thebes, a great hunt of wild cattle, and the number of lions the king slew in the first ten years of his reign. The colossi known to the Greeks by the name of the Homeric hero Memnon, which look over the western plain of Thebes, represent this king and were placed before the entrance of his funerary temple, the rest of which has disappeared. His palace lay farther south on the west bank, built of crude brick covered with painted stucco. Towards the end of his reign of thirty-six years, Syria was invaded by the Hittites from the north and the people called the Khabiri from the eastern desert; some of the kinglets conspired with the invaders to overthrow the Egyptian power, while those who remained loyal sent alarming reports to their sovereign.
Amenophis IV., son of Amenophis III. and Taia, was perhaps the most remarkable character in the long line of the Pharaohs. He was a religious fanatic, who had probably been high priest of the sun-god at Heliopolis, and had come to Amenophis IV. view the sun as the visible source of life, creation, growth and activity, whose power was demonstrated in foreign lands almost as clearly as in Egypt. Thrusting aside all the multitudinous deities of Egypt and all the mythology even of Heliopolis, he devoted himself to the cult of the visible sun-disk, applying to it as its chief name the hitherto rare word Aton, meaning “sun”; the traditional divine name Harakht (Horus of the horizon), given to the hawk-headed sun-god of Heliopolis, was however allowed to subsist and a temple was built at Karnak to this god. The worship of the other gods was officially recognized until his fifth year, but then a sweeping reform was initiated by which apparently the new cult alone was permitted. Of the old deities Ammon represented by far the wealthiest and most powerful interests, and against this long favoured deity the Pharaoh hurled himself with fury. He changed his own name from Amenhotp, “Ammon is satisfied,” to Akhenaton, “pious to Aton,” erased the name and figure of Ammon from the monuments, even where it occurred as part of his own father’s name, abandoned Thebes, the magnificent city of Ammon, and built a new capital at El Amarna in the plain of Hermopolis, on a virgin site upon the edge of the desert. This with a large area around he dedicated to Aton in the sixth year, while splendid temples, palaces, houses and tombs for his god, for himself and for his courtiers were rising around him; apparently also this “son of Aton” swore an oath never to pass beyond the boundaries of Aton’s special domain. There are signs also that the polytheistic word “gods” was obliterated on many of the monuments, but other divine names, though almost entirely excluded from Akhenaton’s work, were left untouched where they already existed. In all local temples the worship of Aton was instituted. The confiscated revenues of Ammon and the tribute from Syria and Cush provided ample means for adorning Ekhaton (Akhetaton), “the horizon of Aton,” the new capital, and for richly rewarding those who adopted the Aton teaching fervently. But meanwhile the political needs of the empire were neglected; the dangers which threatened it at the end of the reign of Amenophis III. were never properly met; the dynasts in Syria were at war amongst themselves, intriguing with the great Hittite advance and with the Khabiri invaders. Those who relied on Pharaoh and remained loyal as their fathers had done sent letter after letter appealing for aid against their foes. But though a general was despatched with some troops, he seems to have done more harm than good in misjudging the quarrels. At length the tone of the letters becomes one of despair, in which flight to Egypt appears the only resource left for the adherents of the Egyptian cause. Before the end of the reign Egyptian rule in Syria had probably ceased altogether. Akhenaton died in or about the seventeenth year of his reign, c. 1350 B.C. He had a family of daughters, who appeared constantly with him in all ceremonies, but no son. Two sons-in-law followed him with brief reigns; but the second, Tutenkhaton, soon changed his name to Tutenkhamûn, and, without abandoning Ekhaton entirely, began to restore to Karnak its ancient splendour, with new monuments dedicated to Ammon. Akhenaton’s reform had not reached deep amongst the masses of the population; they probably retained all their old religious customs and superstitions, while the priesthoods throughout the country must have been fiercely opposed to the heretic’s work, even if silenced during his lifetime by force and bribes. One more adherent of his named Ay, a priest, ruled for a short time, but now Aton was only one of many
