240 REVIEWS OF BOOKS April to interest the understanding reader and even the ordinary popular reader in the story. We read in the text of the dominant influence of his queen Tii, that she ruled not only the court, but the king also, and we do not wonder at it when we see the energy of her face as shown in her portraits : and we may if we please see in the union of Amenhetep with Tii evidence of a romantic element in the king's character, which would not be unlikely in the father of the artist philosopher Akhenaten. We feel therefore rather disappointed that Mr. Hall has commemorated the portrait of the king alone, and left the queen to the obscurity of a sentence in the text and some references (with expressions of doubt) in the foot-notes. If the king was a figure of such character in history as the text shows, and as his portrait quite suits, we should like to see also the portrait of the lady who ' ruled the king ', whose ' strong feminine influence ' produced the genius and the half insanity of Amenhetep IV her son, when ' the result was disaster '. There is doubtless good reason for the omission, which probably Mr. Hall regrets as much as his readers do. It may, however, be doubted whether Mr. Hall has not been misled by the greater interest and by the abundance of documents relating to the rise and fall of kings into depreciating unintentionally the observation of the great forces which run through history. I find little, and that merely incidental and fragmentary, with regard to the real effect upon the history of nations of the flowing and ebbing tides of conquest. The conqueror, as a general rule, seized part of the land, usually a certain proportion fixed according to old religious law, taking possession of a share for himself and distributing portions among his most trusted officers ; while the conquered people were expected to live on the soil and maintain its cultivation in the interest both of themselves and of the new lords. This forms a thread running through history which can be traced from many centuries b. c. down to the struggles of the present day, when the question of the land is seen to lie at the basis of many great economic and political struggles. The reader cannot feel that sufficient attention is paid to this side of history, or that sufficient notice is taken of the allusions to this topic, usually incidental and unstudied, and there- fore all the more trustworthy, which occur in various inscriptions. On the greatest principle which has emerged in the recent study of ancient history Mr. Hall is almost silent. Doubtless he regards it as outside the scope of his purpose. It relates not exactly to the ownership of the land, but to the binding of the cultivator to residence and work on the land. We dimly look back to an early time in western Asia when the theocratic principle ruled and when people were servants of the god. As in the Holy Land, so in Anatolia, we see the lordship of the land and of its inhabitants passing from the god of the country to the kings and princes. As far back as we can conjecture, the custom must have existed that most people lived on and cultivated the land of the god under his guidance. The same custom remained when the lordship of the god ceased ; but it was only a custom, not a rigid law, and it was greatly modified by the influence of trade, communication across country, and the influence of trade guilds. We see the power of this custom in the last centuries b. c. The remarkable inscription engraved about 160 b. c. on the wall within
