Eye and Horemhab
The rule of Egypt fell to the aged vizier Eye, who had been a counselor and friend of Akhenaton. After four years Eye was succeeded by Horemhab (ca. 1340-1310 B.C.), an energetic ruler who sought to restore Egypt’s fortunes abroad and erase the memory of the Amarna revolt at home. As a young general, Horemhab had espoused the cause of Akhenaton, but as a Pharaoh he sought to obliterate the records of the Amarna kings with as great enthusiasm as Akhenaton had sought to eliminate the name of Amon. Later orthodox king lists omit the names of Akhenaton, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamon, and Eye, placing the name of Horemhab immediately after Amenhotep III.
Although the Amon priests of Thebes seemed to be more firmly entrenched than ever after the accession of Horemhab, the calendar could not be pushed back completely. Egyptian art and literature retained some of the naturalism of the Amarna movement. There were effects in the religious world, too, for although Atonism was not pure monotheism, it exhibited tendencies in that direction which persisted in the Egyptian thought. God is frequently addressed in the singular, although under different names, in the hymns of the later periods of Egyptian history.
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AMARNA AND THE BIBLE
The Amarna texts make it clear that the inhabitants of Canaan during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries B.C. had a high degree of culture. While most people were probably illiterate, each community had its professional scribes who could write in at least one foreign language. Akkadian cuneiform, and not Canaanite, was the language of diplomatic correspondence between the city states of Canaan and the Egyptian court.