Fragments of dictionaries for the use of the scribes have also been recovered from the débris of the building, as well as the seal of a servant of Samas-akh-iddin who looked after the cuneiform correspondence. Like several of the Canaanitish governors, he bore a Babylonian name. Even the brother of Amenophis III., who had been made king of Nukhasse, had received the Babylonian name of Rimmon-nirari. No stronger proof could be found of the extent and strength of Babylonian influence in the West.
At Khut-Aten, as the "heretic" Pharaoh called his new capital, he was surrounded by the adherents of the new faith. Many of them were doubtless Egyptians, but many, perhaps the majority, were of Asiatic extraction. Already under his father and grandfather the court had been filled with Canaanites and other natives of Asia, and the great offices of state had been occupied by them. Now under Khu-n-Aten the Asiatic character of the government was increased tenfold. The native Egyptian had to make way for the foreigner, and the rule of the Syrian stranger which seemed to have been expelled with the Hyksos was restored under another form. Canaan was nominally a subject province of Egypt, but in reality it had led its conqueror captive. A semi-Asiatic Pharaoh was endeavouring to force an Asiatic form of faith upon his subjects, and entrusting his government to Asiatic officials; even art had ceased to be Egyptian and had put on an Asiatic dress.
The tombs of Khu-n-Aten's followers are cut in the cliffs at the back of the city, while his own sepulchre is towards the end of a long ravine which runs out into the eastern desert between two lofty lines of precipitous rock. But few of them are finished, and the sepulchre of the king himself, magnificent in its design, is incomplete and mutilated. The sculptures on the walls have been broken, and the granite sarcophagus in which the body of the great king rested has been shattered into fragments before it could be lifted into the niche where it was intended to stand. The royal mummy was torn into shreds, and the porcelain figures buried with it dashed to the ground.
It is clear that the death of Khu-n-Aten must have been quickly followed by the triumph of his enemies. His capital was overthrown, the stones of its temple carried away to Thebes, there to adorn the sanctuary of the victorious Amon, and the adherents of his reform either slain or driven into exile. The vengeance executed upon them was national as well as religious. It meant not only a restoration of the national faith, but also the restoration of the native Egyptian to the government of his country. The feelings which inspired it were similar to those which underlay the movement of Arabi in our own time, and there was no English army to stand in the way of its success. The rise of the nineteenth dynasty represents the triumph of the national cause.
The cuneiform letters of Tel el-Amarna show that already before Khu-n-Aten's death his empire and power were breaking up. Letter after letter is sent to him from the governors in Canaan with urgent requests for troops. The Hittites were attacking the empire in the north, and rebels were overthrowing it within. "If auxiliaries come this year," writes Ebed-Tob of Jerusalem, "the provinces of the king my lord will be preserved; but if no auxiliaries come the provinces of the king my lord will be destroyed." To these entreaties no answer could be returned. There was civil and religious war in Egypt itself, and the army was needed to defend the Pharaoh at home.
The picture of Canaan presented to us by the Tel el-Amarna correspondence has been supplemented by the discovery of Lachish. Five years ago Prof. Flinders Petrie undertook to excavate for the Palestine Exploration Fund in the lofty mound of Tel el-Hesi in Southern Palestine. Tel el-Hesi stands midway between Gaza and Hebron on the edge of the Judaean mountains, and overlooking a torrent stream. His excavations resulted in the discovery of successive cities built one upon the ruins of the other, and in the probability that the site was that of Lachish. The excavations were resumed by Mr. Bliss in the following year, and the probability was raised to practical certainty. The lowest of the cities was the Lachish of the Amorite period, whose crude brick walls, nearly twenty-nine feet in thickness, have been brought to light, while its pottery has revealed to us for the first time the characteristics of Amorite manufacture. The huge walls bear out the testimony of the Israelitish spies, that the cities of the Amorites were "great and walled up to heaven" (Deut. i. 28). They give indications, however, that in spite of their strength the fortresses they enclosed must have been captured more than once. Doubtless this was during the age of the Egyptian wars in Canaan.
As at Troy, it is probable that it was only the citadel which was thus strongly fortified. Below it was the main part of the town, the inhabitants of which took refuge in the citadel when an enemy threatened to attack them. The fortified part, indeed, was not of very large extent. Its ruins measured only about two hundred feet each way, while the enclosure within which it stands is a quarter of a mile in diameter. Here a regular series of pottery has been found, dating from the post-exilic age through successive strata back to the primitive Amoritish fortress. To Prof. Petrie belongs the credit of determining the characteristics of these various strata, and fixing their approximate age.
The work begun by Prof. Petrie was continued by Mr. Bliss. Deep down among the ruins of the Amoritish town he found objects which take us back to the time of Khu-n-Aten and his predecessors. They consist of Egyptian beads and scarabs of the eighteenth dynasty, and on one of the beads are the name and title of "the royal wife Teie." Along with them were discovered beads of amber which came from the Baltic as well as seal-cylinders, some of them imported from Babylonia, others western imitations of Babylonian work. The Babylonian cylinders belong to the period which extends from 3000 to 1500 B.C., while the imitations are similar in style to those which have been found in the pre-historic tombs of Cyprus and Phoenicia.
But there was one discovery made by Mr. Bliss which far surpasses in interest all the rest. It is that of a cuneiform tablet, similar in character, in contents, and in age to those which have come from Tel el-Amarna. Even the Egyptian governor mentioned in it was already known to us from the Tel el-Amarna correspondence as the governor of Lachish. One of the cuneiform letters now preserved at Berlin was written by him, and Ebed-Tob informs us that he was subsequently murdered by the people of his own city.
Here is a translation of the letter discovered at Tel el-Hesi:—