The land of Egypt....”
It is certainly worthy of note that Syria and Nubia are thus named before Egypt, and seem to take precedence in Akhnaton’s mind. In the same hymn the following lines occur:—
“The Nile in heaven is for the strangers, ...
But the Nile [itself,] it cometh from the nether world for Egypt.”
Here Akhnaton refers to the rain which falls in Syria to water the lands of the stranger, and compares it with the river which irrigates his own country. Thus again his thoughts are first for Syria and then for Egypt. This is the true imperial spirit: in the broadness of the Pharaoh’s mind his foreign possessions claim as much attention as do his own dominions, and demand as much love. The sentiments are entirely opposed to those of the earlier kings of this dynasty, who ground down the land of the “miserable” foreigner and extracted therefrom all its riches, without regard to aught else.
Akhnaton believed that his God was the Father of all mankind, and that the Syrian and the Nubian were as much under His protection as the Egyptian. This is a greater advance in ethics than may be at once apparent; for the Aton thus becomes the first deity who was not tribal or not national ever conceived by mortal mind. This is the Christian’s understanding of God, though not the Hebrew conception of Jehovah. This is the spirit which sends the missionary to the uttermost parts of the earth; and it was such an attitude of mind which now led Akhnaton to build a temple for the Aton in the heart of Syria, and another far up in the Sudan.[59] The site of the Syrian temple is now lost, but the Nubian buildings were recently discovered and seem to have been of considerable extent.
An Example of the Friendly Relations between Syria and Egypt.
A Syrian Soldier named Terura, and his wife, Aariburæ, attended by an Egyptian servant, who assists him to hold the tube through which he is drinking wine from a jar. From a tablet found at El Amarna. (Zeit. Aeg. Spr. xxxvi. 126.)