Tutankhaton was king of Egypt. On his accession to the throne he changed his name from Tutankhaton—the living image of Aton—to Tutankhamon—the living image of Amon. He changed his religion just as easily. He took off his feet Amon's sandals with the divine image on the soles and bowed down before the god on whom he had trampled.
He moved from the City of the Sun to the ancient capital, Thebes, and began restoring Amon's temples throughout Egypt: he raised up idols of pure gold to him, multiplied gifts and levys, re-established feasts and sacrifices. He demolished the temples of Aton and destroyed his name wherever it was found—on granite colossi or personal amulets, on the high obelisks or in underground tombs. The same masons were hammering with their mallets as in King Akhnaton's reign: then they had been destroying the name of Amon and now the name of Aton; the same spies who had then been tracking Amon's secret worshippers were now hunting down the servants of Aton.
King Akhnaton's memory was anathematized. The curse was proclaimed throughout Egypt:
"May the Lord destroy the memory of him in the land of the living and may his double, Ka, find no rest in the kingdom of the dead. Woe to thine enemies, Lord, their dwelling-place is in darkness, but the rest of the earth in thy light. The sun of them that hate thee is darkened, the sun of them that love thee is rising!"
No one dared to mention his name and he was called the Enemy, the Criminal, the Monster, or the Buffoon, the Fool.
The first men of the land—the well-born, the rich, the happy, soon forgot him; but the last—the beggars, the sick, the wretched remembered him for years. They did not believe in his death: "he died and rose from the dead," said some of them, while others asserted that he did not die at all, but escaped from the palace and wandered about the world as a beggar, secretly. But all equally believed that he would come again and restore truth and justice; would punish the wicked, show mercy to the good, comfort the sorrowful, free the slaves, make the poor and the rich equal, wipe out the field boundaries, like the Nile, with the waters of inexhaustible love; would save the world that was perishing in evil and be the second Osiris, the true Redeemer and Son.
"Do you know what rumours there are about?" Tuta said one day to Merira, the high priest of Amon, and his chief helper in the war upon Aton.
"What rumours, sire?"
"That the Criminal is alive."
"I have known it all along," Merira answered, with a smile so strange that Tuta was surprised, almost alarmed.