DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4668#0116
98 The Hidden God. [Ch.
descent but from his personal union with Ra,
and inasmuch as heresy was punished with
excommunication and even, as M. Maspero
states, with death by fire, it would have been
inevitable that each successive dynasty, as it
proceeded now from This, now from Memphis,
now from Thebes, now from Sais, should have
torn up by the roots the religion established
by its predecessors; and the annals of Egypt
would have been as full of religious discord
and confusion as those of our own Tudor
princes. History however has produced, so
far, but one instance of an endeavour on the
part of the king to introduce novelty into the
religion. Amenoph IV., who married a foreign
princess, adopted the title of Khu-en-Aten,*
* I have adopted the translation of the word Khou,
given by M. Deveria in the passage above quoted, the
hieroglyphs being identical; but the name, according to
Mr. Flinders Petrie, is more correctly pronounced Akhen-
aten. That diligent explorer, in his interesting work on
Tel-el-Amarna, the site of the palace built by Khuenatcn,
on the borders of Middle and Upper Egypt, has abun-
dantly illustrated the theory that the monarch's object
descent but from his personal union with Ra,
and inasmuch as heresy was punished with
excommunication and even, as M. Maspero
states, with death by fire, it would have been
inevitable that each successive dynasty, as it
proceeded now from This, now from Memphis,
now from Thebes, now from Sais, should have
torn up by the roots the religion established
by its predecessors; and the annals of Egypt
would have been as full of religious discord
and confusion as those of our own Tudor
princes. History however has produced, so
far, but one instance of an endeavour on the
part of the king to introduce novelty into the
religion. Amenoph IV., who married a foreign
princess, adopted the title of Khu-en-Aten,*
* I have adopted the translation of the word Khou,
given by M. Deveria in the passage above quoted, the
hieroglyphs being identical; but the name, according to
Mr. Flinders Petrie, is more correctly pronounced Akhen-
aten. That diligent explorer, in his interesting work on
Tel-el-Amarna, the site of the palace built by Khuenatcn,
on the borders of Middle and Upper Egypt, has abun-
dantly illustrated the theory that the monarch's object