Brugsch, Heinrich: Egypt under the pharaohs: a history derived entirely from the monuments (London, 1891)

222 FAMILY OF KHU-N-ATEN ch. x.

highest enjoyment, and found in the love of his family,
and the devout adoration of his god, indemnification for
the loss of the attachment of the ' holy fathers ' and of
a great part of the people. His mother Thi also shared
this domestic happiness. Her suite used to accompany
her, and especially her steward and treasurer, the con-
troller of the women's apartment, Hia.

King Khu-n-aten gave a remarkable expression to
his love for his relations in three identical rock-sculp-
tures with inscriptions, which remain on the steep cliff
near the city of Khu-aten, but are barely within reach
of the eye. The king and queen are seen in the upper
compartment, raising their hands in an attitude of
prayer to the god of light, whose disk hovers over their
heads, each ray terminating in a hand dispensing life.
Two daughters, Meri-aten and Mak-aten, accompany
their royal parents. The date of the 6th year, in the
month Pharmuthi, the 13th day, gives to the whole a
fixed historical epoch.

Underneath are the following words—omitting the
long titles of honour of the king or the queen :•—•

On this day was the king in Khu-aten, in a tent of byssus.
And the king-—life, prosperity, and health to him !—changed Khu-
aten, -which was its name, into Pa-aten-haru (that is, ' the city
of the delight of the Sun's disk '). And the king appeared riding
in the golden court-chariot, like the disk of the Sun, when it
rises and sheds over the land its pleasant gifts, and he took the
road that ends in Khu-aten, from the first time when the king
had discovered it, to found it (the city) as a memorial to the disk of
the Sun, according as the sun-god king, who dispenses life eternally
and for ever, had signified to him to found a memorial within it.

A proper and complete sacrifice was offered on that day in the
[temple of the sun] at Khu-aten, to the Sun's disk of the living
god, who received the thanks of the love of the royal counterpart,
the Pharaoh Khu-n-aten. Thereupon the king went up the river,
and went up in his chariot before his father, the sun-god king,
towai-ds the mountain to the south-east of the city of Khu-aten.

The beams of the Sun's disk shone over him in a pure life, so as
to make his body young every day.