DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17#0114
PYRAMIDS AND PROGRESS.
COLUMNS WITH EIGHT SIDES (ROCK-CUT): TOMBS OF BENI HASAN.
This tomb has beautiful paintings, and is now protected by the Government.
burdens that could
not be borne. They
had conventionalised
literature, art, and
architecture and had
stifled and strangled
originality through
every branch of the
wonderful civilisa-
tion of ancient
Egypt. Amenho-
tep IV. at an early
age succeeded to a
great empire, inheri-
ted from his father,
the great Amenho-
tep III.,of whom we
shall hear more when
we visit Thebes.
Doubtless our young monarch tried to curb the power of the proud priests
during his six years' residence ât the ancient capital ; but, as he early announced
himself as the worshipper of one God, he had small chance of success. Despair-
ing of reforming them or bringing them round to his view, he left the city of
his fathers, and sought, lower down the Nile, about 200 miles from Thebes, a
site for a new city, to be the centre of his reformation—a reformation of religion,
art, architecture, and à model of good government, free from the dominance of
an arrogant and bigoted priesthood. He was no sun-worshipper ; but he took
the sun's disc as the emblem of his one god, the grandest and most evident
of the Creator's works and the emblem of the source and origin of life. He
seems to have attracted round his court literary men, poets, and artists of no
mean ability. Several religious poems have been found, either composed by the
king, like another David, or at least by the poetic talent attached to his court.
The morality expressed in these
hymns and epics ¡s of the highest
tone, almost on a level with Christi-
anity. It was even to be a domes-
tic reform, for he seems to have
had no "harem " establishment,
and only one wife, the beautiful
ATHLETIC AND OTHER SCK>
[From the Tombs of Beni /.asmi
COLUMNS WITH EIGHT SIDES (ROCK-CUT): TOMBS OF BENI HASAN.
This tomb has beautiful paintings, and is now protected by the Government.
burdens that could
not be borne. They
had conventionalised
literature, art, and
architecture and had
stifled and strangled
originality through
every branch of the
wonderful civilisa-
tion of ancient
Egypt. Amenho-
tep IV. at an early
age succeeded to a
great empire, inheri-
ted from his father,
the great Amenho-
tep III.,of whom we
shall hear more when
we visit Thebes.
Doubtless our young monarch tried to curb the power of the proud priests
during his six years' residence ât the ancient capital ; but, as he early announced
himself as the worshipper of one God, he had small chance of success. Despair-
ing of reforming them or bringing them round to his view, he left the city of
his fathers, and sought, lower down the Nile, about 200 miles from Thebes, a
site for a new city, to be the centre of his reformation—a reformation of religion,
art, architecture, and à model of good government, free from the dominance of
an arrogant and bigoted priesthood. He was no sun-worshipper ; but he took
the sun's disc as the emblem of his one god, the grandest and most evident
of the Creator's works and the emblem of the source and origin of life. He
seems to have attracted round his court literary men, poets, and artists of no
mean ability. Several religious poems have been found, either composed by the
king, like another David, or at least by the poetic talent attached to his court.
The morality expressed in these
hymns and epics ¡s of the highest
tone, almost on a level with Christi-
anity. It was even to be a domes-
tic reform, for he seems to have
had no "harem " establishment,
and only one wife, the beautiful
ATHLETIC AND OTHER SCK>
[From the Tombs of Beni /.asmi