Wilkinson, John Gardner: The Architecture Of Ancient Egypt: In Which The Columns Are Arranged In Orders, And The Temples Classified; With Remarks On The Early Progress Of Architecture, Etc.; With A Large Volume Of Plates Ilustrative Of The Subject, And Containing The Various Columns And details, From Actual Measurement (Text) (London, 1850)

PART II. ERASURE OF AMUN'S NAME. 123

god of their own country. For, as these strangers
were Asiatics, they may have traced in Atin their
own Adonai;* and the additional title of Re, "the
Sun", was well suited to their worship.-}- "Re" had
been appended by the Egyptians to the name of
Atin, as to that of Amuu; and in the sculptures
where Atin-re was substituted, by the Strangers,
for Amun-re, the adjunct " Re" was found to suit
equally well the names of both deities. This ac-
counts for its being frequently left, when they
erased the name of Amun.

Atin, or Atin-re, was an ancient Egyptian title,^
often given to Kneph, who is called Kneph Nou-re,
Nou-atin, and Noum-atinre; and that too in the
time of Thothmes III, and even at the later period
■of Remeses IX; but he was not represented as a
distinct god, nor with rays terminating in human
hands, § except in monuments of Bakhan, and the
other Stranger kings. The erasure, then, of Amun,
and the temporary abolition of his worship, were
not an Egyptian caprice ; they were owing to the
tyranny of foreigners, who obtained a footing in
Egypt; and the abject manner, in which the soldiers
and others are represented, crouching before those
kings, in the tombs of Amarna, shews the despot-
ism then exercised; as the erasure of their royal

* " Our Lord", whence the name of Adonis.

t They were probably from some country, farther east than Syria;
and a god of a similar name seems to have been worshipped by other
people of Asia ; as Attin, or Atys, by the Phrygians, etc. Vide Ancient
Egyptians, vol. iv, p. 297.

{ Vide Ancient Egyptians, vol. iv, p. 298.

§ I have once found the sun so figured, in a tablet, apparently of
the time of Remeses II.