The marriages, domestic relations, and foreign history of this period can be followed in excep- tional detail owing to the records dei>osited at el-Amama, where a portion of the correspondence between the Egyptian court and its allies, envoys, and vassals in Syria lay stored until its discovery in 1887. The correspondence was almost wholly in the Babylonian language, — clearly the diplomatic medium of the age, — though the writers were not, with one or two exceptions, Babylonians. Some of the letters are from the kings of Mitanni, but most are from the Syrians entrusted with the government of the subjugated provinces. Those letters which belong to the reign of Amenophis HI. show a condition still of peaceful allegiance to Egypt and respect for its king. Those, however, dating from his son's reign bear witness to the defection of the vassals and speedy loss of the Asiatic empire, which resulted from the neglect and incapacity of the suzerain power. Amenopliis rv. was t'Kj fully engrossed at home to spend time or money upon external afTairs.
Although this king reigned for some seventeen years, there is nothing recorded of him beyond his religious activity. 1 he religious revolution was accompanied by an ephemeral, though for the time complete, revolution in art, traceable through-
out the remains of the great palace and temple which Amenophis, no longer content to reside at Thebes, had built at el-Amama in Middle Egypt. Place and personal names were changed, in ac- cordance with the reformed cult; the new residence was called ' Horizon of the Sun,' the king took the name //in i7n (Khuenaten), 'Spirit of the Sun,' the names of his wife — another princess of Mitanni and his own cousin — and daughters being likewise altered. There has been much speculation as to the king's personality, owing to the wide diverg- ence between his youthful and mature portraits. The peculiar, almost deformed, type of the latter has been thought in some way connected with the religious change. It is scarcely likely that the very similar portraits of his courtiers are due to more than imitative Hattery.
On the death of the reformer-king, he was pro- suinably interred in the great tomb hewn for him at el-Amama. His courtiers had planned to lie around him there ; but only some of them were destined to complete their tombs. For in a short time it was clear that the schism had depended on the energies of its originator ; with him dead, the ancient religion quickly rea-sserted itself. His two sons-in-law, who succeeded him, were not the men to resist the reaction which, within twenty years of Amenophis' death, was complete, and left the 18th Dynasty to end its course where it had begun it, at Thebes.
The most conspicuous results of the intercourse with Asia of which the 18tli Dynasty had wit- nessed the growth, are naturally seen in the military character of the age, the new basis on which the army was levied,— dependent no longer on the feudal nomarchs, but immediately on the king, — and the new methods of warfare taught by the introduction of the hitherto unknown horse and chariot into Egypt. The gradual extinction of the nomarchs — an effect perhaps of civil war- implied a corresponding exaltation of the crown ; their lands seem mostly to have passed into the king's hands. Conquest gave to the new mon- archy a prestige and resources (treasure and slave- labour) which placed it in a position of hitherto unattained magnihcenco. The country became, as under the early Dynasties, filled with royal officials and favourites, who soon rose to form a new no- bility ; a royal tax was levied upon all land, and royal justice administered by mixed courts of otncials and priests. The Asiatic vassal-provinces were governed chiefly by native viceroys, whom the Egyptian court controlled by means of envoys. Nubia and part of S. Egypt were entrusted to an official known as the ' Prince of Kush.' The evils of the irresponsible security attained by the capacity and fortune of the earlior Pharaons of the New Kingdom and those resulting from their close alliance with the all-jjowerful priesthood, become visible first under the following Dynasty.
Whether //rm/i6-Armais be reckoned the hist king of the 18th or the first of the 19th Dynasty, it is he who really initiates the new epoch. The disturbance for which Amenophis iv. had been responsible could not be quieted without vigorous reorganization, and this was the main work of Armais, a strong ruler, and probably already acting regent when called by his patrons, the priests of Thebes, to the throne. Beyond reconstructive work at home, we hear of one Asiatic war in which the principal enemy is the Hittite power, now advanced southward (probably from the Armenian highlands) and making havoc among Egypt's allies and vassals in N. Syria. It is uncertain whether this reign saw a treaty between tliem and Egypt. Armais was followed by the first of the famous Ramesside Pharaohs who ruled Egypt during the following 200 years. But
663
EGYPT
EGYPT
Ramses I. died after a short and uneventhil reign, and his son Sti/Sethds was the first whose liands were free enough at home to allow of any real attempt to regain abroad the ground of late lost. Yet now even SethOs was unable to do more than assure his hold upon such districts as the Hittites had not already annexed. A march through Palestine to the Orontes and back by the Phoeni- cian coast overawed Bedawins and Canaanites ; but he made no fresh conquests, and finally came to terms \vith the Hittite king, who was to be suzerain from the Lebanon northwards, while Palestine remained in allegiance to E^pt. Nubia, Libya, and, with the last, the ^Iediter^anean pirate hordes who now begin to appear on the N. and W. for the first time, were like\vise chastised or repelled ; but most of the reign must have been spent peacefully, as the king's colossal monuments at Thebes and Abydos testify.