RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Amalek Aniarna
C. Hahn, Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter, iii. 176 sqq., Stuttgart, 1845; Kronlein, Amalrich von Bena und David vonDinart, in TSK, xii. (1847) 271 sqq.; W Preger, Geschichte der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter, i. 1 66 sqq. , 1 73 sqq., Leipsic, 1874; A. Jundt, Histoire du pantheisme populaire au moyen age, p. 20, Paris, 1875; H. Reuter, Geschichte der religiosen Aufklarung im Mittelalter, ii. 218 sqq., Berlin, 1877.
AMANA SOCIETY. See Communism, II., 3.
AMANDUS, a-man'dus: Bishop and missionary of the Franks; d. at the abbey of Elno, near Tournai, Feb. 6, 661 (?). He was a man of rank from Aquitania, took holy orders in early youth against the will of his father, and lived in a cell in the city-wall of Bourges till he was induced by a vision of St. Peter to give himself up to missionwork in Friesland. He preached and baptized near Ghent. The Frankish govern/hent neglected to protect the mission near the frontier, and the hostility of the haughty Frieslanders hindered the work. Amandus therefore went to Carinthia and Carniola to seek a better field among the Slavic invaders, south of the Danube. Here, however, he was not successful; and he returned to Ghent, where he founded two monasteries, Blandinium and Gundarum, and a third, Elno, near Tournai. From these the Friesian mission-work was carried on with more success. Amandus was made bishop of Maestricht, and in this position he helped to carry through the Roman resolutions against the Monothelites, and tried to reform the clergy. As the latter showed themselves obstinate, he retired from his see between 647 and 649, entered the abbey of Elno, and worked to the end of his life for the conversion of the Frankish and Basque heathen. He was said to have performed miracles, and it was believed that miracles occurred at his tomb, which became a place of pilgrimage.
A. Werner.
Bibliography: Baudemund and Milo wrote accounts of his life which with other sources are in ASB, Feb., i. 815-903. Consult Gosse, Bssai sur St. Amand, 1866; J. J. de Smedt, Vie de St. Amand, Ghent, 1881; Rettberg, KD, i. 554, ii. 507-508; Friedrich, KD, ii. 322; J. Desilve, De schola Elmnensi S. Amandi, Louvain, 1890; Hauck, KD, i. 269 sqq.
AMANDUS, JOHANNES. See Albert of Prussia, § 2.
AMARNA TABLETS.
I. Tell el-Amarna. IV. Value of the Tablets.
". The Tablets. Historical (§1).
HI. Authors and Contents. Geographical (§ 2).
Linguistic (§3).
I. Tell el-Amarna: The Amarna tablets are a collection of cuneiform documents, so called from Tell el-Amarna, the name by which the place where the tablets were discovered is generally known outside of Egypt. It is really a conventionalized word, compounded of the Arab Ml, 'mound," and a word formed either from the name of the Arabic tribe Amran or from a place near Amarieh. The place is 160 miles above Cairo, between Thebes and Memphis, or, more closely, between Assiout and Beni-Hassan. The mound is the site of the city built by Amenophis IV., Known otherwise as the heretic king Khu-en-aten, wat he might there develop untrammeled by the nostile pnesthoods his favorite cult of the disk of We sun (aten) with which he hoped to supersede
all other cults and to unify the religion of Egypt (see Egypt, I.). His attempt was of course opposed by all the priesthoods of all the other cults, and after his death his name was held accursed because of bis efforts in that direction. His position in Egypt was very like that of Julian " the Apostate " among the Christians of Rome. The place which he built for his capital was allowed to fall into ruins, not being occupied after his death by any other king. It is this fact which accounts for the presence of the tablets there and also for their preservation. The foreign office of his reign with its archives was located there, and when the palace was disused, the chamber where the tablets were kept was covered by the debris of the disintegrating buildings. These facts constitute one of the strongest proofs of the genuineness of the documents, which indeed is established beyond all question. The mound was excavated in 1891-92 by W M. F. Petrie and a corps of assistants under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Fund. The finds made were most valuable, although the site had been rifled by Arabs and travelers. The entire reign of the king whose capital was there was illuminated by the finds, and the activities, religious, political, and industrial, were laid bare. That excavation was the result, however, not the cause, of the finding of the tablets. One of the hopes was that other tablets would be discovered, a hope which largely stimulated the search but was not realized.
II. The Tablets : The discovery was accidental. In 1887 a peasant woman while searching in the ruins for antiquities to sell to travelers discovered the place of deposit within the palace enclosure. The tablets were all taken out, naturally without the extreme care which skilled excavators would have used, were conveyed down the river, and sold. Eighty-two letters and fragments came into the possession of the British Museum, 160 went to Berlin, the Gizeh museum has sixty, while a few are in private hands. In all, about 320 documents of the series are known. Some fragments were afterward found in the place of deposit by Petrie, verifying the location as given by the peasants, but adding hardly anything to the knowledge already gained. The tablets are different in many respects, particularly in shape, from those recovered from Babylonian and Assyrian mounds. Most of them are rectangular, a few are oval, some are flat on both sides, some convex on both, some pillow-shaped, some are kiln-dried, others sundried. Many of them confirm by the texture of the clay the assertions of the inscriptions as to their sources. Six of them are the largest known of this species of tablet, measuring ten inches by eight. The language, except in three of the documents, is the neo-Babylonian, closely related to Assyrian, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic, approximating most closely the Assyrian. One letter is in the Hittite language but in the cuneiform script. Sometimes a Sumerian ideograph is used, of which the explanation occasionally follows either in Assyrian or in Canaanitic. In all but half a dozen tablets the general character of the writing is inferior, showing the work of unskilled scribes.
Axnarna Ambo