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whose publications are the definitive work on the city. It yielded its treasures; the painted head of Nefertiti is perhaps the greatest, but there were other pieces of sculpture, some so naturalistic that they were originally taken to be death masks. Fragments of the brightly painted floors of the palaces survived, to find their way into museums and collections. The plans of the villas and the workmen’s village have been reconstructed; certain of the massive boundary stelae still exist, sadly ravaged by time and human destructiveness; but there is little left at Tell el Amarna to interest the nonspecialist.

At Thebes, blocks and statues have been found that came from Akhenaton’s first temple to his god. They had been torn from their setting and used as filler for the work of later kings in the great Amon temple of Karnak. After a reign of only a few years, Ay passed away and was buried in a tomb in the West Valley, perhaps the one that had been begun for Tutankhamon. But for the miraculous survival of Tutankhamon’s burial equipment we would know very little about the wealth and richness of this imperial period. Multiply that minor king’s goods a hundred fold and you will get some idea of what the magnificent Amenhotep must have taken to his tomb.

In later times Akhenaton’s name and that of his god were cut from the inscriptions and the name of Amon was replaced. Amon-Re resumed his place as king of the gods and took back all the ground he had lost—and more. His devotees had good reason to write, after Akhenaton’s death:

Woe to him who assails thee!

Thy city endures, but he who assails thee is overthrown;

The sun of him who knew thee not has set, but he who knows thee shines;

The sanctuary of him who assailed thee is overwhelmed in darkness,

but the whole earth is in light.

The shout of triumph rings hollow, however, after three thousand years. The attempt to obliterate Akhenaton’s name failed, thanks to the patient skill of historians, philologists, and archaeologists; he still exists in memory, to stir the imaginations of all who know of him. Even the great god Amon-Re did not live forever. He is as dead today as his old enemy Akhenaton; the sand drifts over his altars, and his sanctuaries are laid open to the stares of the curious.

Nine

THE BROKEN REED

Cartouche of Ramses II

LOOK ON MY WORKS!

There is no apparent reason why Egypt should not have arisen refulgent from the minor brushfires set by the Amarna heresy, as it had been re-born out of the greater conflagrations of the first two Intermediate Periods. To the men and women who lived out their lives under the first kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty, this resurgence was probably taken for granted. Yet to some, the greatness of Egypt is gone.

Greatness is a hard word to define. But whether Egyptian achievements are defined in terms of the rampantly successful imperialism of Thutmose III or the defiant spiritual challenges of the First Intermediate Period, the fable-making iconoclasm of Akhenaton or the more than oriental splendor of his father’s court, in almost every sense, Egyptian culture had passed its high point. Except for short periods of domestic calm under a strong pharaoh, the internal picture is one of slow but unmistakable decay. Abroad, the attempts of the Nineteenth Dynasty kings to regain the lost empire of Egypt fell short of Thutmose III’s achievements, and their descendants were unable to hold even what they had gained. There is a brief efflorescence of art, incorporating the best of the Amarna techniques, which produced some beautiful statues and reliefs, but it did not last. It is a melancholy task to view the decline of a culture so bright and attractive as that of Egypt, but it would be futile to try to paint the dying organism in the colors of life. So let us take up the story where we left it after the tragedy of Amarna was ended.

Ay, the old councilor who took Tutankhamon’s crown and perhaps his widow as well, did not live to enjoy his dubiously acquired gains for long. After his death there was no man in Egypt who could