The Washington times., 1922-06-25

~ ACK a thousand years before the
r birth of the Saviour there lived
young Pharaoh of Egypt who was
possessed of quite extraordinary courage.
His name was Amenophis He believed
that there was only one god over Egypt
and the rest of the world, and he be-
lieved that god was the sun. But his
land had many gods and their priests
were very powerful, especially those of
the deity Amon-re.
Amenophis defied the priests, closed
everywhere the temples of all divinities
except the sun god Atom, confscated
their property, had their statues de-
stroyed and even their names chiseled
from the temple walls. Especially active
was he in his campaign against the great
god Amon-re. He commanded that the.
name be not tolerated nor pronounced" -
and he himself gave up his name-Ame-
nophis - meaning "Amon-Is-C Content"
and took that of Animation, or "Glory-of.
the-Solar-Disk."
For six hundred years the ancestors of
the Pharaoh had lived in Thebes, where
was also the powerful temple of Amon-
re. Furthermore, Amenophis had mar
ried princess whose family was closely
allied to that of the High Priest of the
god Amon-re. Nefertiti was her name,
and the King loved her very dearly, Be-
cause she would not bedevil him so that
for peace and quiet he would turn away
from Atom and hack to the old gods, her
relatives were much displeased with her,
and when it was found that she was act
ually believing heart to heart and mind
to mind with her King, they hated her,
AS they were very strong they made
great many more people who thought as
they did hate her, too,
So many people hated her, In fact, that
after while they made Nefertiti so un-
comfortable that Pharaoh Akhnaton
moved out of his ancestral town entirely.
Bag and baggage, wife and court, he
travelled 270 miles further down the Nile !,
toward Cairo, and there in the raw, hot I
sands of the desert he built wonderful
city. Hundreds of thousands of slavest
and workmen labored on It. Temples to-
the god Atom and palaces arose. A lake
was created and many pools of cool
water, and trees and flowers were planted.
Out of the desert, at the cost of treas
ures incslculahle to us of to-day, the
Nefertiti died. And after while he also
died. The old gods came back to their
own. The priests Of Amon-re again
ruled Egypt The City of the Sun was
left empty. Soon the sands filed up its
lake and pools and covered its temples
and palaces.
For centuries the sands covered 1t un-
til at last only a mound In the desert re-
mained with squalid little Egyptian town
huddled at It's base. It was called the
Tell-el-Amarna, or Hill of Amarna.
has uncovered It's streets and buildings.
But most interesting, from the human
viewpoint at least the scientists have dug
out of the desert the Pleasure Palace
which Akhnaton built for his Queen, and
have found in it the very "Lotus Pools"
where Nefertiti took her baths and where
the Pharaoh himself, when sad and bur
dencd with affairs of state, came, no
doubt, to be amused by her ladies-in-
waiting and dancers, which was custom
of bored kings in those days.
Here the scientists found queer toilet
instruments and odd paraphernalia for
retaining feminine comelness-many of
the beauty secrets, indeed, by which the
Queen kept up her sway over Akhnaton's
admiration and affection.
And they found, too, extraordinary
evidence of a most unusual domestic
tragedy. Poor Queen Nefertiti, beside
being so blamed for her husbands queer
behavior to the old gods that she has
been called the "most hated Queen of
Egypt" was apparently hated as vigor-
ously by her own daughters! At any
rate, when she died and they each In
their turn ruled for short time In her
place, they cut her name from all the
monuments, and cut off the heads of her
the place of them; or where they couldn't
cut off the heads, they made the court
sculptors go over them with a chisel un-
til they looked as much as possible like
themselves.
It is curious coincidence that this Is