STORY or A DYNASTY

Evening Star, Issue 18161, 29 December 1922, Page 7

STORY or A DYNASTY

EGYPT’S HATED QUEEN. A thousand years 8.0. there lived a young Pharaoh of Egypt who was possessed of quite extraordinary courage. His name was Arneuophis. He believed that there was only one god over Egypt and the rest of the world, and lie believed that god was the sun. But Ms land had many gods, and their priests wore very powerful; especially those of the deitv Amon-re. Amenophia defied the priests, closed everywhere the temples of all divinities except the sun gocf Atou, confiscated their property, had their statues destroyed, and oven their names chiselled from the temple walls. Especially active was ho in his campaign against the great god Amon-re. He commanded that the name bo not “ tolerated nor prouounced ” and ho himself gave up his name—Arneuophis—meaning “ Amon-is Content,” and took that of Akhnatou, or “ Glory-of-the-Solar-Disk.” For 600 years the ancestors of the Pharaoh had lived in Thebes, where was also the powerful temple of Amon-re. Furthermore, Arneuophis has married a princess whose family was closely allied to that of the high priest of the god Amon-re. Nefortiti was her name, and the king loved her very dearly. 80 many people hated her that after a while they made Nefertiti so uncomfortable that Pharaoh Akhnaton moved out of his ancestral town entirely. Bag and baggage, wife and court, he travelled 270 miles farther down the Nile towards Cairo, and there in the raw, hot sands of the desert ho built a wonderful city. Hundreds of thousands of slaves and workmen labored on it. Temples to the god Aton and palaces arose. A lake was created and many pools of cool water, and trees and flowers wero planted. ■ Out of the desert, at the cost of treasures incalculable, the Pharaoh made a garden of Paradise. There Nefertiti died. And after a 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 filled up its lake and pools, and covered its temples and palaces. For centuries the sands covered it, until at last oniv a mound in the desert remained, with a squalid little Egyptian town huddled at its base. It was called the Teli-el-Amarna. or Hill of Amarna. Now the Egypt Exploration Society has uncovered its 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 hatha. Here the scientists found extraordinary evidence of a most unusual domestic tragedy. Poor Queen Nefertiti, besides being so blamed for her husband’s queer behaviour to the old gods that she has been called the “ most hated Queen of Egypt,” was apparently hated as vigorously by her own daughters. At any rate, when she died, and they each in their turn ruled for a short time in her place, they cut her name from all the monuments, and cut off the heads of her statues, putting replicas of their own in the place of them; or when they could not cut off the heads they made the court sculptors go over them with a chisel until they looked as much as possible like themselves. On nearly every piece the name Queen Nefertiti has been erased, and that of her daughter Meri-Aton substituted, and the Queen’s characteristics removed, and even her portrait altered to that of the Princess. “ A door by the side of the throne,” says the report, “ leads to a peristyle court, op either side of which is a broad staircase going up to the rooms which lay over tho cellars. Thb peculiar feature is that the court closely resembles a Reman atrium. The columns along its three sides supported a corridor roof, but left in the middle a small space in which were flower beds. TVs central court opened into the third and last apartment, having twelve columns in throe rows, suggesting that it was roofed. It might be a harem,_ or_ a hall of audience, or a combination of tho two.” It was most probably the palace of the Queen. More wonderful discoveries may come from Amarna, which, will be "welcomed, as they explain these hidden romance? of past history. '