stood alone; there were no other Baals, no Baalim, by the side of him.

Amenophis was not content with preaching and encouraging the new faith;
he sought to force it upon his subjects. The other gods of Egypt were
proscribed, and the name and head of Amon, the patron god of Thebes, to
whom his ancestors had ascribed their power and victories, were erased
from the monuments wherever they occurred. Even his own father's name
was not spared, and the emissaries of the king, from one end of the
country to the other, defaced that portion of it which contained the
name of the god. His own name was next changed, and Amenophis IV. became
Khu-n-Aten, "the splendour of the solar disk."

Khu-n-Aten's attempt to overthrow the ancient faith of Egypt was
naturally resisted by the powerful priesthood of Thebes. A religious war
was declared for the first time, so far as we know, in the history of
mankind. On the one side a fierce persecution was directed against the
adherents of the old creed; on the other side every effort was made to
impede and defeat the Pharaoh. His position grew daily more insecure,
and at last he turned his back on the capital of his fathers, and built
himself a new city far away to the north. The priests of Amon had thus
far triumphed; the old idolatrous worship was carried on once more in
the great temple of Karnak, though its official head was absent, and
Khu-n-Aten with his archives and his court had fled to a safer home.
Upper Egypt was left to its worship of Amon and Min, while the king
established himself nearer his Canaanite possessions.

Here on the eastern bank of the Nile, about midway between Minyeh and
Siût, the new capital was founded on a strip of land protected from
attack by a semi-amphitheatre of cliffs. The city, with its palaces and
gardens, extended nearly two miles in length along the river bank. In