its midst rose the temple of the new god of Egypt, and hard by the
palace of the king. Both were brilliant with painting and sculpture, and
inlaid work in precious stones and gold. Even the floors were frescoed,
while the walls and columns were enamelled or adorned with the most
costly materials that the Egyptian world could produce. Here and there
were statues of alabaster, of bronze or of gold, some of them almost
Greek in form and design. Along with the reform in religion there had
gone a reform in art. The old conventionalized art of Egypt was
abandoned, and a new art had been introduced which aimed at imitating
nature with realistic fidelity.

The mounds which mark the site of Khu-n-Aten's city are now known as Tel
el-Amarna. It had a brief but brilliant existence of about thirty years.
Then the enemies of the Pharaoh and his work of reform finally
prevailed, and his city with its temple and palaces was levelled to the
ground. It is from among its ruins that the wondering fellah and
explorer of to-day exhume the gorgeous relics of its past.

But among these relics none have proved more precious than the clay
tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters, which have revolutionized
our conceptions of the ancient East. They were preserved in the Foreign
Office of the day. This formed part of the public buildings connected
with the palace, and the bricks of which it was built were stamped with
an inscription describing its character. Many of the tablets had been
brought from the archive chamber of Thebes, but the greater part of the
collection belongs to the reign of Khu-n-Aten himself. It consists
almost entirely of official correspondence; of letters from the kings of
Babylonia and Assyria, of Mesopotamia and Kappadokia, and of despatches
from the Egyptian governors and vassal-princes in Syria and Palestine.
They furnish us with a living and unexpected picture of Canaan about