Here on the eastern bank of the Nile, about midway between Minyeh and Siut, 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 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 1400 B.C.

Fragments of dictionaries for the use of the scribes have also been recovered from the debris of the building, as well as the seal of a servant of Samas-akh-iddin who looked after the cuneiform correspondence.  Like several of the Canaanitish governors, he bore a Babylonian name.  Even the brother of Amenophis III., who had been made king of Nukhasse, had received the Babylonian name of Rimmon-nirari.  No stronger proof could be found of the extent and strength of Babylonian influence in the West.