The mounds known as Tell el-Amarna in Upper Egypt mark the site of a city which had a brief but brilliant existence under Amen-hetep IV., or Akhenaten, one of the later kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty. He was the famous "heretic" king, who attempted to suppress the established religion of Egypt and to substitute for it a pantheistic monotheism associated with the worship of the solar disk. In pursuance of his religious ideas he deserted Thebes, the ancient capital of the country, and built a new capital further to the north, which he called Akhetaten,[12] the modern Tell el-Amarna. Here he transferred the official records of his own government and those of his father, Amenhetep III., including the despatches from Egypt's Asiatic provinces and the diplomatic correspondence with kings of Mesopotamia, Assyria and Babylon. Some twenty-seven years ago a large number of these were discovered in the ruins of the royal palace, and they form one of the most valuable sources of information on the early relations of Egypt and Western Asia.[13] More recently they have been supplemented by a still larger find of similar documents at Boghaz Keui in Cappadocia, a village built beside the site of Khatti, the ancient capital of the Hittite empire. The royal and official archives had been stored for safety on the ancient citadel, and the few extracts that have as yet been published, from the many thousands of documents recovered on the site, have furnished further information of the greatest value from the Hittite standpoint.[14] From these documents we have recovered a very full picture of international politics in Western Asia during two centuries, from the close of the fifteenth to the later years of the thirteenth century B.C. We can trace in some measure the dynastic relations established by Egypt with the other great Asiatic states, and the manner in which the balance of power was maintained, largely by diplomatic methods. During the earlier part of this period Egyptian power is dominant in Palestine and Syria, while the kingdom of Mitanni, under its Aryan dynasty, is a check upon Assyrian expansion. But Egypt was losing her hold upon her Asiatic provinces, and the rise of the Hittite empire coincided with her decline in power. Mitanni soon fell before the Hittites, to the material advantage of Assyria, which began to be a menace to her neighbours upon the west and south. After a change of dynasty, Egypt had meanwhile in part recovered her lost territory in Palestine, and once more took her place among the great nations of Western Asia. And it is only with the fall of the Hittite empire that the international situation is completely altered. Throughout Babylon stands, so far as she may, aloof, preoccupied with commerce rather than with conquest;[15] but in the latter half of the period her eyes are always fixed upon her Assyrian frontier. [Illustration: HEAD OF A COLOSSAL STATUE OF AMEN-HETEP III]