Dispute still reigns as to the origin of the cult to which he devoted himself. A theory of its nature and derivation, based on that of Mr. J. H. Breasted (History of Egypt, 1906, p. 396), is set forth in an article by Mr. A. E. P. Weigall on "Religion and Empire in Ancient Egypt" in the Quarterly Review, Jan. 1909. On this view Aten or Aton is simply Adon = "the Lord"--a name ultimately identified with Adonis, the Syrian Sun-God and Vegetation-God. The king's grandfather was apparently a Syrian, presumably of royal lineage; and Queen Tii or Thiy, the king's mother, who with her following had wrought a revolution against the priesthood of Amen, brought him up as a devotee of her own faith. On her death he became more and more fanatical, getting out of touch with people and priesthood, so that "his empire fell to pieces rapidly." Letters still exist (among the Tell-el-Amarna tablets) which were sent by his generals in Asia, vainly imploring help. He died at the age of twenty-eight; and if the body lately found, and supposed to be his, is really so, his malady was water on the brain. Mr. Breasted, finding that Akhunaton's God is described by him in inscriptions as "the father and the mother of all that he made," ranks the cult very high in the scale of theism. Mr. Weigall (art. cited, p. 60; so also Budge, Hist. iv, 125) compares a hymn of the king's with Ps. civ, 24 sq., and praises it accordingly. The parallel is certainly close, but the document is not thereby certificated as philosophic. On the strength of the fact that Akhunaton "had dreamed that the Aton religion would bind the nations together," Mr. Weigall credits him with harbouring "an illusive ideal towards which, thirty-two centuries later, mankind is still struggling in vain" (p. 66). The ideal of subjugating the nations to one God, cherished later by Jews, and still later by Moslems, is hardly to be thus identified with the modern ideal of international peace. Brugsch, in turn, credits the king with having "willingly received the teaching about the one God of Light," while admitting that Aten simply meant the sun's disk (Hist. of Egypt, 1-vol. ed. p. 216).