When Amenhotep III died he was succeeded by his eleven year old son Amenhotep IV (1370-1353 B.C.), and the queen mother Tiy continued to act as regent. In addition to the influence of his mother, young Amenhotep IV was educated by the priest, Eye, who was the husband of his childhood nurse. No doubt Amenhotep was early married to the fair Nofretete who may have been his sister. Brother-sister marriages were common in ancient Egypt, but we cannot be certain concerning the parentage of Nofretete. Under the tutelage of his mother, his wife, and a favored priest, young Amenhotep could hardly be expected to have developed an interest in military affairs. His interest turned toward religion and, in the words of Breasted, “the philosophizing theology of the priests was of more importance to him than all the provinces of Asia.”[2] Amenhotep IV is depicted as having a thin face, narrow sloping shoulders, and unusually large hips and abdomen. His skull seems to have been deformed, and he may have been an epileptic. These handicaps did not affect his mind, however, for he was one of history’s creative thinkers. Breasted (with considerable hyperbole, to be sure), calls him “the first individual in human history.”[3] Unfortunately the international tensions of the day were such that Egypt needed a warrior rather than a philosopher king. The idealism of Amenhotep IV was largely lost on his own generation, and entirely lost on the generation that followed him. Nofretete was devoted both to her husband and to the religious reforms to which he dedicated his life. She bore him six daughters and appears to have been her husband’s constant companion and confidant. Nofretete was, understandably, a favored subject in Amarna art. Reliefs depict her playing with her daughters, and one shows her seated on her husband’s knee, blowing him a kiss at a chariot procession. During the early years of his reign, Amenhotep IV clearly favored the god Aton, but he was tolerant of the various deities worshiped in Egypt. In this he continued the policy of his father, Amenhotep III, and his mother, Queen Tiy. The preference for the god Aton is evident in the name of the first child of Amenhotep IV, Merit-aton (“Beloved of Aton”). The priests of Amon in Thebes must have looked with apprehension upon the youthful Pharaoh whose devotion to the chief god of Egypt seemed to be compromised by religious innovation. We can only guess their reaction when Amenhotep IV decided to build a temple to Aton within the sacred precincts of the city of Amon. Orders were given to quarry sandstone at the Silsila quarries, forty miles north of Aswan. Here a monument was erected to mark the beginning of the quarrying operation: