The full meaning of the phrase has been explained to us by the tablets of Tel el-Amarna. They have made it clear that towards the end of the eighteenth dynasty the Egyptian court became semi-Asiatic. The Pharaohs married Asiatic wives; and eventually Amenophis IV., under the influence of his mother Teie, publicly abandoned the religion of which he was the official head, and avowed himself a convert to an Asiatic form of faith. Amon, the god of Thebes, was dethroned by a new deity, Aten-Ra, ‘the Solar Disk.’ The Solar Disk, however, was but the visible manifestation of the one Supreme God, who was diffused throughout nature, and corresponded in many respects with the Semitic Baal. The Egyptians accordingly identified him with Ra, the ancient Sun-god of Heliopolis, who in earlier times had similarly been identified with the Hyksos Baal. Amenophis, the cast of whose face taken immediately after death displays the features and expression of a philosopher and enthusiast,[156] endeavoured to force the new faith upon his unwilling subjects. The very name of Amon was proscribed and was erased wherever it occurred, the followers of the old religion of Egypt were persecuted, and the Pharaoh changed his own name to that of Khu-n-Aten, ‘the radiance of the Solar Disk.’ A violent struggle ensued with the powerful hierarchy of Thebes. Khu-n-Aten was finally compelled to leave the capital of his fathers, and build himself a new city further north, where its site is now marked by the mounds of Tel el-Amarna. He carried with him the State-archives, consisting mainly of foreign correspondence in the Babylonian language and cuneiform script, and these were deposited in one of the public buildings adjoining the palace, every brick of which was stamped with the words, ‘Aten-Ra! the Record-Office.’[157] The palace itself was a marvel of art. Its walls and columns were encrusted with precious stones, with gold and with bronze, and it was adorned with painting and statuary, some of which reminds us of Greek art in its best period. Even the floors were frescoed with pictures of birds and animals, of flowers and trees. The new religion was accompanied by a new form of art, which cast aside the traditions of Egypt, and looked rather to Asiatic models. It strove after a realism which was sometimes exaggerated, and was always in strange contrast to the conventionalism of Egyptian art. Hard by the gardens of the palace rose the temple of Aten-Ra in the centre of the city. Like the palace, it was gorgeous with ornament. But it contained no image of the deity to whom it was consecrated. His symbol, the Disk, was alone permitted to appear. The pantheistic monotheism of the Pharaoh thus anticipated the puritanism of the Israelitish Law.