Such was the condition of Canaan when the cuneiform correspondence of Tel el-Amarna comes suddenly to an end. The death of Khu-n-Aten had been the signal for a revolt against the faith which he had endeavoured to impose upon Egypt, as well as against the Asiatic influences by which he had been surrounded. He left daughters only behind him. One of them was married to a prince who, in order to secure the throne, was forced to return to the old religion of the country, and to call himself by the name of Tutânkh-Amon. But his reign was short, like those of one or two other relations and followers of Khu-n-Aten who have left traces of themselves upon the monuments. A rival king, Ai by name, held possession of Egypt for a while, and after his death Hor-m-hib, the Armais of Manetho, ruled once more at Thebes over a united Egypt, and the worship of the solar disk was at end. But the ruins of Tel el-Amarna show that the restoration of the old creed and the overthrow of Khu-n-Aten’s adherents had not been without a struggle. Most of the tombs in the cliffs and sandhills which surround the old city have been unfinished: the followers of the new cult for whom they were intended have never been allowed to occupy them. The royal sepulchre itself, as we have seen, is in an equally unfinished condition, and the sarcophagus in which the body of the king rested was violated soon after his mummy had been placed in it. Indeed, it had never been deposited in the niche that had been cut to receive it; its shattered fragments were discovered far away on the floor of the great columned hall. The capital of the “heretic king” was destroyed by its enemies soon after his death, and never inhabited again. The ruins of its palace and houses were full of broken statues and other objects which their owners had no time to carry away. The city lasted only for about thirty years, and the sands of the desert then began to close over its fallen greatness. How sudden and complete must have been its overthrow is proved by the cuneiform tablets; not only were these imperial archives not carried elsewhere, the correspondence contained in them breaks off suddenly with a half-told tale of disaster and dismay. The Asiatic empire of Egypt is falling to pieces, its enemies are enclosing it on every side; the Hittites have robbed it of its northern provinces, and revolt is shaking it from within. The governors and vassals of the Pharaoh send more and more urgent requests for instant aid: “If troops come this year, then there will remain both provinces and governors to the king, my lord; but if no troops come, no provinces or governors will remain.” But no answer was returned to these pressing appeals, and the sudden cessation of the correspondence under the ruins of the Egyptian foreign office itself gives us the reason why.