For numberless centuries the Egyptian had applied the title of “the one god” to the divinity he was adoring at the moment, or who presided over the fortunes of his city or nome. But he did not mean to exclude by it the existence of other deities. The “one god” was unique only to the worshipper, and to the worshipper only in so far as his worship for the moment was addressed to this “one god” alone. When with the growth of the solar theory the deities of Egypt began to be resolved into one another, the title came to signify that attribute of divinity which unified all the rest. But to the Egyptian, it must be remembered, the attribute was a concrete thing; and though in one sense Amon and Khnum and Horus denoted the attributes of Ra, in another sense they were distinct personalities with a distinct history behind them. The result was what I have called a nebulous polytheism, in which the individual deities of the Egyptian Pantheon had melted like clouds into one another; they had lost their several individualities, but had not gained a new individuality in return. The conservative spirit, which forbade the Egyptian to break with the traditions of the past and throw aside any part of his heritage, prevented him from taking the final step, and passing out of polytheism into monotheism. It was just this step, however, that was taken by Amon-hotep IV. and his followers, and which at once stamps the non-Egyptian character of his religious reformation. Henceforward there was to be but one God in Egypt, a God who was omnipresent and omniscient, existing everywhere and in everything, and who would brook no rival at his side. He was not, indeed, a new god, for he had already revealed himself to the generations of the past under the form of Ra, and his visible symbol was the solar disc. But Ra had been ignorantly worshipped; unworthy language had been used of him, and he had been confounded with gods who were no gods at all. The new and purified conception of the supreme divinity needed a new name under which it could be expressed, and this was found in Aten, “the solar disc,” or Aten-Ra, “the disc of the sun.” It was not probable that Amon of Thebes and his worshippers would bow their heads to the new faith without a struggle. It was Amon who had led the fathers of Amon-hotep IV. to victory, who had given them their empire over the world, and upon whose city of Thebes the spoils of Asia had been lavished. A fierce contest broke out between the Theban priesthood and the heretical king. The worship of Amon was proscribed, his very name was erased from the monuments on which it was engraved, and a shrine of the rival deity was erected at the very gates of his ancient temple. The Pharaoh changed his own name to that of Khu-n-Aten, “the glory of the solar disc,” and thereby publicly proclaimed his renunciation of the religion of which he was the official head.