Dust and Ashes of Empires (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Where Glorious Civilizations Once Flourished As one travels up the Nile by boat or train, he is deeply impressed by the sight of the remains of ancient civilizations everywhere?pyramids, great walls, mounds, sightly columns and stately temples, standing in splendid ruin, speaking of bygone ages, of a people that conquered the world and loved art and architecture and literature and gilded cities, but who forgot something that left a leak in the dikes, finally broke the dam, completely dissipated all the accumulated and developed products of human intellect, and so lost to the world the high place of achievement attained by that civilization. One hundred and eighty-eight miles above Cairo lies the little village of Deir Mawas; and from here to the village of Beni Amran, or the ancient Amarna, are to be found the remains of the most unique civilization known to history. In 1375 B.C., in the city of Thebes, Amenophis IV. ascended the throne of the Pharaohs and inherited the palaces, temples, and gods of his fathers. The chief god was Amon, and the priests of that cult were all-powerful and formed a hierarchy that was dominant in State and society. From this orthodox and powerful hierarchy, intrenched in State and in the emotions of the people, this new monarch dared to rebel with a revolution unparalleled in its suddenness and completeness. There remains to us no intimation as to the stepsthat led up to this remarkable change. With a zeal akin to fanaticism, characterized by a mad fury that chiseled out the name of Amon from every temple and palace that could be reached (not exempting the name of his own father, nor indeed his own name, for he changed that from Amenophis to Ikhnaton), he abandoned the capital of his ancestors, moved down here, and built a sacred c...