Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 12 (Egyptian and Indo-Chinese).djvu/265

Rh Nefer-khepru-rê‘ ["the Best of the Forms of the Sun"; cf. p. 170], Ua‘-n-rê‘ ["the Only One of the Sun"], Son of the sun, living in truth, The lord of diadems, Akh-en-aten. Long (be) his life, And the chief royal wife, beloved of him, The mistress of both countries, Nefer-nefru-aten, Nefert-iti, Who liveth and flourisheth for ever and for eternity."

There are some shorter hymns and prayers of this same period, usually abridged from the long hymn which we have just quoted. All of them have the same character: they follow a modern, lyric style of poetic description, depicting nature with a minute observation of small details, but they present scarcely a religious thought which cannot be found in earlier literature. They might almost as well have been written of the solar deities of preceding generations.

The reaction which set in after the death of Amen-ḥotep IV re-established the old forms and names of the deities every where and even sought to emphasize them more than before. It was easy to destroy the heresies of the schismatic Pharaoh since his short-lived reform had nowhere penetrated the masses. If the reformation left any trace, we might find it in the fact that the style of religious literature did not return to the dry formalism which had reigned before the New Empire; the warmer, pietistic tone was maintained, and this could be done with impunity since the heretical movement did not, strictly speaking, inaugurate this style, which had had forerunners before the time of Amen-ḥotep IV. This lyric, personal tone seems to deepen even in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, so that the worship of the ancient deities was, after all, not quite the same as in the days of the ancestors, and this wholly apart from the pantheistic syncretism of scholars. The texts reveal an increasing tendency to break away from formalism in worship and to inculcate a personal devotion to the deity. They emphasize that the divinity loves