When Akhunaten
died, the Egyptian artists' shackles were riveted tighter than ever.
The reaction was strong. The kingdom had fallen into anarchy, and the
foreign empire which his predecessors had built up had practically
been thrown to the winds by Akhunaten. The whole is an example of the
confusion and disorganization which ensue when a philosopher rules. Not
long after the heretic's death the old religion was fully restored, the
cult of the disk was blotted out, and the Egyptians returned joyfully
to the worship of their myriad deities. Akhunaten's ideals were too high
for them. The debris of the foreign empire was, as usual in such
cases, put together again, and customary law and order restored by
the conservative reactionaries who succeeded him. Henceforth Egyptian
civilization runs an uninspired and undeveloping course till the days
of the Saites and the Ptolemies. This point in the history of Egypt,
therefore, forms a convenient stopping-place at which to pause, while
we turn once more to Western Asia, and ascertain to what extent recent
excavations and research have thrown new light upon the problems
connected with the rise and history of the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian
Empires.
[Illustration: 387.jpg]
CHAPTER VIII--THE ASSYRIAN AND NEO-BABYLONIAN EMPIRES IN THE LIGHT OF
RECENT RESEARCH
The early history of Assyria has long been a subject on which historians
were obliged to trust largely to conjecture, in their attempts to
reconstruct the stages by which its early rulers obtained their
independence and laid the foundations of the mighty empire over which
their successors ruled.
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