they were skirting an ancient
oasis. Perhaps the travellers had come from it. He was still some
distance from Tel-el-Amarna--not the modern Tel-el-Amarna or Haggi
Kandil, which lies about five miles back from the banks of the river,
where passengers travelling by railway alight when they come from Cairo
to visit the ruins of the ancient city--but the ruins of Akhnaton's
capital. At the point on the Nile where Akhnaton chose to build his
city, the limestone cliffs go back from the river about three miles,
returning to it some six miles further on.

Michael's objective was not the ruins of Akhnaton's city, but the desert
and the hills which lie beyond it. The boundaries of the "City of the
Horizon," Akhnaton's new capital, the seat of the heretic King, were so
carefully laid down and defined by him that there has been no mistaking
its exact size and circumference.

Michael was going to the original tomb of Akhnaton, cut out of the hills
which formed a half-crescent round the city, like a bay, reaching back
from the river. In these encircling hills the King's body was buried;
the hills were his chosen resting-place.

"Here Akhnaton elected to be buried, where hyenas prowled and jackals
wandered, and where the desolate cry of the night-owls echoed over the
rocks. In winter the wind sweeps up the valley and howls round the
rocks; in summer the sun makes it a veritable furnace, unendurable to
man. There is nothing here to remind one of the God Who watches over
him, and the tender Aton of the Pharaoh's conception would seem to have
abandoned this place to the spirits of evil. There are no flowers where
Akhnaton cut his sepulchre, and no birds sing; for the King believed that
his soul, caught up into the noon of Paradise, would need no more
delights on earth.

"The tomb consisted of a passage descending into the hill and leading to
a rock-cut hall, the roof of which was supported by four columns. Here
stood the sarcophagus of pink granite in which the Pharaoh's mummy would
lie. The walls of this hall were covered with scenes carved in plaster,
representing various phases in the Aton worship. From the passage there
led another small chamber, beyond which a further passage was cut,
perhaps to lead to the second hall in which the Queen should be buried,
but the work was never finished." [1]

Later on, for political and religious reasons, his mummy was disentombed,
taken up the river to the western desert and placed