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Hieroglyphs of the Great Hymn to the Aten
found in the tomb of Ay
The tomb of Akhenaten was discovered by locals in 1881-1882.
We should be grateful that in 1883 - 1884 Urbain Bouriant made a copy of
the Great Hymn found in the tomb of Ay(a). The latter was a brother of Teye, the mother of Akhenaten.
He probably was the tutor, even father-in-law of the reformer. A third of the
inscription in the tomb was
maliciously destroyed in 1890 (during a quarrel among local inhabitants).
On the basis of this copy the famed Great Hymn to the Aten could
be studied for the first time by James Henry Breasted in 1895 in his
Berlin dissertation : De Hymnis in
Solem sub Rege Amenophide IV conceptis ("On the Hymns to the
Sun composed under Amenophis IV").
In 1908, Norman de Garis Davies made a fine drawing of the hieroglyphic text,
indicating which areas had been destroyed.
In 1887,
locals discovered the archive of clay tablets (380 of them)
containing the cuneiform correspondence of Akhenaten and his father with
the princes of Western Asia. The first authoritative edition was made by
J.A.Knudtzon in 1915. |
