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In the latter part of the eighteenth dynasty friendly relations prevailed between Egypt and Mitanni or Nahrina (Aram Naharaim, Judges iii. 8), a Mesopotamian district which lay opposite to the Hittite city of Carchemish. Amenôphis III. married a wife from the royal house of Mitanni; and the offspring of this marriage—Amenôphis IV.—in his turn married Tadukhepa, daughter of Duisratta, the Mitannian king. He was thus doubly drawn to look favourably upon the Mitannian form of faith, which, like that of the Semites, included the adoration of the winged solar disk. Meantime the Egyptian conquest of Palestine, whose petty kings and governors now ruled as satraps for the Egyptian monarch, had paved the way for strangers from Canaan and Syria to rise into favour at Pharaoh’s court. Amenôphis IV. surrounded himself with Semitic officers and courtiers, thus offending the nobles of Egypt; and by forsaking the ancient religion of his country, brought about a rupture with the powerful priesthood of Thebes. Forced to go forth, the “heretic king” built a new capital on the edge of the desert to the north. Here he assumed the name of Khu-en-Aten, “the glory of the solar disk,” while his architects and sculptors consecrated a new and peculiar style of art to the new religion, and even the potters decorated the vases they modelled with new colours and patterns.