Читать книгу The Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt онлайн

25 страница из 29

CEILING DECORATION FROM THE PALACE OF AMONHOTEP III.

About the time of his marriage Amonhotep built a palace on the western bank of the Nile, on the edge of the desert under the Theban hills, and here Queen Tiy held her brilliant court. The palace was a light but roomy structure of brick and costly woods, exquisitely decorated with paintings on stucco, and embellished with delicate columns. Along one side ran a balcony on which were rugs and many-coloured cushions, and here the king and queen could sometimes be seen by their subjects. Gardens surrounded the palace, almost at the gates of which rose the splendid hills. On the eastern side of the building the king later constructed a huge pleasure-lake especially for the amusement of Tiy. The mounds of earth which were thrown up during its excavation were purposely formed into irregular hills, and these were covered with trees and flowers. Here the queen floated in her barge, which, in honour of the Heliopolitan god, she called “Aton-gleams”; and as she watched the reflections of the hills and the trees in the still water, she may well have imagined herself in those fair lands of Syria from which Aton or Adonis had come.