Note 96 — Chapter III · THE MORAL LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT: AN IDEAL OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

Amélineau, Essai, p. 344. The monotheist Ikhnaton (Amenhotep IV), the reform Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, it is true, pursued throughout his reign a peace policy, but this policy manifestly was dictated by temperament, or the king’s preoccupation with religious affairs, and not by moral scruples. His reform was essentially a religious and not a social or moral one. Not one of the historical documents of the age contains a word in condemnation of war as inherently wrong (see Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt (1906), vol. ii, pp. 382–419), though in these “the customary glorying in war has almost disappeared” (Petrie, A History of Egypt (1896), vol. ii, p. 218).