instances of such precocity in Eastern countries can be called to mind.

Prof. von Bissing and Dr Spiegelberg question whether Dr Elliot Smith's conclusions as to the age of the body are to be trusted; but this criticism in no way affects the identification of the body as that of Akhnaton. While keeping an open mind on the question of the exact age of the body, certain Egyptologists, such as Prof. Erman, Prof. Breasted, and Mr N. de G. Davies, believe that the great revolution could not have been carried out by so young a man. As, however, has already been remarked, the first serious step was taken in the fourth year of Akhnaton's reign, that is to say, when he was fifteen years of age; and the climax of the revolution was not reached until he was at least twenty years old. If it appears improbable that a youth of this age could direct the movement, we may fall back upon the theory that Queen Thiy, or her advisers, were the instigators of the upheaval.

There is abundant evidence to show that Akhnaton was very young when, as Amenhotep IV, he ascended the throne. In the tomb of Rames at Thebes, which dates from the third or fourth year, the king is still represented as a boy; and in the letters sent by the Asiatic princes to the Egyptian court at his accession, Queen Thiy, and not the young Pharaoh, is addressed. This indicates that she was the regent; and the fact that her name alone is written in one of the first quarries at Tell-el-Amarna may be regarded as a confirmation of this view. But perhaps the most convincing evidence of the king's youth and the queen's regency is to be found in an inscription cut upon the rocks near Wady Hammamat. It was published by Golenischeff somewhat incorrectly; and the following account is written from notes taken on the spot by the present writer. There are three cartouches written beneath the Aton rays and above two neb signs, symbolic of sovereignty. The first cartouche is that of Queen Thiy, the second that of Amenhotep IV, and the third seems to read Akhnaton. The cartouches of Thiy and Akhnaton are erased, but that reading Amenhotep has been left intact. The inscription must have been written at the moment when the name Akhnaton was substituted for Amenhotep, i.e. about the fourth year of

the king's reign; and the fact that Queen Thiy's cartouche is as prominent as his own, and stands upon the same signs of royalty, can only be interpreted to mean that she was still the regent; or, at any rate, a personage of the greatest power at court. Moreover, that her cartouche suffered erasure is an indication of her concern in the revolution. If the king had not been a young boy at his accession, would the queen's name have been so prominent at the beginning of his reign? There is not sufficient evidence to justify a positive statement; but one may say definitely that the probabilities are here all in favour of the king's extreme youth.

There is yet another objection which has been raised by Prof. Breasted and by Prof. Sethe. In the tomb in which the body was found, the cartouches of Akhnaton were everywhere erased. The gold bands which passed around the mummy had been inscribed with his name and titles, but in each case the cartouche was destroyed. If, then, the name was so fiercely hated, would the body have been left unmutilated? Would it not have been torn to pieces and scattered to the winds? Those who are in favour of the identification reply that this was not the Egyptian custom; and the very fact that the body was not destroyed in this case proves that it was not the custom. When the cartouches were erased on the bands of gold around the body, the destroyers could not have thought that the mummy was that of any one else but the king whose name it bore. It lay in a coffin inscribed with Akhnaton's name; it was bound round with gold ribbons inscribed with his name; and its identification must have been certain to them, unless they had some particular reason for supposing it to be the body of some one else. But in this case, why should they have left the ribbons bearing Akhnaton's inscriptions intact upon the body except for the erasing of the name? and why, in the first instance, should Akhnaton's bands have been placed on the mummy of another?

The Egyptians reverenced the bodies of their dead; and those of their kings were most carefully protected. It was the name 'Akhnaton' which, in this case, they came to detest. In the inscription at Wady Hammamat that name was erased, but the king's earlier name, Amenhotep, was left intact. No thought was enterVol. 210.-No. 418,

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tained of destroying the body upon which the divine touch of kingship had fallen; surely that would have been against all the sentiments which we know the Egyptians to have held. It is a question, too, how fierce this detestation was at the time when the tomb was entered and the name erased. There is no evidence to show that the erasing of the king's name was more than a simple act of revenge on the part of the priests of Amen for the erasing of their god's name. Akhnaton was not called 'that criminal' until the reign of Rameses II, many years after his death. When the tomb was opened and the king's name erased, the general feeling against him need not yet have been intense. Subsequently, when public indignation against Akhnaton had reached a high pitch, in the days of Sety I and Rameses II, the location of the tomb was already forgotten.

The question has been raised as to whether the body was not perhaps that of Smenkhkara, the successor of Akhnaton. Apart from the improbability that the mummy which was labelled with the name of Akhnaton, and which lay in that king's coffin, should be that of any king but Akhnaton, one may ask how it is that the body has the physical characteristics of Akhnaton if it is that of Smenkhkara, who was not related to the king. Smenkhkara was a noble, not of royal blood, who had married one of Akhnaton's daughters; and it would have been a strange coincidence indeed if he had been physically so like his father-in-law.

It is a strange and striking episode of the past, whose discovery has been reserved for these later days. The relics which have been so recently unearthed and deciphered show us how the Hyksos hordes swept through Syria into Egypt; how the Egyptians, recovering themselves, swarmed over Syria; and how the Syrians, revolting against Akhnaton, regained the mastery over their own land. In Ramesside times Syria was partly reconquered, but Egypt never again held all the dominions which Amenhotep III bequeathed to his son, and which that king sacrificed to an illusive ideal towards which, thirty-two centuries later, mankind is still struggling in vain.

ARTHUR E. P. WEIGALL.

Art. 4.-SWEATED INDUSTRIES AND THE MINIMUM

WAGE.

1. A Bill to improve the Conditions of Employment, including the establishment of a Legal Minimum Wage of Persons employed in certain Industries. Ordered to be printed, February 3, 1908.

2. Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Home Work, 1908. Commons paper, No. 246.

3. Report to the Home Secretary on Wages Boards and Industrial Conciliation in Australia and New Zealand. By Ernest Aves. 1908. [Cd: 4167.]

And other papers.

WE intend in the following pages to consider how far the proposal to enforce by legal enactment a minimum rate of wages is practicable and how far it is necessary. As we understand it, the argument is somewhat as follows. Competition tends to bring down the price of commodities; and it is assumed that competition, if unrestricted, will reduce the price of labour. The free market, though it may be favourable to society by reducing the cost of living, does not result in the maintenance of high wages. So it is argued; and, to counteract this tendency of the free market as regards labour, we have our trade-union system of restriction. Few trades, however, are so situated that trade-union rule can be

described as paramount. There is in most trades a minority of workers which is willing, if not anxious, to conclude its own bargains. There are also many trades. without any trade-union organisation at all.

What is to be done in such cases where, failing, from one of the above-mentioned reasons, the intervention of the trade union, wages, according to this theory, might be expected to fall to an intolerably low level? There is, in the preliminary stages of this debate, a considerable amount of controversy as to what a trade union is justified in doing in order to compel all labourers to join it, and what are the limits of the monopoly which it is entitled to claim as against non-unionists in each particular industry. Very exceptional privileges have been conceded to trade unionists by recent legislation; but, notwithstanding this, it seems to be generally assumed,

by those who are pessimists as to the fate of labour in the open market, that it is necessary to resort to legisla tion in support of the principle of the collective bargain. Accordingly we have proposals, such as the one we are now considering, for fixing by statute or otherwise a national minimum rate of wages. The argument may be summarised thus. Where collective action by the workmen is established, a collective bargain has been obtained, and a collective bargain is assumed to be an equitable bargain, more or less advantageous to the workmen; where collective action has been found im possible, the aid of legislation is deemed necessary to prohibit employment under a minimum rate of wages.

At the outset we venture to express a doubt as to the propriety of the phraseology employed in this controversy. In what sense is this so-called collective bargain a bargain at all, supported as it is by the exceptional privileges of trade unionism and by a statutory prohibi tion of work on terms unauthorised by trade-union approval? Does it not really imply an abandonment of the principle of exchange (which is of the essence a bargain) and the beginning of an attempt to regulate wages on some estimation of the income which ought to be at the disposal of each labourer in an ideal state of society? And if it is such a beginning, how far are we going to allow it to carry us?

of

There are those who argue that our factory and sanitary enactments already concede the principle of the minimum wage, and that for practical purposes it is not worth while to resist the proposal by appeal to any general principle. For better or worse, the reign of the general principle is over; and we now guide our political conduct by what we call the merits of each case and the exigencies of the hour. Practically, however, the proposal to pass from a Factory Act, introduced to protect women and children and to remove certain definite evils, to the much larger policy of wages-regulation is a momentous one, and requires careful consideration. It does not follow that, because a man took medicine with advantage last week, drugs should be his staple food for the rest of his life. To continue the metaphor; as the object of the physician in administering drugs is to restore, not to revolutionise, his patient's constitution, so the object