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10 About sixty years after the Israelites’ Exodus, highly un- usual religious developments took place in Egypt. Some scholars view those developments as an attempt to adopt Monotheism—perhaps under the influence of the revelations at Mount Sinai. What they have in mind is the reign of Amenhotep (sometimes rendered as Amenophis) IV who left Thebes and its temples, gave up the worship of Amon, and declared ATEN the sole creator god. As we shall show, that was not an echo of Monotheism, but another harbinger of an expected Return—the re- turn, into view, of the Planet of the Cross. The Pharaoh in question is better known by the new name he had adopted—Akhen-Aten (“The servant/worshipper of Aten’), and the new capital and religious center that he had established, Akhet-Aten (“Aten of the Horizon’), is better known by the site’s modern name, Tell el-Amarna (where the famed ancient archive of royal international correspondence was discovered). Scion of Egypt’s famed eighteenth Dynasty, Akhenaten reigned from 1379 to 1362 B.c.E., and his religious revolution did not last. The priesthood of Amon in Thebes led the op- position, presumably because it was deprived of its positions of power and wealth, but it is of course possible that the ob- jections were genuinely on religious grounds, for Akhenat- en’s successors (of whom most famed was Tut-Ankh-Amen) resumed the inclusion of Ra/Amon in their theophoric names. No sooner was Akhenaten gone than the new capital, its temples, and its palace were torn down and systematically THE CROSS ON THE HORIZON