So passed the seventh year of his reign without any particular records to mark it. At Aswan there is a monument which perhaps dates from about this period. The king’s chief sculptor, Bek, was there employed in obtaining red granite for the decoration of the new city; and he caused to be made upon a large rock a commemorative tablet. On it one sees him before Akhnaton, whose figure has been erased at a later date; and the altar of the Aton, above which are the usual sun’s rays, stands beside them. Bek calls himself “The Chief of the Works in the Red [Granite] Hills, the assistant whom his Majesty himself taught, Chief of the Sculptors on the great and mighty monuments of the King in the house of Aton in the City of the Horizon of Aton.” Here also one sees Men, the father of Bek, who was also Chief of the Sculptors, presenting an offering to a statue of Amonhotep III., under whom he had served.
The eighth year of Akhnaton’s reign, and the nineteenth year of his age, was memorable, for it would seem that he now took up his permanent residence in the City of the Horizon. On some of the boundary tablets a repetition of the royal oath is recorded; and, as this is the last mention of _a visit_ made by Akhnaton to the new capital, one may suppose that henceforth he was resident there. The inscription reads:--
This oath (of the sixth year) was repeated in year eight, first month of the second season, eighth day. The King was in the City of the Horizon of Aton, and Pharaoh stood mounted on a great chariot of electrum, inspecting the boundary-stones of the Aton....
Then follows a list of these boundary-stones, and the inscription ends with the words:--
And the breadth of the City of the Horizon of Aton is from cliff to cliff, from the eastern horizon of heaven to the western horizon of heaven. It shall be for my father Ra-Horakhti Aton, its hills, its deserts, all its fowl, all its people, all its cattle, all things which the Aton produces, on which his rays shine, all things which are in ... the City of the Horizon, they shall be for the father, the living Aton, unto the temple of Aton in the City of the Horizon for ever and ever; they are all offered to his spirit. And may his rays be beauteous when they receive them.