The Life and Times of Akhnaton

1. INTRODUCTION

The reign of Akhnaton, for seventeen years Pharaoh of Egypt (from BC 1375 to 1358), stands out as the most interesting epoch in the long sequence of Egyptian history. We have watched the endless line of dim Pharaohs go by, each lit momentarily by the pale lamp of our present knowledge, and most of them have left little impression upon the mind. They are so misty and far off, they have been dead and gone for such thousands of years, that they have almost entirely lost their individuality. We call out some royal name, and in response a vague figure passes into view, stiffly moves its arms, and passes again into the darkness. With one there comes the muffled noise of battle; with another there is laughter and the sound of music; with yet another the wailing of the oppressed drifts by. But at the name of Akhnaton there emerges from the darkness a figure more clear than that of any other Pharaoh, and with it there come the singing of birds, the voices of children, and the scent of many flowers. For once we may look right into the mind of a king of Egypt and may see something of its workings; and all that is there observed is worthy of admiration. Akhnaton has been called the first individual in human history; but if he is thus the first historical figure whose personality is known to us, he is also the first of all human founders of religious doctrines. Akhnaton may be ranked in degree of time, and, in view of the new ground broken by him, perhaps also in degree of genius, as the world’s first idealist; and, since in all ancient Oriental research there never has been, and probably never will be, brought before us a subject of such intellectual interest as this Pharaoh’s religious revolution, which marks the first point in the study of advanced human thought, a careful consideration of this short reign deserves to be made.

The following pages do not pretend to do more than acquaint the reader with the subject, as interpreted in the light of recent discoveries. A series of volumes have been issued by the Egypt Exploration Fund, in which accurate copies are to be found of the reliefs, paintings, and inscriptions upon the walls of the tombs of some of Akhnaton’s disciples and followers. In the year 1893 Professor Flinders Petrie excavated the site of the city which the Pharaoh founded, and published the results of his work in a volume entitled Tel el Amarna.

Shortly before the late war the Germans made some valuable excavations in Akhnaton’s city, and discovered amongst other things the studio of a sculptor in which several great works of art, now in Berlin, were found; and soon after the war the Egypt Exploration Society began its work on the site, which, year by year, is revealing the marvels of that amazing epoch in Egyptian history.

In 1906 Professor J. H. Breasted devoted some space to a masterly study of this period in his History of Egypt and Ancient Records of Egypt. From these publications, and from the Journals of the Egypt Exploration Society, the reader will be able to refer himself to the remaining literature dealing with the subject; but he should bear in mind that the discovery of the bones of Akhnaton himself, which have shown us how old he was when he died—namely, about thirty years of age—have modified many of the deductions in the earlier works. Those who have travelled in Egypt will probably have visited the site of Akhnaton’s city, near the modern village of El Amarna; and in the museums of Cairo, London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Leiden, and elsewhere, they will perhaps have seen some of the relics of his age.

During the early years of the present century an extraordinary series of discoveries was made in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes.

In 1903 the tomb of Thutmosis IV, the paternal grandfather of Akhnaton, was discovered; in 1905 the tomb of Yuaa and Tuau, the maternal grandparents of Akhnaton, was found; in 1907 Akhnaton’s body was discovered in the tomb of his mother, Queen Tiy; and in 1908 the tomb of the Pharaoh Horemheb, one of the immediate successors of Akhnaton, was brought to light. At all but the first of these discoveries the present writer had the good fortune to be in charge; and a particular interest in the period was thus engendered, of which the following sketch, prepared during an Upper Egyptian summer, is an outcome.

It must be understood, however, that a volume written at such times as the exigencies of official work allowed - partly in the shade of the rocks beside the Nile, partly at railway-stations or in the train, partly amidst the ruins of ancient temples, and partly in the darkened rooms of official quarters during the heat of the day - cannot claim the value of a treatise prepared in an English study where books of reference are always at hand. It is believed, however, that no errors have been made in the statement of the facts; and the deductions drawn therefrom are frankly open to the reader’s criticism. There will certainly be no two opinions as to the originality, the power, and the idealism of the Pharaoh whose life is now to be outlined.

2. THE ANCESTORS OF AKHNATON

The Eighteenth Dynasty of Egyptian kings took possession of the throne of the Pharaohs in the year 1580 BC, over thirteen hundred years after the building of the great pyramids, and some two thousand years after the beginning of dynastic history in the Nile Valley. The founder of the dynasty was the Pharaoh Ahmose I (circa 1550-1525 BC). He drove out the Asiatics (Hycsos) who had overrun the country during the previous century, and pursued them into the heart of Syria. His successor, Amenophis I (c. 1526-1506 BC), penetrated as far as the territory between the Orontes and the Euphrates; and the next king, Thutmosis I (1506-1493 BC), was able to set his boundary-stone at the northern limits of Syria, and thus could call himself the ruler of the entire east end of the Mediterranean, the emperor of all the countries from Asia Minor to the Sudan. Thutmosis II (1493-1479 BC), the succeeding Pharaoh, was occupied with wars in his southern dominions; but his successor, the famous Queen Hatshepsut (1479-1458 BC), was able to devote the years of her reign to the arts of peace.

She was followed by the great warrior Thutmosis III (1479-1425 BC) who conducted campaign after campaign in Syria, and raised the prestige of Egypt to a point never attained before or after that time. Every year he returned to Thebes, his capital, laden with the spoils of Asia. From the capture of the city of Megiddo alone he carried away 924 splendid chariots, 2,238 horses, 2,400 head of various kinds of cattle, 200 shining suits of armour, including those of two kings, quantities of gold and silver, the royal sceptre, the gorgeous tent of one of the kings, and many minor articles. Booty of like value was brought in from other shattered kingdoms, and the Egyptian treasuries were full to overflowing. The temples of the gods also received their share of the riches, and their altars groaned under the weight of the offerings.

Cyprus, Crete, and perhaps the islands of the Egean, sent their yearly tribute to Thebes, whose streets, for the first time in history, were thronged with foreigners. Here were to be seen the long-robed Asiatics adorned with jewels made by the hands of Tyrian craftsmen; here were chariots mounted with gold and electrum drawn by prancing Syrian horses; here were Phoenician merchants with their precious wares stripped from the kingdoms of the sea; here were negroes bearing their barbaric treasures to the palace. The Egyptian soldiers held their heads high as they walked through these streets, for they were feared by all the world. The talk was everywhere of conquest, and the tales of adventure now related remained current in Egypt for many a century. War-songs were composed, and hymns of battle were inscribed upon the temple walls. The spirit of the age will be seen in the following lines, in which the god Amon addresses Thutmosis III:

"I have come, giving you to smite the princes of Zahi,

I have hurled them beneath your feet among their highlands

You hast trampled those who are in the districts of Punt,

I have made them see your majesty as a circling star

Crete and Cyprus are in terror

Those who are in the midst of the great sea hear your roarings;

I have made them see your majesty as an avenger,

Rising upon the back of his slain victim .

I have made them see your majesty as a fierce-eyed lion,

While you make them corpses in their valleys"

It was a fierce and a splendid age - the zenith of Egypt’s great history. The next king, Amenophis II (or Amenhotep II, 1427-1401 BC or 1427–1397 BC), carried on the conquests with a degree of ferocity not previously apparent. He himself was a man of great physical strength, who could draw a bow which none of his soldiers could use. He led his armies into his restless Asiatic dominions, and having captured seven rebellious Syrian kings, he hung them head downwards from the prow of his galley as he approached Thebes, and later sacrificed six of them to Amon with his own hand. The seventh he carried up to a distant city of the Sudan, and there hung him upon the gateway as a warning to all rebels.

He left the throne to his son, Thutmosis IV (1401-1391 or 1397-1388 BC), the grandfather of Akhnaton, who at his accession was about eighteen years of age.

3. THE GODS OF EGYPT

With the reign of Thutmosis IV (1401-1391 or 1397-1388 BC) we reach a period of history in which the beginnings are to be observed of certain religious movements, which become more apparent in the time of his son Amenophis III (or Amenhotep III, 1391-1353 or 1388-1351 BC) and his grandson Akhnaton (or Akhenaten, 1353-1336 or 1351-1334 BC). We must look, therefore, more closely at the events of this reign, and must especially observe their religious aspect. For this reason, and also in order that the reader may the more readily appreciate, by contrast, the pure teachings of the Pharaoh whose life forms the subject of the following pages, it will be necessary to glance at the nature of the religions which now held sway.

Egypt had at this time existed as a civilized nation for over two thousand years, during the whole of which period these religious beliefs had been developing; and now they were so engrained in the hearts of the people that changes, however slight, assumed revolutionary proportions, requiring a master-mind for their initiation, and a hand of iron for their carrying into execution. At the time of which we now write, this mind and this hand had not yet come into existence, and the old gods of Egypt were at the zenith of their power.

Of these gods Amon, the presiding deity of Thebes, was the most powerful. He had been originally the tribal god of the Thebans, but when that city had become the capital of Egypt, he had risen to be the state god of the country. The sun-god Ra, or Ra-Horakhti, originally the deity of Heliopolis, a city not far from the modern Cairo, had been the state god in earlier times, and the priests of Amon contrived to identify the two deities under the name Amon-Ra, King of the Gods.

Amon had several forms. He was usually regarded as a man of shining countenance, upon whose head two tall feathers arose from a golden cap. Sometimes, however, he assumed the form of a heavy-horned ram. Sometimes, again, he adopted the appearance of a brother god, named Min, who was later identified with the Greek Pan; and it may be mentioned in passing that the goat-form of the Greek deity may have been derived from, or connected with, this Min-Amon of the Thebans.

On occasions, Amon would take upon himself the likeness of the reigning Pharaoh, choosing a moment when the monarch was away or was asleep, and in this manner he would obtain admittance to the queen’s bed-chamber. Amenophis III himself was said to be the son of a union of this nature, though at the same time he did not deny that his earthly father was Thutmosis IV. Amon delighted in battle, and gave willing assistance to the Pharaohs as they clubbed the heads of their enemies or cut their throats. It is possible that, like other of the Egyptian gods, he was but a deified chieftain of the prehistoric period whose love of battle had never been forgotten.

The goddess Mut, the Mother, was the consort of Amon, who would sometimes come to earth to nurse the king’s son at her breast. By Amon she had a son, Khonsu, who formed the third member of the Theban trinity. He was the god of the Moon, and was very fair to look upon.

Such were the Theban deities, whose influence upon the court was necessarily great.

The Heliopolitan worship of the sun had also a very considerable degree of power at the palace. The god Ra was believed to have reigned as Pharaoh upon earth in the dim ages of the past, and it was thought that the successive sovereigns of Egypt were his direct descendants, though this tradition actually did not date from a period earlier than the Fifth Dynasty.

Son of the Sun was one of the proudest titles of the Pharaohs, and the personal name of each successive monarch was held by him in the official titulary as the representative of Ra. While on earth Ra had had the misfortune to be bitten by a snake, and had been cured by the goddess Isis, who had demanded in return the revealing of the god’s magical name. This was at last told her; but for fear that the secret would come to the ears of his subjects, Ra decided to bring about a general massacre of mankind. The slaughter was carried out by the goddess Hathor in her form of Sekhmet, a fierce lion-headed woman, who delighted to wade in streams of blood; but when only the half of mankind had been slain, Ra repented, and brought the massacre to an end by causing the goddess to become drunk, by means of a gruesome potion of blood and wine.

Weary, however, with the cares of state, he decided to retire into the heavens, and there, as the sun, he daily sailed in his boat from horizon to horizon. At dawn he was called Khepera, and had the form of a beetle; at noon he was Ra; and at sunset he took the name of Atum, a word probably connected with the Syrian Adon, Lord, better known to us in its Greek translation Adonis. As the rising and the setting sun, that is to say, the sun near the horizon, he was called Ra-Horakhti, a name which the reader must bear in mind.

The goddess Isis, mentioned in the above tradition, was the consort of Osiris, originally a Lower Egyptian deity. Like Ra, this god had also reigned upon earth, but had been murdered by his brother Set, his death being ultimately revenged by his son Horus, the hawk. Thus Osiris, Isis, and Horus formed a trinity, which at this time was mainly worshipped at Abydos, a city of Upper Egypt, where it was thought that Osiris had been buried. Having thus ceased to live upon earth, Osiris became the great King of the Underworld, and all persons prayed to him for their future welfare after death.

Meanwhile Horus, the hawk, was the tribal god of more than one city. At Edfu he was worshipped as the conqueror of Set; and in this manifestation he was the husband of Hathor, the lady of Dendereh, a city some considerable distance from Edfu. At Ombos, however, Set was worshipped, and in the local religion there was no trace of aught but the most friendly relations between Set and Horus. The goddess Hathor, at the same time, had become