TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been placed at the end of the book.

Footnotes [79] and [82] have a translation of some heiroglyphic words, using several accented characters. These will display, using Unicode combining diacriticals, on this device as
ȧ (a with dot above)
ḥ and Ḥ (h and H with dot below)
a͑ and A͑ (a and A with half left circle above)

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Some minor changes to the text are noted at the [end of the book.]

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

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TRAVELS IN THE
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THE TREASURY
OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archæology.

Mr Weigall has performed a remarkable literary feat. He has truly made dry bones live, and has presented his researches in Egyptology in a manner so fascinating as to arouse the enthusiasm of the patrons of the circulating libraries. Of this volume it is enough to say that it is worthy of the author of ‘The Life and Times of Akhnaton.’

WM. BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London.

PAVEMENT DECORATION FROM THE PALACE OF AMONHOTEP III.

The Life and Times of
Akhnaton

The Life and Times of

Akhnaton

Pharaoh of Egypt

BY

ARTHUR E. P. WEIGALL

CHIEF INSPECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES, UPPER EGYPT

AUTHOR OF ‘A REPORT ON THE ANTIQUITIES OF LOWER NUBIA,’ ‘A CATALOGUE OF THE
WEIGHTS AND BALANCES IN THE CAIRO MUSEUM,’ ‘A GUIDE TO THE ANTIQUITIES
OF UPPER EGYPT,’ ‘DIE MASTABA DES GEMNIKAI’ (WITH PROFESSOR VON
BISSING), ‘TRAVELS IN THE UPPER EGYPTIAN DESERTS,’ ETC.

“Ye ask who are those that draw us to the Kingdom if the Kingdom is in Heaven? The fowls of the air, and all the beasts that are under the earth or upon the earth, and the fishes of the sea, these are they which draw you, and the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”

—Grenfell and Hunt: Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iv. 6.

SECOND IMPRESSION

William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
1911

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO

THEODORE M. DAVIS,

THE DISCOVERER OF

THE BONES OF AKHNATON,

This Book is Dedicated.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

“How much Akhnaton understood we cannot say, but he had certainly bounded forward in his views and symbolism to a position which we cannot logically improve upon at the present day.”—Petrie: ‘History of Egypt.’

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF
AKHNATON.

[INTRODUCTION.]

The reign of Akhnaton, for seventeen years Pharaoh of Egypt (from B.C. 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 singing and the sound of music; with yet another the wailing of the oppressed drifts by. But at the name Akhnaton there emerges from the darkness a figure more clear than that of any other Pharaoh, and with it there comes the singing of birds, the laughter 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”;[1] 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 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, at a time when, owing to the recent discovery of the Pharaoh’s bones, some interest may have been aroused in his career. A series of volumes have lately been issued by the Egypt Exploration Fund,[2] 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 ‘Tell el Amarna.’[3] Recently Professor J. H. Breasted has devoted some space to a masterly study of this period in his ‘History of Egypt’ and ‘Ancient Records of Egypt.’[4] From these publications 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[5] of the bones of Akhnaton himself, which have shown us how old he was when he died—namely, about twenty-eight years of age,—have modified many of the deductions there made. 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 last few years an extraordinary series of discoveries has been made in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes. In 1903 the tomb of Thothmes 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 pleasure of assisting; 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—cannot claim the value of a treatise prepared in an English study where books of reference are always at hand. It is hoped, 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 acknowledgment of the originality, the power, and the idealism of the Pharaoh whose life is now to be outlined.[6]

[I.]
THE PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS OF AKHNATON.

1. THE ANCESTORS OF AKHNATON.

The Eighteenth Dynasty of Egyptian kings took possession of the throne of the Pharaohs in the year 1580 B.C., over thirteen hundred years after the buildings 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 Aahmes I. He drove out the Asiatics who had overrun the country during the previous century, and pursued them into the heart of Syria. His successor, Amonhotep I., penetrated as far as the territory between the Orontes and the Euphrates; and the next king, Thothmes I., 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. Thothmes II., the succeeding Pharaoh, was occupied with wars in his southern dominions; but his successor, the famous Queen Hatshepsut, was able to devote the years of her reign to the arts of peace.

She was followed by the great warrior Thothmes III., 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, 2238 horses, 2400 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 Ægean, sent their yearly tribute to Thebes, whose streets, for the first time in their history, were thronged with foreigners. Here were to be seen the long-robed Asiatics bearing vases fresh from the hands of Tyrian craftsmen; here were chariots mounted with gold and electrum drawn by prancing Syrian horses; here were Phœnician 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 Thothmes III.:—

“I have come, giving thee to smite the princes of Zahi,

I have hurled them beneath thy feet among their highlands....

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

I have made them see thy majesty as a circling star....

Crete and Cyprus are in terror....

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

I have made them see thy majesty as an avenger,

Rising upon the back of his slain victim....

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

While thou makest them corpses in their valleys....”

It was a fierce and a splendid age—the zenith of Egypt’s great history. The next king, Amonhotep II., 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. Dying in the year 1420 B.C., he left the throne to his son, Thothmes IV., the grandfather of Akhnaton, who at his accession was about eighteen years of age.[7]

2. THE GODS OF EGYPT.

With the reign of Thothmes IV. 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 Amonhotep III. and his grandson Akhnaton. 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 civilised 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 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. Amonhotep 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 Thothmes 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 derived from 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 patron of the Western Hills, and in one of her earthly forms—namely, that of a cow—she is often seen emerging from her cavern in the cliffs.

At Memphis the tribal god was the little dwarf Ptah, the European Vulcan, the blacksmith, the artificer, and the potter of the gods. In this city also, as in many other districts of Egypt, there was a sacred bull, here called Apis, who was worshipped with divine honours and was regarded as an aspect of Ptah. At Elephantine a ram-headed deity named Khnum was adored, and there was a sacred ram kept in his temple for ceremonial purposes. As Khnum had some connection with the First Cataract of the Nile, which is situated near Elephantine, he was regarded as of some importance throughout Egypt. Moreover, he was supposed by some to have used the mud at the bottom of the Nile to form the first human being, and thus he found a place in the mythology of several districts.

A vulture, named Nekheb, was the tribal deity of the trading city of Eileithiaspolis; a ferocious crocodile, Sebek, was the god of a second city of the name of Ombos; an ibis, Thoth, was that of Hermopolis; a cat, Bast, that of Bubastis; and so on—almost every city having its tribal god. Besides these there were other more abstract deities: Nut, the heavens, who, in the form of a woman, spread herself across the sky; Seb, the earth; Shu, the vastness of space; and so forth. The old gods of Egypt were indeed a multitude. Here were those who had marched into the country at the head of conquering tribes; here were ancient heroes and Chieftains individually deified, or often identified with the god whom their tribe had served; here were the elements personified; here the orbs of heaven which man could see above him. As intercourse between city and city became more general, one set of beliefs had been brought into line with another, and myths had developed to explain the discrepancies. Thus in the time of Thothmes IV. the heavens were crowded with gods; but standing above them all, the reader will do well to familiarise himself with the figure of Amon-Ra, the god of Thebes, and with Ra-Horakhti, the god of Heliopolis. In the following pages the lesser denizens of the Egyptian Olympus play no great part, save as a routed army hurled back into the ignorant darkness from which they came.

3. THE DEMIGODS AND SPIRITS—THE PRIESTHOODS.

The sacred bulls and rams mentioned above were relics of an ancient animal-worship, the origin of which is lost in the obscurity of prehistory. The Egyptians paid homage to a variety of animals, and almost every city or district possessed its particular species to which special protection was extended. At Hermopolis and in other parts of Egypt the baboon was sacred, as well as the ibis, which typified the god Thoth. Cats were sacred both at Bubastis, where the cat-goddess, Bast, resided, and in various other districts. Crocodiles were very generally held in reverence, and several river fish were thus treated. The snake was much feared and reverenced; and, as a pertinent example of this superstition, it may be mentioned that Amonhotep III., the father of Akhnaton, placed a figure of the agathodemon serpent in a temple at Benha. The cobra was reverenced as the symbol of Uazet, the goddess of the Delta, and, first used as a royal emblem by the archaic kings of that country, it became the main emblem of sovereignty in Pharaonic times. It is unnecessary here to look more closely at this aspect of Egyptian religion; and but a word need be said of the thousand demons and spirits which, together with the gods and the sacred animals, crowded the regions of the unknown. Many were the names which the magician might call upon in the hour of his need, and many were the awful forms which the soul of a man who had died was liable to meet. Osiris, the great god of the dead, was served by four such genii, and under his authority there sat no less than forty-two terrible demons whose business it was to judge the quavering soul. The numerous gates of the underworld were guarded by monsters whose names alone would strike terror into the heart, and the unfortunate soul had to repeat endless and peculiarly tedious formulæ before admittance was granted.

To minister to these hosts of heaven there had of necessity to be vast numbers of priests. At Thebes the priesthood of Amon formed an organisation of such power and wealth that the actions of the Pharaoh had largely come to be controlled by it. The High Priest of Amon-Ra was one of the most important personages in the land, and his immediate subordinates, the Second, Third, and Fourth Priests, as they were called, were usually nobles of the highest rank. The High Priest of Amon was at this period often Grand Vizir also, and thus combined the highest civil appointment with the highest sacerdotal office. The priesthood of Ra at Heliopolis, although of far less power than that of Amon, was also a body of great importance. The High Priest was known as “the Great One of Visions,” and he was probably less of a politician and more of a priest than his Theban colleague. The High Priest of Ptah at Memphis was called “the Great Master Artificer,” Ptah being the Vulcan of Egypt. He, however, and the many other high priests of the various gods, did not rank with the two great leaders of the Amon and the Ra priesthoods.

4. THOTHMES IV. AND MUTEMUA.

When Thothmes IV. ascended the throne he was confronted by a very serious political problem. The Heliopolitan priesthood at this time was chafing against the power of Amon, and was striving to restore the somewhat fallen prestige of its own god Ra, who in the far past had been the supreme deity of Egypt, but had now to play an annoying second to the Theban god. Thothmes IV., as we shall presently be told by Akhnaton himself,[8] did not altogether approve of the political character of the Amon priesthood, and it may have been due to this dissatisfaction that he undertook the repairing of the great Sphinx at Gizeh, which was in the care of the priests of Heliopolis. The sphinx was thought to represent a combination of the Heliopolitan gods Horakhti, Khepera, Ra, and Atum, who have been mentioned above; and, according to a later tradition, Thothmes IV. had obtained the throne over the heads of his elder brothers through the mediation of the Sphinx—that is to say, through that of the Heliopolitan priests. By them he was called “Son of Atum and Protector of Horakhte, ... who purifies Heliopolis and satisfies Ra,”[9] and it seems that they looked to him to restore to them their lost power. The Pharaoh, however, was a physical weakling, whose small amount of energy was entirely expended upon his army, which he greatly loved, and which he led into Syria and into the Sudan. His brief reign of somewhat over eight years, from 1420 to 1411 B.C., marks but the indecisive beginnings of the struggle between Amon and Ra, which culminated in the early years of the reign of his grandson Akhnaton.

Thothmes IV. slaying Asiatics.

Some time before he came to the throne he had married a daughter of the King of Mitanni, a North-Syrian state which acted as a buffer between the Egyptian possessions in Syria and the hostile lands of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and which it was desirable, therefore, to placate by such a union. There is little doubt that this princess is to be identified with the Queen Mutemua, of whom several monuments exist, and who was the mother of Amonhotep III., the son and successor of Thothmes IV. A foreign element was thus introduced into the court which much altered its character, and led to numerous changes of a very radical nature. It may be that this Asiatic influence induced the Pharaoh to give further encouragement to the priest of Heliopolis. The god Atum, the aspect of Ra as the setting sun, was, as has been said, of common origin with Aton or Adonis, who was largely worshipped in North Syria; and the foreign queen with her retinue may have therefore felt more sympathy with Heliopolis than with Thebes. Moreover, it was the Asiatic tendency to speculate in religious questions, and the doctrines of the priests of the northern god were more flexible and more adaptable to the thinker than was the stiff, formal creed of Amon. Thus, the foreign thought which had now been introduced into Egypt, and especially into the palace, may have contributed somewhat to the dissatisfaction with the state religion which becomes apparent during this reign.

Very little is known of the character of Thothmes IV., and nothing which bears upon that of his grandson Akhnaton is to be ascertained. Although of feeble health and unmanly physique, he was a fond upholder of the martial dignity of Egypt. He delighted to honour the memory of those Pharaohs of the past who had achieved the greatest fame as warriors. Thus he restored the monuments of Thothmes III., of Aahmes I., and of Senusert III.,[10] the three greatest military leaders of Egyptian history. As a decoration for his chariot there were scenes representing him trampling upon his foes; and when he died many weapons of war were buried with him. Of Queen Mutemua’s character nothing is known; and the attention of the reader may at once be carried on to Akhnaton’s maternal grandparents, the father and mother of Queen Tiy.

5. YUAA AND TUAU.

Somewhere about the year 1470 B.C., while the great Thothmes III. was campaigning in Syria, the child was born who was destined to become the grandfather of the most remarkable of all the Pharaohs of Egypt. Neither the names of the parents nor the place of birth are known; and the reader will presently find that it is not easy to say whether the child was an Egyptian or a foreigner. His name is written Aau, Aay, Aai, Ayu, A-aa, Yaa, Yau, and most commonly Yuaa; and this variety of spelling seems rather to indicate that its pronunciation, being foreign, did not permit of a correct rendering in Egyptian letters. He must have been some twenty years of age when Thothmes III. died; and thus it is quite possible that he was one of those Syrian princes whom the Pharaoh brought back to Egypt from the courts of Asia to be educated in the Egyptian manner. Some of these hostages who were not direct heirs to Syrian thrones may have taken up their permanent residence on the banks of the Nile, where it is certain that a fair number of their countrymen were settled for business and other purposes. During the reign of Amonhotep II., Yuaa must have passed the prime years of his life, and at that king’s death he had probably reached about the forty-fifth year of his age. He had married a woman called by the common Egyptian name of Tuau, regarding whose nationality there is, therefore, not much question. Two children were born of the marriage, the first a boy who was named Aanen, and the second a girl named Tiy, who later became the great queen. Tiy was probably a little girl some two years old when Thothmes IV. came to the throne, and as her parents both held appointments at court, she must have presently received those first impressions of royal luxury which influenced her childhood and her whole life.

Tuau, grandmother of Akhnaton.

At this time Yuaa held the sacerdotal office of Priest of Min, one of the most ancient of the Egyptian gods. Min, who had many of the characteristics of, and was later identified with, the Greek Pan, was worshipped at three or four cities of Upper Egypt, and throughout the Eastern Desert to the Red Sea coast. He was the god of fecundity, fertility, generation, reproduction, and the like, in the human, animal, and vegetable worlds. In his form of Min-Ra he was a god of the sun, whose fertilising rays made pregnant the whole earth. He was more noble than the Greek Pan, and represented the pristine desires of lawful reproduction in the family, rather than the erotic instincts for which the Greek god was famous. Were one to compare him with any of the gods of the countries neighbouring to Egypt, he would be found to have as much likeness to the above-mentioned Adonis, who in North Syria was a god of vegetation, as to any other deity. This fact offers food for some thought, for if Yuaa was a foreigner, hailing, as may be supposed, from Syria, there would have been no Egyptian god, except Atum, to whose service he would have attached himself so readily as to that of Min. Although a tribal god, Min was not essentially the protector and upholder of Egyptian rights and Egyptian prejudices. He was, in one form or another, universal; and he must have appealed to the sense and the senses of Syrian and Egyptian alike.

At this time, as we have seen, the priests of Amon, whose wealth had brought corruption in its train, were under the cloud of royal displeasure, and the court was beginning to display a desire to rid itself of an influence which was daily becoming less exalted. It may be that Yuaa, upholding the doctrines of Min and of Adonis, had some connection with this movement, for he was now a personage of considerable importance at the palace. He may have already held the title of Prince or Duke, by which he is called in his funeral inscriptions; and one may suppose that he was a favourite of the young king, Thothmes IV., and of his wife, Queen Mutemua, whose blood was soon to unite with his own in the person of Akhnaton. When Thothmes IV. died at the age of twenty-six, and his son Amonhotep III., a boy of twelve years of age, came to the throne, Yuaa was a man of over fifty, and his little daughter Tiy was a girl of marriageable age according to Egyptian ideas, being about ten years old.[11]

Chest belonging to Yuaa.

The court at this time was more or less under the influence of the now Queen-Regent Mutemua and her advisers, for Amonhotep III. was still too young to be allowed to go entirely his own way, and amongst those advisers it seems evident that Yuaa was to be numbered. Now the boy-king had not been on the throne more than a year, if as much, when, with feasting and ceremony, he was married to Tiy; and Yuaa and Tuau became the proud parents-in-law of the Pharaoh.

It is necessary to consider the significance of the marriage. The royal pair were the merest children; and it is impossible to suppose that the marriage was not arranged for them by their guardians. If Amonhotep at this early age had simply fallen in love with this girl, with whom probably he had been brought up, he, no doubt, would have insisted on marrying her, and she would have been placed in his harîm. But she became his Great Queen, was placed on the throne beside him, and received honours which no other queen of the most royal blood had ever received before. It is clear that the king’s advisers would never have permitted this had Tiy been but the pretty daughter of a noble of the court. There must have been something in her parentage which entitled her to these honours and caused her to be chosen deliberately as queen.

There are several possibilities. Tuau may have had royal blood in her veins, and may have been, for instance, the granddaughter of Thothmes III., to whom she bears some likeness in face. Queen Tiy is often called “Royal Daughter” as well as “Royal Wife”; and it is possible that this is to be taken literally. In a letter sent by Dushratta, King of Mitanni, to Akhnaton, Tiy is called “my sister and thy mother”; and though it is possible that the word “sister” is here used to indicate the general cousinship of royalty, it is more probable that some real connection is meant, for other relationships, such as “daughter,” “wife,” and “father-in-law,” are precisely stated in the letter. Yuaa may have been indirectly of royal Egyptian blood, or he may have been, as we have seen, the offspring of some Syrian royal house, such as that of Mitanni, related by marriage with the Pharaoh; and thus Tiy may have had some distant claim to the throne, and Dushratta would have had reason for calling her his sister. Queen Tiy, however, has so often been called a foreigner for reasons which have now been shown to be quite erroneous that we must be cautious in adopting any of these possibilities. It has been stated that her face is North-Syrian in type,[12] and, as the portrait upon which this statement is based is, in all features except the nose, reminiscent of Yuaa, that noble would also resemble the people of that country; and in this connection it must be remembered that the marriage of Tiy and Amonhotep took place under the regency of Mutemua, herself probably a North-Syrian princess. Be this as it may, however, the two children, not yet in their ’teens, ruled Egypt together, and Yuaa and Tuau stood behind the throne to advise them.

Queen Tiy.

Tuau now included amongst her titles those of “Royal Handmaid,” or lady-in-waiting, “the favoured-one of Hathor,” “the favourite of the King,” and “the Royal mother of the great wife of the King,” a title which may indicate that she was of royal blood. Amongst the titles of Yuaa one may mention those of “Master of the Horse and Chariot-Captain of the King,” “the favourite, excellent above all favourites,” and “the mouth and ears of the King,”—that is to say, his agent and adviser. He was a personage of commanding presence, whose powerful character showed itself in his face. One must picture him now as a tall man, with a fine shock of white hair; a great hooked nose, like that of a Syrian; full, strong lips; and a prominent, determined jaw. He has the face of an ecclesiastic, and there is something about his mouth which reminds one of the late Pope, Leo XIII. One feels, in looking at his well-preserved features, that here perhaps may be found the originator of the great religious movement which his daughter and grandson carried into execution.

Yuaa, grandfather of Akhnaton.

6. AMONHOTEP III. AND HIS COURT.

Besides Yuaa and Tuau and the Queen-Dowager Mutemua, there was a certain noble, named Amonhotep-son-of-Hapu, who may have exercised considerable influence upon the young Pharaoh. So good and wise a man was he, that in later times he was regarded almost as a divinity, and his sayings were treasured from generation to generation. It may be that he furthered the cause of the Heliopolitan priesthood against that of Amon; and it is to be observed in this connection that, in the inscription engraved upon his statue, he refers to the Pharaoh as the “heir of Atum” and the “first-born son of Horakhti,” those being the Heliopolitan gods. When, presently, a daughter was born to Tiy, who was named Setamon, this philosopher was given the honorary post of “Steward” to the princess; while at the same time he filled the office of Minister of Public Works, and held various court appointments. At this period, when religious speculation was beginning to be freely indulged in, the influence of a “wise man” of this character would necessarily be great; and should any of his sayings come to light, they will perhaps be found to bear upon the subject of the religious changes which were now taking place. A late tradition tells us that this Amonhotep had warned the Pharaoh that if he would see the true God he must drive from his kingdom all impure persons; and herein one may perhaps observe some reference to the corrupt priests of Amon, whose ejection from their offices was daily becoming more necessary.

Amonhotep-son-of-Hapu, the “wise man” of the
Court of Amonhotep III.

At the time of which we write Egypt still remained at that height of power to which the military skill of Thothmes III. had raised her. The Kings of Palestine and Syria were tributaries to the young Pharaoh; the princes of the sea-coast cities sent their yearly impost to Thebes; Cyprus, Crete, and even the Greek islands, were Egyptianised; Sinai and the Red Sea coast as far south as Somaliland were included in the Pharaoh’s dominions; and the negro tribes of the Sudan were his slaves. Egypt was indeed the greatest state in the world, and Thebes was a metropolis at which the ambassadors, the merchants, and the artisans from these various countries met together. Here they could look upon buildings undreamed of in their own lands, and could participate in luxuries unknown even in Babylon. The wealth of Egypt was so enormous that a foreign sovereign who wrote to the Pharaoh asking for gold mentioned that it could not be considered as anything more valuable than so much dust by an Egyptian. Golden vases in vast quantities adorned the tables of the king and his nobles, and hundreds of golden vessels of different kinds were used in the temples.

The splendour and gaiety of the court at Thebes remind one of the tales from the Arabian Nights. One reads of banquets, of splendid festivals on the water, of jubilee celebrations, and of hunting parties. When the scenes depicted on the monuments are gathered together in the mind, and the ruins which are left are there reconstructed, a life of the most intense brilliancy is shown. This was rather a development of the period than a condition of things which had been derived from an earlier régime. The Egyptians had always been a happy, light-hearted people; but it was the conquests of Thothmes III. that had given them the security and the wealth to live as luxuriously as they pleased. The tendency of the nation was now to break away from the old, hardy traditions of the earlier periods of Egyptian history; and virtually no other body, except the priesthood of Amon, held them down to ancient conventionalities. But while the king and his court made merry and amused themselves in sumptuous fashion, that god Amon and his representatives towered over them like some sombre bogie, holding them to a religion which they considered to be obsolete, and claiming its share of royal wealth.

CEILING DECORATION FROM THE PALACE OF AMONHOTEP III.

About the time of his marriage Amonhotep built a palace on the western bank of the Nile, on the edge of the desert under the Theban hills, and here Queen Tiy held her brilliant court. The palace was a light but roomy structure of brick and costly woods, exquisitely decorated with paintings on stucco, and embellished with delicate columns. Along one side ran a balcony on which were rugs and many-coloured cushions, and here the king and queen could sometimes be seen by their subjects. Gardens surrounded the palace, almost at the gates of which rose the splendid hills. On the eastern side of the building the king later constructed a huge pleasure-lake especially for the amusement of Tiy. The mounds of earth which were thrown up during its excavation were purposely formed into irregular hills, and these were covered with trees and flowers. Here the queen floated in her barge, which, in honour of the Heliopolitan god, she called “Aton-gleams”; and as she watched the reflections of the hills and the trees in the still water, she may well have imagined herself in those fair lands of Syria from which Aton or Adonis had come.

The name Aton was Syrian. The setting sun, as we have seen, was called in Egypt Atum, which was derived from the Asiatic Adon or Aton; and it is now that we first find the word introduced into Egypt as a synonym of Ra-Horakhti-Khepera-Atum of Heliopolis. Presently we find that one of the Pharaoh’s regiments of soldiers is named after this god Aton, and here and there the word now occurs upon the monuments. Thus, gradually, the court was bringing a new-named deity into prominence, closely related to the gods of Heliopolis; and it may be supposed that the priesthood of Amon watched the development with considerable perturbation. The Pharaoh himself does not seem to have worried very considerably with regard to these religious matters. He was, it seems, a man addicted to pleasure, whose interests lay as much in the hunting-field as in the palace. He loved to boast that during the first ten years of his reign he had slain 102 lions; but as he was a mere boy when he first indulged in this form of sport, it is to be presumed that his nobles assisted him handsomely in the slaughter on each occasion. In one day he is reported to have killed fifty-six wild cattle, and a score more fell to him a few days later; but here again one may suppose that the glory and not the deed was his.

Site of the Palace of Queen Tiy.

In the fifth year of his reign he led an expedition into the Sudan to chastise some tribe which had rebelled, and he records with pride the slaughter which he had made. It is stated that these negroes “had been haughty, and great things were in their hearts; but the fierce-eyed lion, this prince, he slew them by the command of Amon-Atum.” It is interesting to notice that Atum is thus brought into equal prominence with Amon, and one may see from this the trend of public opinion.

At this time the Vizir, a certain Ptahmes, held also the office of High Priest of Amon; but when he died he was not succeeded in his duties as Vizir by the new head of the Amon priesthood, as was to be expected. The Pharaoh appointed a noble named Rames as his prime minister, and thus separated the civil and the religious power: a step which again shows us something of the movement which was steadily diminishing the power of Amon.

Queen Tiy seems to have borne several daughters to the king, and it is possible that she had also presented him with a son. But, if this is so, he had died in early childhood, and no heir to the throne was now living. It may have been partly due to this fact that Amonhotep, in the tenth year of his reign, married the Princess Kirgipa or Gilukhipa, daughter of the King of Mitanni, and probably niece of the Dowager-Queen Mutemua.[13] The princess came to Egypt in considerable state, bringing with her 317 ladies-in-waiting; but she seems to have been thrust into the background by Tiy, who, even in the official record of the marriage, is called the king’s chief wife. The marriage may have been purely political, as was that of Thothmes IV.; and there is certainly no record of any children born to Gilukhipa. She and her ladies but added a further foreign element to the life of the palace, and swelled the numbers of those who had no sympathy with the old gods of Thebes.

Coffin of Yuaa.

It must have been somewhere about the year 1390 B.C. that Tiy’s aged father, Yuaa, died; and Tuau soon followed him to the grave. They were buried in a fine sepulchre in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes; and if they are not to be considered as royal, this will have been the first time that persons not of royal blood had been buried in a tomb of large size in this valley. A quantity of funeral furniture was placed around the splendid coffins in which their mummies lay, and amongst this there were a few objects which evidently had been presented by the bereaved king and queen and by the young princesses, Setamon and another whose name is now lost. Yuaa and his wife had evidently been much beloved at the court, and as the parents of the great queen they had commanded the respect of all men. To us they are remarkable as the grandparents of that great teacher, Akhnaton, whose birth has now to be recorded.

[II.]
THE BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS OF AKHNATON.

1. THE BIRTH OF AKHNATON.

It has been seen that Queen Tiy presented several children to the king; but it was not until they had reigned some twenty-five or twenty-six years that the future monarch was born. As the years had passed the queen must have grown more and more anxious for a son, and many must have been the prayers she offered up that a male child might be vouchsafed to her. In Egypt at the present day the desire to bear a son holds dominion in the heart of every young woman; and those to whom this privilege has not been granted forsake the laws of the prophet and still lay their passionate appeal before the old gods. The present writer was asked recently by a young peasant to allow his wife to walk round the outer wall of an ancient temple, in order that she might perchance bear a male child thereafter; and on another occasion three young women were seen sliding down the plinth of an overturned statue of Rameses the Great for the same purpose. With similar emotion, though with greater intelligence, Queen Tiy must have turned in her grief from one god to another, promising them all manner of gifts if they would grant her desire. To Ra-Horakhti Aton she appears to have turned with the most confidence; and perhaps, as will presently be seen, she vowed that if a son were granted to her she would dedicate him to the service of that god.

It is probable that the little prince first saw the light in the royal palace at Thebes, which was situated on the edge of the desert at the foot of the western hills. It was, as has been said, an extensive building, lightly constructed and gaily decorated. The ceilings and pavements of its halls were fantastically painted with scenes of animal life: wild cattle ran through reedy swamps beneath the royal feet, and there many-coloured fish swam in the water; while overhead flights of pigeons, white against a blue sky, passed across the hall, and wild duck hastened towards the open casements. Through curtained doorways one might obtain glimpses of the garden planted with flowers foreign to Egypt; and on the east of the palace shone the great pleasure-lake, surrounded by the trees of Asia.

In all the world there are few places more beautiful than the site of this palace. Here one may sit for many an hour watching the changing colours on the wonderful cliffs, the pink and the yellow of the rocks standing out from the blue and the purple of the deep shadows. In the fields which now surround the ruined palace, where the royal gardens were laid out, one obtains an impression of colour, of beauty, and of gaiety—if it can be so expressed—which is not easily equalled. The continuous sunshine and the bracing wind render one intensely awake to natural joys; and here, indeed, was a fitting birthplace, one feels, for a king who taught his people to study the beauties of nature.

2. THE RISE OF ATON.

The little prince was named Amonhotep,[14] “the Peace-of-Amon,” after his father; but though the supremacy of Amon was thus acknowledged, the Heliopolitan deity appears to have been considered as the protector of the young boy. While the luxurious court rejoiced at the birth of their future king, one feels that the ancient priesthood of Amon-Ra must have looked askance at the baby who was destined one day to be their master. This priesthood still demanded implicit obedience to its stiff and ancient conventions, and it refused to recognise the growing tendency towards religious speculation.

Probably stronger measures would have been taken by it to resist the growing power of Ra-Horakhti, had it not been for the fact that Ra was also a form of Amon, and had been identified with him under the name of Amon-Ra. The god Amon was originally but the local deity of Thebes; and, when the Theban Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty had elevated him to the position of the state god of all Egypt, they made him acceptable to the various provinces, as we have seen, by pointing to his identification with Ra, the sun-god, who, under one form or another, found a place in every temple and held high rank in every variety of mythology. As Amon-Ra he was able to be appreciated by the sun-worshippers of Syria and by those of Nubia, for there were few races who would not do homage to the great giver of warmth and light.

It is possible that those more thoughtful members of the court who were quietly attempting to undermine the influence of the priesthood of Amon, and who were beginning to carry into execution the schemes of emancipation which we have already noticed, now endeavoured to strip Amon of his association with the sun; for that identity was really his simple claim to acceptance by any but Thebans. The priesthood, on their part, it may be supposed, drew as much attention as possible to the connection of their deity with Ra; for they knew that none but the Heliopolitan god could be advanced with success as a rival of Amon by those who desired to overthrow the Theban god. Thus one finds that the High Priest of Ra at Heliopolis was given, and was obliged to accept, the honorary office of Second Priest of Amon at Thebes,[15] which at once placed him under the thumb of the Theban High Priest. The propounders of the new thought, however, met this move by bringing into greater prominence the claims, not of Ra-Horakhti, but of Aton, which was merely a more elusive form of the sun-god. The priesthood of Amon had always checked the individual growth of Ra-Horakhti by regarding him simply as an aspect of Ra, and hence of Amon-Ra. One of the essential features of the new movement was the regarding of Ra as an aspect of Ra-Horakhti, and the calling of Ra-Horakhti by the uncontaminated name of Aton. Aton, in fact, was originally introduced into the matter largely for the purpose of preventing any identification between Amon-Ra and Ra-Horakhti. Soon the name of Aton, entirely supplanting that of Atum, was heard with some frequency at Thebes and elsewhere, but always, it must be remembered, as another word for Ra-Horakhti.

The desire of the court for a change of religion is understandable. The cult of the god Amon, as has been said, was so hedged about with conventionalities that free thought was impossible. We have seen, however, that the upper classes were passing through a phase of religious speculation, and they were ready to revolt against the domination of a priesthood which forbade criticism. The worship of the intangible power of the sun, under the name of Aton, offered endless possibilities for the exercise of those tendencies towards the abstract which were now beginning to be felt all over the civilised world. This was man’s first age of philosophical thought, and for the first time in history the gods were being endued with ideal qualities.

Apart from all questions of religion, the priesthood of Amon had obtained such power and wealth that it was a very serious menace to the dignity of the throne. The great organisation which had its headquarters at Karnak had become an incubus which weighed heavily upon the state. For political reasons alone, therefore, it was desirable to push the priests of Heliopolis into a more prominent position.

There was, moreover, a third consideration. The god Aton, with whom Ra and Ra-Horakhti were now being identified, was, we have seen, originally the same as the Syrian and Greek Adonis, the word “Adon” or “Aton” meaning simply “lord.” Thus the propounders of the new doctrines must have dreamt of an Egypto-Syrian empire bound together by the ties of a common religion. With one god understood and worshipped from the cataracts of the Nile to the distant Euphrates, what power could destroy the empire?

3. THE POWER OF QUEEN TIY.

In Amonhotep III. one may see the lazy, speculative Oriental, too opinionated and too vain to bear with the stiff routine of his fathers, and yet too lacking in energy to formulate a new religion. On the other hand, there is every reason to suppose that Queen Tiy possessed the ability to impress the claims of the new thought upon her husband’s mind, and gradually to turn his eyes, and those of the court, away from the sombre worship of Amon, “the unknown god,” into the direction of the brilliant cult of the sun. Those who have travelled in Egypt will realise how completely the land is dominated by the sun. The blue skies, the shining rocks, the golden desert, the verdant fields, all seem to cry out for joy of the sunshine. The extraordinary energy which one may feel in Egypt at sunrise, and the deep melancholy which sometimes accompanies the red nightfall, must have been felt by Tiy also in her palace at Thebes.

As the years passed the power and influence of Queen Tiy increased; and now that she had borne a son to the king there was added to her great position as royal wife the equally great rôle of royal mother. Never before had a queen been so freely represented on all the king’s monuments, nor had so fine a series of titles been given before to the wife of a Pharaoh. At Sedênga, far up in the Sudan, her husband erected a temple for her; and in distant Sinai a beautiful portrait head of her was recently found. All visitors to Thebes have seen her figures by the side of the legs of the two great colossi at the edge of the Western Desert; and the huge statues of herself and her husband, now in the Cairo Museum, will have been seen by those who have visited that collection. Of Grilukhipa,[16] however, and the king’s other wives, one hears nothing at all: Queen Tiy relegated them to the background almost before their marriage ceremonies were over.

By the time that Amonhotep III. had reigned for thirty years or so, he had ceased to give much attention to state affairs, and the power had almost entirely passed into the capable hands of Tiy. Already an influence, which we may presume to have been to a large extent hers, was being felt in many directions: Ra-Horakhti and Aton were being brought into the foreground, a tone of thought which can hardly be regarded as purely Egyptian was being developed, the art was undergoing modifications and had risen to a pitch of excellence never attained before or after. The exquisite low-reliefs of the end of the reign of Amonhotep III.—for example, those to be seen at Thebes in the tombs of Khaemhat and Rames,[17] both of which are definitely dated to the close of the reign—stir one almost as do the works of the early Florentine masters. There is an elusive grace in the dainty figures there sculptured, which, through another medium and under other laws of convention, cause them to appeal with the same force of indefinable sweetness as do the figures in the works of Filipino Lippi and Botticelli. In the mass of Egyptian painting and sculpture of secondary importance such gems as these have been overlooked and have not been appreciated by the public; but the present writer ventures to think that some day they will set the heart of all art-lovers dancing as danced those of Queen Tiy’s great masters.

The court in which the little prince passed his earliest years was more brilliant than ever it had been before, and Queen Tiy presided over scenes of indescribable splendour. Amonhotep III. has been truly called “the Magnificent”; and at no period, save that of Thothmes III., were the royal treasuries so full or the nobles so wealthy. Out of a pageant of festivities, from amidst the noise of song and laughter, the little sad-eyed prince first emerges on to the stage of history, led by the hand of Queen Tiy; but as he appears before us, above the clink of the golden wine-bowls, above the sound of the timbrels, one seems to hear the lilt of a more simple song, and the peaceful singing of a lark.

4. AKHNATON’S MARRIAGE.

During the last years of his reign the Pharaoh, although well under fifty years of age,[18] seems to have suffered from permanent ill-health. On two occasions the King of Mitanni sent to Egypt a miracle-working statuette of the goddess Ishtar, apparently in the hope that Amonhotep might be cured of his illness by it. It is probable that the king had never been a very strong man. Having been born when his father—himself extremely delicate—was but a child, he had had little chance of enjoying a robust middle age, and he passed on to his children this inherent weakness. One hears no more of his daughters,[19] whom we have seen mourning for their grandparents Yuaa and Tuau, and there is some likelihood that they died young. The little Prince Amonhotep was already developing constitutional weaknesses which rendered his life very precarious. His skull was misshapen, and he must have been subject to occasional epileptic fits. And now Queen Tiy gave birth to a daughter, who was named Baketaton in honour of the new god, and who seems to have lived less than a score of years, since nothing more is heard of her after her twelfth or thirteenth year.

Amonhotep III.

As Amonhotep, at the age of forty-eight or forty-nine, felt his end approaching, he seems to have shown considerable anxiety in regard to the succession. Here was his only son—now a boy of ten or eleven years of age—in so sad a state of health that he could not be expected to live to manhood, and in the event of his death the throne would be without an occupant in the direct line. Obviously it was necessary that he should be married as soon as possible, in order that he might become a father as early as that was naturally possible. Amonhotep III. himself had been married to Tiy when he was about twelve years of age, and his father Thothmes IV. had likewise been married at that early age.[20] The little Prince Amonhotep should, therefore, also be given a wife at once; and the Pharaoh now began to look around for a suitable consort for him. He had heard that Dushratta, King of Mitanni, had a small daughter who was said to be a comely maiden; but it appears that she was only eight or nine years of age,[21] and therefore could not be expected to provide an heir for at least another four years. Nevertheless there were many political reasons for proposing the union. Mitanni was, as we have seen, the buffer state between the Pharaoh’s Syrian possessions and the lands of the Hittites and of the Mesopotamians. Thothmes IV. had asked a bride from Mitanni, and Amonhotep III. himself had obtained Gilukhipa from thence, if not Queen Tiy also: both these being probably political matches, designed for the welfare of the Syrian empire. The Pharaoh therefore decided upon this marriage for his sickly son, and sent an embassy to Dushratta to negotiate the union between these two children.

The reply of Dushratta has, fortunately, been preserved to us. The Mitannian king acknowledges the arrival of the envoy, and is much rejoiced at this further binding together of the two countries. In a subsequent letter it is evident that the princess has already been sent to Egypt, and we are led to suppose that Prince Amonhotep has at once been married to her. The little princess was named Tadukhipa, but on her arrival in Egypt she was renamed Nefertiti. Her age, as mentioned above, is apparent from the fact that, although in after life she gave birth to children at very regular intervals, her first child was not born until nearly five years after her marriage.[22] So young was she that she did not at once cohabit with the prince, but was put under the care of a certain lady of the court named Ty, the wife of a noble of the name of Ay, who afterwards usurped the throne. This lady Ty called herself in later years “great nurse and nourisher of the Queen,” and Ay always called himself the king’s father-in-law (neter at). It would thus seem that they had become the actual foster-parents of the little Syrian girl. It was not at all unusual in Egypt for a child to be adopted thus; and it is a curious fact that if a woman gave the breast to a child of any age but for a moment, or if a man placed his finger in the child’s mouth, a formal adoption was considered to have been made.[23]

The court had hardly settled down after the celebration of the marriage of Amonhotep and Tadukhipa-Nefertiti, when it was thrown into mourning by the death of Amonhotep “the Magnificent,” which occurred in the thirty-sixth year of his reign. Queen Tiy at once assumed control of state affairs, on behalf of her barely eleven-year-old son, who as Amonhotep IV. now ascended the throne of the Pharaohs.

5. THE ACCESSION OF AKHNATON.

On coming to the throne the young king fixed his titulary in the following manner:—

Mighty Bull, Lofty of Plumes; Favourite of the Two Goddesses, Great in Kingship in Karnak; Golden Hawk, Wearer of Diadems in the Southern Heliopolis; King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Beautiful-is-the-Being-of-Ra, the Only-One-of-Ra; Son of the Sun, Peace-of-Amon (Amonhotep), Divine Ruler of Thebes; Great in Duration, Living for Ever and Ever, Beloved of Amon-Ra, Lord of Heaven.

These titles were drawn up on more or less prescribed lines, and conformed to the old custom of the Pharaohs. Like his ancestors, he was called “Beloved of Amon-Ra,” although, as we have seen, the power of that god was already much undermined. To counterbalance this reference to the god of Thebes, however, one finds the surprising title—

High Priest of Ra-Horakhti, rejoicing in the horizon in his name, “Heat-which-is-in-Aton.”

Let the boy be said to be beloved of Amon-Ra till the walls of Thebes reverberate with the cry; let Amon-Ra be called Lord of Heaven till the priestly heralds can shout no more: the doom of the god of Thebes cannot now be averted, for the reigning Pharaoh is dedicated to another god.

Akhnaton.

It is obvious that a boy of eleven years of age could not himself have claimed the office of the High Priest of Ra-Horakhti. Queen Tiy and her advisers must have deliberately endowed the youthful king with this office, largely in order to set the seal upon the fate of Amon. There were, perhaps, other reasons why this remarkable step was decided upon. It may be, as has been said, that the queen, before the birth of her son, had vowed him to Ra-Horakhti. Again, the boy was epileptic, was subject to hallucinations; and it may be that while in this condition he had seen visions or uttered words which led his mother to believe him to be the chosen one of the Heliopolitan god, whose name the prince must have been constantly hearing. In a palace where the mystical “Heat-which-is-in-Aton,” which was the new elaboration of the god’s name, was being daily invoked, and where the youthful master of Egypt was constantly falling into what appeared to be holy frenzy, it is not unlikely that the rising deity would be connected with the eccentricities of the young Pharaoh. The High Priest of Ra-Horakhti was always called “The Great of Visions,” and was thus essentially a visionary prophet either by nature or by circumstance; and the unfortunate boy’s physical condition may have been turned, thus, to account in the struggle against Amon-Ra.

One may now imagine the Pharaoh as a pale, sickly youth. His head seemed too large for his body; his eyelids were heavy; his eyes as one imagines them were wells of dream. His features were delicately moulded, and his mouth, in spite of a somewhat protruding lower jaw, is reminiscent of the best of the art of Rossetti. He seems to have been a quiet, studious boy, whose thoughts wandered in fair places, searching for that happiness which his physical condition had denied to him. His nature was gentle; his young heart overflowed with love. He delighted, it would seem, to walk in the gardens of the palace, to hear the birds singing, to watch the fish in the lake, to smell the flowers, to follow the butterflies, to warm his small bones in the sunshine. There was a grave dignity in his gait, or the artists have lied; and his words were already fraught with wisdom. The great crown of the Pharaohs sat easily upon his head, for his every movement was royal. He accepted as his due the homage of the court; yet he does not seem to have acted with arrogance, and was ever a tender-hearted, impulsive child. Already he was sometimes called “Lord of the Breath of Sweetness”;[24] and already he was so much beloved by his subjects that their adherence to him through the rough places of his future life was assured. For the first years of his reign he was, of course, entirely under the regency of his mother. Dushratta, the King of Mitanni, writing to congratulate the boy on his accession, addressed himself to Queen Tiy, as though he thought the king would hardly yet be able to understand a letter; and in a later communication he asks the Pharaoh to inquire of his mother as to certain matters of international policy. But although so young, the king was wise beyond his years, as the reader will presently see.

6. THE FIRST YEARS OF AKHNATON’S REIGN.

In a subsequent chapter it will be the writer’s purpose to show to what heights of ideal thought, and to what profundities of religious and moral philosophy, this boy, in the years of his early manhood, attained; and it will but enhance our respect for his abilities when he reached maturity, if we find in his early training all manner of shortcomings. The beautiful doctrines of the religion with which this Pharaoh’s name is identified were productions of his later days; and until he was at least seventeen years of age neither his exalted monotheism nor any of his future principles were really apparent. Some time after the eighth year of his reign one finds that he had evolved a religion so pure that one must compare it with Christianity in order to discover its faults; and the reader will presently see that this superb theology was not derived from his education.

One of the first acts of the king’s reign, undertaken at the desire of Queen Tiy or of the royal advisers, was the erection of a temple to Ra-Horakhti Aton at Karnak.[25] This was in no way an insult to Amon, for Thothmes III. and other Pharaohs had dedicated temples at Karnak to gods other than Amon. The priesthood of Amon-Ra recognised the existence of the many deities of Egypt, and gave them their place in the constitution of heaven, reserving for their own god the title of “King of the Gods.” There was a temple of Ptah here; there were shrines set apart for the worship of Min; and other gods, unconnected with Amon, were here accommodated. The priests of Amon-Ra thus could not offer any serious objection to the project. The building[26] was to be constructed of sandstone, and therefore various officials were dispatched to the great quarries of Gebel Silsileh, which lie on the river between Edfu and Kom Ombo, and to those near Esneh. Large tablets were there carved upon the cliffs towards the close of the work, and on them the figure of the Pharaoh was represented worshipping Amon, who was thus still the state god. Above the king’s figure, however, the disk of the sun is seen, and from it a number of lines, representing rays, project downwards towards the royal figure. These rays terminate in hands, which thus seem to be distributing the “Heat-which-is-in-Aton” around the Pharaoh. This is the first representation of the afterwards famous symbol of the religion of Aton, and it is significant that it should make its début in a scene representing the worship of Amon.

The king is called the High Priest of Ra-Horakhti; but the title “Living in truth,” which he took to himself in later years, and which had reference to the religion of Aton which he was soon to evolve, does not yet appear.

A large number of fragments from this shrine have been discovered, and on these one sees references to the gods Horus, Set, Wepwat, and others. The king is still called by the name Amonhotep, which was later banned, and the names of Aton, afterwards always written within the royal ovals or cartouches, are still lacking in that distinction. The temple was called “Aton-is-found-in-the-House-of-Aton,” a curious name of which the meaning is not clear.[27] A certain official named Hataay was “Scribe and Overseer of the Granary of the House of the Aton,” by which this temple is probably meant; and in the tomb of Rames a reference is made to the building by its full name, and a picture of it is given, but otherwise one knows little about it. The rapidity with which it was desired to be set up is shown by the fact that the great, well-trimmed blocks of stone usually employed in the construction of sacred buildings were largely dispensed with, and only small easily-handled blocks were used. The imperfections in the building were then hidden by a judicious use of plaster and cement, and thus the walls were smoothed for the reception of the reliefs. The quarter in which the temple stood was now called “Brightness of Aton the Great,” and Thebes received the new name of “City of the Brightness of Aton.”

There are two other monuments which date from these early years of the king’s reign: both are tombs of great nobles. At this period one of the greatest personages in the land was the above-mentioned Rames, the Vizir of Upper Egypt. This official was now engaged in constructing and decorating a magnificent sepulchre for himself in the Theban necropolis. In the great hall of this tomb the artists were busy preparing the beautiful sculptures and paintings which were to cover the walls, and ere half their work was finished they set themselves to the making of a fine figure of Amonhotep IV. seated upon his throne, with the goddess Maat standing behind him. The scene was probably executed a few months before the making of the tablets at the quarries. The sun’s rays do not appear, and the work was carried out strictly according to the canons of art obtaining during the last years of Amonhotep III. and the first of his son. But hardly had the figures been finished before the order came that the Aton rays had to be included, and certain changes in the art had to be recognised; and therefore the artists set to work upon another figure of the king standing under these many-handed beams of “heat,” and now accompanied by his, as yet, childless wife. The two scenes may be seen by visitors to Thebes standing side by side, and nowhere may the contrast between the old order of things and the new be so clearly observed.

While Rames was providing a tomb for himself at Thebes, another great noble named Horemheb, who ultimately usurped the throne, was constructing his sepulchre at Sakkârah, the Memphite necropolis near Cairo. Horemheb was commander-in-chief of the army, and in his tomb some superb reliefs are carved showing him receiving rewards in that capacity from the king. Some of the scenes represent the arrival of Asiatic refugees in Egypt, who ask to be allowed to take up their abode on the banks of the Nile, and the figures of these foreigners rank amongst the finest specimens of Egyptian art. In the inscriptions, Horemheb, who is supposed to be addressing the king, states that the Pharaoh owes his throne to Amon,[28] but yet we see that the figure of the king is drawn in that style of art which is typical of the new religion.[29]

7. THE NEW ART.

This sudden change in the style of the reliefs which we have observed in these two tombs and on the quarry tablets seems to be attributable to about the fourth year of the king’s reign. The reliefs which were now carved upon the walls of the new temple of Ra-Horakhti at Karnak show us a style of art quite different from that of the king’s early years. The figure of the Pharaoh, which the artists in the tomb of Rames represented as standing below the newly-invented sun’s rays, is as different from the earlier figure there executed as chalk is from cheese. The Pharaoh whom we see in the tomb of Horemheb and on the quarry tablets is represented, according to canons of art, entirely different from those existing at the king’s accession.

In the drawing of the human figure, and especially that of the Pharaoh, there are three very distinct characteristics in this new style of art. Firstly, as to the head: the skull is elongated; the chin, as seen in profile, is drawn as though it were sharply pointed; the flesh under the jaw is skimped, thus giving an upward turn to the line; and the neck is represented as being long and thin. Secondly, the stomach is made to obtrude itself upon the attention by being drawn as though from a fat and ungainly model. And thirdly, the hips and thighs are abnormally large, though from the knee downwards the legs are of more natural size. This distortion of human anatomy is marked in a lesser degree in all the lines of the body; and the whole figure becomes a startling type of an art which seems at first to have sprung fully developed from the brain of the boy-Pharaoh or from one of the eccentrics of the court.

The king was now fifteen years old, and seems to have been extraordinarily mature for his age. It may be that he had objected to be represented in the conventional manner, and had told his artists to draw him as he was. The elongated skull, the pointed chin, and even, perhaps, the protruding paunch, may thus have originated. But the ungainly thighs could only be accounted for by some radical deformity in the royal model, and that he was a well-made man in this respect his recently discovered bones most clearly show.

Purely tentatively a suggestion may here be offered to account for this peculiar treatment of the human body. It is probable that the king had now, in a boyish way, become deeply interested in the religious contest which was beginning to be waged between Amon-Ra and Ra-Horakhti Aton. Having listened to the arguments on both sides, it may have occurred to him to study for himself the ancient documents and inscriptions bearing on the matter. In so doing, he would have found that Amon had become the state god only some few hundred years before his own time, and that previous to his ascent to this important position, previous even to the earliest mention of his name, Ra-Horakhti had been supreme. Carrying his inquiries back, past the days of the pyramid kings to the archaic Pharaohs who reigned at the dim beginning of things, he would still have found the Heliopolitan god worshipped. One of the Pharaohs’ most cherished titles was “Son of the Sun,” which, as we have seen, had been borne by each successive sovereign since the days of the Fifth Dynasty, whose kings claimed descent from Ra himself. Such studies would inevitably bring two matters into prominence: firstly, that Amon was, after all, but a usurper; and, secondly, that as Pharaoh he was the descendant of Ra-Horakhti, and was that god’s representative on earth.

On these grounds, more than on any others, all things connected with Amon would become distasteful to him. He was too young to understand fully which of the two religions was the better morally or theologically; but he was old enough to be moved by the romance of history, and to feel that those great, shadowy Pharaohs who lived when the world was young, and who at the dawn of events worshipped the sun, were the truest and best examples for him to follow. They were his ancestors, and as they were the sons of Ra, so he, too, was the proud descendant of that great god. In his veins there ran the blood of the sun, that “Heat-which-is-in-Aton” pulsed through and through him; and the more he read in those old documents the more he was stirred by the glory of that distant past when men worshipped the god whose rights Amon had usurped. Now the canons of art were regarded as a distinctly religious institution, and the methods of treating the human figure then in vogue had in the first place the sanction of the priesthood of Amon; and few things would be more upsetting to their régime than the abandoning of these canons. This was probably recognised by those who were furthering the cause of Ra-Horakhti, and the young king may have been assisted and encouraged in his views. Presently it may have been brought home to him that, since he was thus the representative of those archaic kings and the High Priest of their god, it was fitting that the canons acknowledged by those far-off ancestors should be recognised by him. Here, then, he would both please his own romantic fancy and deal a blow at the Amon priesthood by banning the art which they upheld, and by infusing into the sculptures and paintings of his time something of the spirit of the most ancient art of Egypt.

The Art of Akhnaton compared with Archaic Art.

1. The head of Akhnaton. From a contemporary drawing.

2. The head of a king. From an archaic statuette found by Professor Petrie at Abydos.

3. The head of Akhnaton. From a contemporary drawing.

4. The head of a prince. From an archaic tablet found by Professor Petrie at Abydos.

5. An archaic statuette found by Professor Petrie at Diospolis, showing the large thighs found in the art of Akhnaton.

In the old temples of Heliopolis and elsewhere a few relics of that period, no doubt, were still preserved; and the king was thus able to study the wood and slate carvings and the ivory figures of archaic times. We of the present day can also study such figures, a few specimens having been brought to light by modern excavators; and the similarity between the treatment of the human body in this archaic art and the new art of Akhnaton at once becomes apparent. In the accompanying illustrations some archaic figures are shown, and one may perhaps see in them the origin of the idiosyncrasies of the new school. Here and in all representations of archaic men one sees the elongated skull so characteristic of the king’s style; in the ivory figure of an archaic Pharaoh one sees the well-known droop of Akhnaton’s head and his pointed chin; in the clay and ivory figures is the prominent stomach; and here also, most apparent of all, are the unaccountably large thighs and ponderous hips.

Akhnaton’s art might thus be said to be a kind of renaissance—a return to the classical period of archaic days; the underlying motive of this return being the desire to lay emphasis upon the king’s character as the representative of that most ancient of all gods, Ra-Horakhti.

Another feature of the new religion now becomes apparent. In the worship of Ra-Horakhti Aton there was an endeavour to do honour to the Pharaoh as the son of the sun, and to the god as the founder of the royal line. Tradition stated that Ra or Ra-Horakhti had once reigned upon earth, and that his spirit had passed from Pharaoh to Pharaoh. This god was thus the only true King of Heaven, and Amon was but a usurper of much more recent date. It was for this reason that the names of the new god were placed within royal cartouches; and for this reason the king was so careful to call Ra-Horakhti his “father,” and to name him “god and king.” For this reason also Akhnaton often wore the crown of Lower Egypt which was used at Heliopolis, but never the crown of Upper Egypt, which history told him did not exist when Ra ruled on earth.[30]

Apart from the representation of the human form, the new art is chiefly characterised by its freedom of poses. An attempt is made to break away from tradition, and a desire is shown to have done with the conventions of the age. Never before had the artists caught the swing of a walk, the relaxation of a seated figure, so well or so truthfully. Sculpture in the round now reached a height of perfection which places it above all but the art of the Greeks in the old world; and there is a grace and naturalness in the low-reliefs which command one’s admiration.

There are only two artists of the period who are known by name. The one was a certain Auta, who is represented in a relief dating from some eight years after the change in the art had taken place. It is a significant fact that this personage held the post of master-artist to Queen Tiy; and it is possible that in him and his patron we have the originators of the movement. The king, however, was now old enough to take an active interest in such matters; and the other artist who is known by name, a certain Bek, definitely states that the king himself taught him. Thus there is reason to suppose that the young Pharaoh’s own hand is to be traced in the new canons, although they were instituted when he was but fifteen years old.

8. THE NEW RELIGION DEVELOPS.

There is an interesting record, apparently dating from about this period, which is to be seen upon the rocks near the breccia quarries of Wady Hammamât. Here there are three cartouches standing upon two neb signs, symbolic of sovereignty, and above them is the disk and rays of the new religion. One of these cartouches, surmounted by the tall feathers worn by the queens of this period, contains a very short name, which can only be that of Queen Tiy.[31] The other two cartouches contain the names Amonhotep (IV.) and the Pharaoh’s second designation. Thus we see that after the new religious symbol had been introduced, and just before the king took the name of “Akhnaton,” Queen Tiy still held equal royal rank with him, and was evidently Regent.

The Artist Auta.

During the fifteenth to the seventeenth years of his age the king devoted a considerable amount of time and thought to the changes which were taking place. With the enthusiasm of youth he threw himself into the new movement, and one may suppose that it required all Queen Tiy’s tact and diplomacy to keep him from offending his country by some rash action against the priesthood of Amon. Those priests were by no means reconciled to the king’s devotion to Ra-Horakhti; and although he still nominally served the Theban god, they felt that every day he was becoming more estranged from that deity. No doubt there were many passages of arms between the High Priest of Amon-Ra and this royal High Priest of the sun, young as he was. The new art, upsetting all the old religious conventions, was distasteful to the priests; the new religious thought did not conform to their stereotyped doctrines; and much that the king said was absolutely heretical to their ears. The tide of new thought, directed in so eager and boyishly unreserved a manner, was sweeping them from their feet, and they knew not whither they were being carried.

The court officials blindly followed their young king, and to every word which he spoke they listened attentively. Sometimes the thoughts which he voiced came direct from the mazes of his own mind; sometimes perhaps he repeated the utterances of his deep-thinking mother; and sometimes there passed from his lips the pearls of wisdom which he had gleaned from the wise men of his court. It had been the boy’s desire to listen to the dreams of the East, to receive into his brain those speculations which ever meander so charmedly through the lands more near the sunrise. At his behest the dreamers of Asia related to him their visions; the philosophers made pregnant his mind with the mystery of knowledge; the poets sung to him harp-songs in which echoed the cry of the elder days; the priests of strange gods submitted to him the creeds of strange people. To him was made known the sweetness of the legends of Greece. The laughter of the woods rang in his ears, though never in narrow Egypt had he felt the enchantment of great forests. He had not seen the mountains, and the wooded slopes which rise from the Mediterranean were scenes but dreamed of; and yet it was the flute of Pan and the song of the nymphs in the mountain streams which set the thoughts dancing within his misshapen skull. He had not walked in the shadow of the cedars of Lebanon, nor had he ascended the Syrian hills; but nevertheless the hymns of Adonis and the chants of Baal were as familiar to him as were the solemn chants of Amon-Ra. The rose-gardens of Persia, the incense-groves of Araby, added their philosophies to his dreams, and the haunting lips of Babylon whispered to him tales of far-off days. From Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, and Cyprus there came to him the doctrines of those who had business in great waters; and Libya and Ethiopia disclosed their mysteries to his eager ears. The fertile brain of the Pharaoh was thus sown at an early age with the seed of all that was wonderful in the world of thought.

It must always be remembered that the king had much foreign blood in his veins. On the other hand, those men to whom he spoke, though highly educated, were but superstitious Egyptians who could not relieve themselves of the belief that a divine power rested upon the Pharaoh. Thus his speculative young brain poured its fantasies into attentive minds unbiassed by rival speculations, though narrowed by conventions. Egyptians, ever lacking in originality, have always possessed the power to imitate and adapt; and those nobles whose fortunes were dependent upon the royal favour soon learnt to attune their minds to the note of their king. Daily they must have gone about their business, ostentatiously attempting to hold to the difficult path of truth; laboriously telling themselves what wonders the new thought revealed to them; loudly praising the wisdom of the boy-Pharaoh; and nervously asking themselves whether and when the wrath of Amon would smite them.

Thus encouraged, the king and his mother developed their speculations, and drew into their circle of followers some of the greatest nobles of the land. A striking example of this proselytising is to be found in the tomb of the Vizir Rames. It has already been stated that that official had constructed for himself a sepulchre in the Theban necropolis, upon the walls of which he had first caused a portrait of the young king to be sculptured in the old conventional style, and later had added another portrait of the Pharaoh standing beneath the radiating beams of the sun, executed in the new style. Rames now added various other scenes and inscriptions, and he records a certain speech made by the king to him, and his own reply.

“The words of Ra,” the king had said, “are before thee.... My august father[32] taught me their essence and [revealed] them to me.... They were known in my heart, opened to my face. I understood....”

“Thou art the Only One of Aton; in possession of his designs,” replied Rames. “Thou hast directed the mountains. The fear of thee is in the midst of their secret chambers, as it is in the hearts of the people. The mountains hearken to thee as the people hearken.”

Thus one sees how the king was already formulating some kind of doctrine in his head, and that the nobles were receiving it; but it is significant that there are here representations of Rames loaded with gifts by the Pharaoh, as though in reward for his allegiance. The Pharaoh seems, indeed, to have showered honours upon those who appeared to grasp intelligently the thoughts which were still immature in his own head; and there must have been many an antagonist who rallied to his standard from the sheer love of gold. The king was in need of all the support which he could muster, for an open break with the priesthood of Amon-Ra grew more and more probable as his doctrines shaped themselves in his mind; and although the people of Egypt as a whole would, without question, follow their Pharaoh for the one reason that he was Pharaoh, there was every probability that the Amon priesthood and the Theban populace would make something of a stand against any infringement of the rights of their local god.

The young Pharaoh seems to have been very popular, and one may presume that he inherited, from his illustrious fathers, the charm of manner which there is not a little evidence to show they possessed. Throughout his life, and for some years after his death, he retained the affection of his people; and when one considers how faithfully his nobles followed him so long as he had strength and health to lead them, and how completely lost they were at his death, one realises how great an influence he must have exerted over them. Even at this early age they seem to have possessed a deep regard for the grave, thoughtful boy; and behind all the pretence, the hypocrisy, and the merely conventional loyalty, one surely catches a glimpse of a strong, personal affection for the king.

We must here record the birth of the king’s first daughter, which occurred in about the fifth year of his reign, when he was some sixteen years of age, and when Nefertiti was about thirteen years old. The child was named Merytaton, “Beloved of Aton”; and though the advent of a daughter instead of a son must have been a grave disappointment to the royal couple, a remarkable degree of affection was lavished upon the little girl, as will be apparent in the sequel.

9. THE NATURE OF THE NEW RELIGION.

There was nothing strikingly exalted in the religion which was now so filling the king’s mind. Ra-Horakhti Aton was in no wise considered as the only god: there were as yet no ideas of monotheism in the doctrine. In the new temple at Karnak, as we have seen, Horus, Set, Wepwat, and other gods were named; and elsewhere Amon was reluctantly recognised. The goddess Maat, in the tomb of Rames, was not obliterated from the walls, but still stood protecting the king; and in the same tomb Horus of Edfu is invoked. In the tomb of Horemheb, Horus, Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, and Hathor are mentioned, and the gods of the Necropolis still receive honour; Horemheb himself still holds the honorary post of High Priest of Horus, Lord of Alabastronpolis; Thoth and Maat are referred to; and there is a magical prayer to Ra, which is by no means of lofty character. Scarabs of this period speak of the Pharaoh as beloved of Thoth. And in a letter to the king dated in the fifth year of his reign, Ptah and “the gods and goddesses” of Memphis are referred to.

This letter is of such interest that a fuller account of it must here be given. It was addressed to the king, who is still called Amonhotep, by a royal steward named Apiy, who lived at Memphis. Two copies of the letter were found at Gurob,[33] both dated in the fifth year of the king’s reign, the third month of winter, and the nineteenth day. The letter begins with the full titles of the Pharaoh, including the phrase “living in truth,” which from this time onwards was always added to his name. Then follows the invocation: “May Ptah of the beautiful countenance work for thee, who created thy beauties, thy true father who raised (?) thee from his house to rule the orbit of the Aton.” Next comes the real business of the letter: “A communication is this to the Master, [to whom be] life, prosperity, and health, to give information that the temple of thy father Ptah ... is sound and prosperous; the house of Pharaoh ... is flourishing; the establishments of Pharaoh ... are flourishing; the residence of Pharaoh ... is flourishing and healthy; the offerings of all the gods and goddesses who are upon the soil (?) of Memphis are ... complete; complete [are they] there is nothing delayed from them.” Again the titles of the king are given, and the letter ends with the date.

Thus in the fifth year of the king’s reign, when he was about sixteen years of age, the various gods of Egypt were still acknowledged; and, though the art had been changed and the worship of Ra-Horakhti under the name of Aton had made great strides towards supremacy, there is as yet no sign of the lofty monotheism which the Pharaoh was soon to propound.

In the portions of the tomb of Horemheb which date from this period, Ra-Horakhti is invoked in the following words: “Ra-Horakhti, great god, Lord of heaven, Lord of earth, who cometh forth from his horizon and illuminateth the Two Lands [of Egypt], the sun of darkness as the great one, as Ra;” and again: “Ra, Lord of Truth, great god, sovereign of Heliopolis, ... Horakhti, only god, king of the gods, who rises in the west and sendeth forth his beauty.” From other sources, which we have seen, the god is called “Ra-Horakhti rejoicing in the horizon in his name Heat-which-is-in-Aton.”

Here we have simply the old religion of Heliopolis, to which has been grafted something of the doctrines of the Syrian Adonis or Aton. At Heliopolis there was a sacred bull, known as Mnevis, which was regarded as the living personification of Ra-Horakhti, and which was treated with divine honours, like the more famous Apis bull of Memphis. Even this superstition was accepted by the king at this time, and continued to be acknowledged by him for yet another year or two.[34] The “Heat-which-is-in-Aton” offered food for much speculation, and, by directing the attention to an intangible quality of the sun, opened up the widest fields for religious thought. But, with this exception, there was nothing as yet in the new religion to command one’s admiration.

[III.]
AKHNATON FOUNDS A NEW CITY.

“A brave soul, undauntedly facing the momentum of immemorial tradition ... that he might disseminate ideas far beyond and above the capacity of his age to understand.”—Breasted: ‘History of Egypt.’

1. THE BREAK WITH THE PRIESTHOOD OF AMON-RA.

The expected break with the priesthood of Amon was not long in coming. One knows nothing of the details of the quarrel, but it may be supposed that Akhnaton himself flung down the gauntlet, making the rash attempt to rid himself of the weight of an organisation which had proved such a drag upon his actions. There is no evidence to show that he disbanded the priesthood, or prohibited the worship of Amon at this period of his reign; but as the ultimate persecution of that god, some years later, commenced very soon after the death of his mother, one may suppose that it was her restraining influence which prevented him from precipitating a struggle to the death with the god of Thebes. The king was now entering upon the sixth year of his reign and the seventeenth of his age, and he was already developing in his mind theories and principles which were soon to produce radical changes in the new religion of the Court. He found, no doubt, that it was hopeless to attempt to convert the people of Thebes to the new doctrines; and daily he realised the more clearly that the development either of the faith of Ra-Horakhti Aton, or of the ideals which he was beginning to find therein, was cramped and checked by the hostility of the influences which pressed around his immediate circle. From the walls of every temple, from pylons and gateways, pillars and obelisks, the figure of Amon stared down at him in defiance; and everywhere he was confronted with the tokens of that god’s power. His little temple at Karnak was overshadowed by the larger buildings of Amon; and the few priests who served at the new altar were lost amidst the crowds of the ministers of the Theban god. How could the flower thrive and bloom in such uncongenial soil? How could the sun shine through such density of conventional tradition?

The king, no doubt, endeavoured to cripple the priesthood of Amon by cutting down its budget as much as possible, and by attempting to win over to his side some of the priests of high standing. Had he succeeded in reducing it to the rank of the smaller cults, it is probable that he would have been satisfied so to leave it; for at this time he wished only to place Ra-Horakhti in a position of undoubted supremacy above all other gods. But the vast resources of Amon seemed unconquerable, and there appeared to be little chance of reducing the priesthood to a position of inferior rank.

In this dilemma the king took a step which had been for some time considered in his mind and in the minds of his advisers. He decided to abandon Thebes. He would build a city far away from all contaminating influences, and there he would hold his court and worship his god. On clean, new soil, he would establish the earthly home of Ra-Horakhti Aton, and there, with his faithful followers, he would develop those schemes which now so filled his brain. Thus also, by reducing Thebes to the position of a provincial town, he might lessen the power of the priesthood of Amon; for no longer would Amon be the royal god, the god of the capital. He would shake the dust of Thebes from off his sandals, and never again would he allow himself to be baffled and irritated by the sight of the glories of Amon.

The first step which he took was that of changing his name from Amonhotep, “The-Peace-of-Amon,” to Akhnaton, “The-Glory-of-Aton”; and from that time forth the word Amon hardly passed his lips. He retained two of his other names,—i.e., “Beautiful-is-the-Being-of-Ra,” and “The-Only-One-of-Ra,” the latter being often used by him; but such titles and names as that which made mention of Karnak be entirely dispensed with. He now laid more stress upon the nature of his god as “Aton” or “the Aton”[35] than as Ra-Horakhti; and from this time onwards the name Ra-Horakhti becomes less and less prominent, though retained throughout the king’s reign.

2. AKHNATON SELECTS THE SITE OF HIS CITY.

Down the river it would seem that the young Pharaoh now sailed in his royal dahabiyeh, looking to right and left as he went, now inspecting this site and now examining that. At last he came upon a place which suited his fancy to perfection. It was situated about 160 miles above the modern Cairo. At this point the limestone cliffs upon the east bank leave the river and recede for about three miles, returning to the water some five or six miles farther along. Thus a bay is formed which is protected on its west side by the river in which there here lies a small island, and in all other directions by the crescent of the cliffs. Upon the island he would erect pavilions and pleasure-houses. Along the edge of the river there was a narrow strip of cultivated land whereon he would plant his palace gardens, and those of the nobles’ villas. Behind this verdant band the smooth desert stretched, and here he would build the palace itself and the great temples. Behind this again, the sand and gravel surface of the wilderness gently sloped up to the foot of the cliffs, and here there would be roads and causeways whereon the chariots might be whirled in the early mornings. In the face of the cliffs he would cut his tomb and those of his followers; and at intervals around the crescent of these hills he would cause great boundary-stones to be made, so that all men might know and respect the limits of his city. What splendid quays would edge the river, what palaces reflect their whiteness in its waters! There would be broad shaded avenues, and shimmering lakes surrounded by the fairest trees of Asia. Temples would raise their lofty pylons to the blue skies, and broad courts should lie stretched in the sunlight.

In Akhnaton’s youthful mind there already stood the temples and the mansions; already he heard the sound of sweet music. The laughter of maidens was added to the singing of the birds which he heard in the trees; the pomp of imperial Egypt displaced the farm-houses and the fields of corn which now occupied the site; and the song of the shepherd in the wilderness was changed to the rolling psalms of the Aton. Fair was this dream and enthralling to the dreamer. To Queen Tiy it probably did not appeal so strongly; for Thebes was full of associations to her, and her palace beside the lake was very dear. There is, indeed, every reason to suppose that the dowager-queen lived on at Thebes after her son had abandoned it.

3. THE FIRST FOUNDATION INSCRIPTION.

Preparations were soon made for the laying out of the city, and in a very short time Akhnaton was called upon to visit the site in order to perform the foundation ceremonies. Fortunately the inscriptions upon some of the boundary tablets in the desert tell us something of the manner in which the king marked the limits of the city.[36] The first inscription reads as follows:—

Year 6, fourth month of the second season, day 13.[37] ... On this day the King was in the City of the Horizon of Aton.[38] His Majesty ascended a great chariot of electrum, [appearing] like Aton when he rises from his [eastern] horizon and fills the land with his love; and he started a goodly course [from his camping place] to the City of the Horizon.... Heaven was joyful, earth was glad, and every heart was happy when they saw him. And his Majesty offered a great sacrifice to Aton, of bread, beer, horned bulls, polled bulls, beasts, fowl, wine, incense, frankincense, and all goodly herbs on this day of demarcating the City of the Horizon....

After these things, the good pleasure of Aton being done, ... [the King returned from] the City of the Horizon, and he rested upon his great throne with which he is well pleased, which uplifts his beauties. And his Majesty continued in the presence of his father Aton, and Aton shone upon him in life and length of days, invigorating his body each day.

And his Majesty said, “Bring me the companions of the King, the great ones and the mighty ones, the captains of soldiers, and the nobles of the land in its entirety.” And they were conducted to him straightway, and they lay on their bellies before his Majesty, kissing the ground before his mighty will.

And his Majesty said unto them, “Ye behold the City of the Horizon of Aton, which the Aton has desired me to make for him as a monument in the great name of my Majesty for ever. For it was the Aton, my father, that brought me to this City of the Horizon. There was not a noble who directed me to it; there was not any man in the whole land who led me to it, saying, ‘It is fitting for his Majesty that he make a City of the Horizon of Aton in this place.’ Nay, but it was the Aton, my father, that directed me to it to make it for him.... Behold the Pharaoh found that [this site] belonged not to a god, nor to a goddess, it belonged not to a prince, nor to a princess. There was no right for any man to act as owner of it.” ...

[... And they answered and said] “Lo! it is Aton that putteth [the thought] in thy heart regarding any place that he desires. He doth not uplift the name of any King except thy Majesty; he doth not [exalt] any other except [thee.] ... Thou drawest unto Aton every land, thou adornest for him the towns which he had made for his own self, all lands, all countries, the Hanebu[39] with their products and their tribute upon their backs for him that made their life, and by whose rays one lives and breathes the air. May he grant eternity in seeing his rays.... Verily, the City of the Horizon will thrive like Aton in heaven for ever and ever.”

Then his Majesty lifted his hand to heaven unto Him that formed him, saying, “As my father Ra-Horakhti Aton liveth, the great and living Aton, ordaining life, vigorous in life, my father, my rampart of a million cubits, my remembrancer of eternity, my witness of that which pertains to eternity, who formeth himself with his own hands, whom no artificer hath known, who is established in rising and in setting each day without ceasing. Whether he is in heaven or in earth,[40] every eye seeth him without [failing,] while he fills the land with his beams and makes every face to live. With seeing whom may my eyes be satisfied daily, when he rises in this temple of Aton in the City of the Horizon, and fills it with his own self by his beams, beauteous in love, and lays them upon me in life and length of days for ever and ever.

“I will make the City of the Horizon of Aton for the Aton, my father, in this place. I will not make the City south of it, north of it, west of it, or east of it. I will not pass beyond the southern boundary-stone southward, neither will I pass beyond the northern boundary-stone northward to make for him a City of the Horizon there; neither will I make for him a city on the western side. Nay, but I will make the City of the Horizon for the Aton, my father, upon the east side, the place which he did enclose for his own self with cliffs, and made a plain (?) in the midst of it that I might sacrifice to him thereon: this is it. Neither shall the Queen say unto me, ‘Behold, there is a goodly place for the City of the Horizon in another place,’ and I hearken unto her. Neither shall any noble nor [any one] of all men who are in the whole land [say unto me], ‘Behold, there is a goodly place for the City of the Horizon in another place,’ and I hearken unto them. Whether it be down-stream or southwards, or westwards, or eastwards, I will not say ‘I will abandon this City of the Horizon and will hasten away and make the City of the Horizon in this other goodly place’ for ever. Nay, but I did find this City of the Horizon for the Aton, which he had himself desired, and with which he is pleased for ever and ever.

“I will make a temple of Aton for the Aton, my father, in this place. I will make a ... of Aton for the Aton, my father, in this place. I will make a Shadow-of-the-Sun[41] of the Great Wife of the King, Nefertiti, for the Aton, my father, in this place. I will make a House of Rejoicing for the Aton, my father, on the island of ‘Aton illustrious in Festivals’ in this place.... I will make all works which are necessary for the Aton, my father, in this place. I will make ... for the Aton, my father, in this place. I will make for myself the Palace of Pharaoh; and I will make the Palace of the Queen in this place. There shall be made for me a sepulchre in the eastern hills; my burial shall be made therein ... and the burial of the Chief Wife of the King, Nefertiti, shall be made therein, and the burial of the King’s daughter Merytaton shall be made therein. If I die in any town of the north, south, west, or east, I will be brought here and my burial shall be made in the City of the Horizon. If the Great Queen, Nefertiti, who lives, die in any town of the north, south, west, or east, she shall be brought here and buried in the City of the Horizon. If the King’s daughter Merytaton die in any town of the north, south, west, or east, she shall be brought here and buried in the City of the Horizon. And the sepulchre of Mnevis shall be made in the eastern hills and he shall be buried therein. The tombs of the High Priests and the Divine Fathers and the priests of the Aton shall be made in the eastern hills, and they shall be buried therein. The tombs of the officers, and others, shall be made in the eastern hills, and they shall be buried therein.

“For as my father Ra-Horakhti Aton liveth ... [the words?] of the priests, more evil are they than those things which I heard until the year four, more evil are they than those things which I have heard in ... more evil are they than those things which King [Nebmaara[42]] heard, more evil are they than those things which Menkheperura[43] heard....”

The rest of the inscription is so much broken that only a few words here and there can be read. They seem to refer to the king’s further projects,—how he will make ships to sail to and from the city, how he will build granaries, celebrate festivals, plant trees, and so on.

The reference to the year four is very interesting, and it would seem that it was at about that date that the king’s eyes were opened to the necessity of making war upon the priesthood of Amon. As we have seen, it was in about the fourth year of his reign that the great changes in the art took place, and the symbol of the sun’s rays was introduced into the sculptures. The mention of the two previous Pharaohs shows that troubles were already brewing then; but it had remained for the energetic young Akhnaton to bring matters to a head.

4. THE SECOND FOUNDATION INSCRIPTION.

The inscription recording these events was probably not written until some months after they had occurred. Just when the engravers had made an end of their work a second daughter was born to the king and queen, whom they named Meketaton; and orders were given that her figure should be added upon the boundary tablet beside that of her sister, which already appeared there with Akhnaton and Nefertiti. The king was somewhat distressed that a son had not been granted to him; for the thought was bitter that, in the event of his death, all his projects would fall to the ground. He therefore altered the wording of the inscriptions about to be written on the other boundary tablets; and, by including his oath in the text, he added an even greater integrity to the decree. The name of the second daughter was now inserted in this inscription, which reads:—

Year six, fourth month of the second season, thirteenth day.

On this day the King was in the City of the Horizon of Aton, in the parti-coloured tent made for his Majesty in the City of the Horizon, the name of which is “The Aton is well pleased.” And his Majesty ascended a great chariot of electrum, drawn by a span of horses, and [he appeared] like Aton when he rises from the horizon and fills the two lands with his love. And he started a goodly course to the City of the Horizon, on this the first occasion, ... to dedicate it as a monument to the Aton, even as his father Ra-Horakhti Aton had given command.... And he caused a great sacrifice to be offered.

And his Majesty went southward, and halted on his chariot before his father Ra-Horakhti Aton, at the [foot of the] south-east hills, and Aton shone upon him in life and length of days, invigorating his body every day.

Now this is the oath pronounced by the King:—

“As my father Ra-Horakhti Aton liveth, as my heart is happy in the Queen and her children—as to whom may it be granted that the Chief Wife of the King, Nefertiti, living for ever and ever, grow aged after a multitude of years, in the care of the Pharaoh, and may it be granted that the King’s daughter Merytaton and the King’s daughter Meketaton, her children, grow old in the care of the Chief Wife of the King, their mother....

“This is my oath of truth which it is my desire to pronounce, and of which I will not say ‘It is false’ eternally for ever.

“The southern boundary-stone which is on the eastern hills. It is the boundary-stone of the City of the Horizon, namely this one by which I have made halt. I will not pass beyond it southwards for ever and ever. Make the south-west boundary-stone opposite it on the western hills of the City of the Horizon exactly.

“The middle boundary-stone which is on the eastern hills. It is the boundary-stone of the City of the Horizon by which I have made halt on the eastern hills of the City of the Horizon. I will not pass beyond it eastwards for ever and ever. Make the middle boundary-stone which is to be on the western hills opposite it exactly.

“The north-eastern boundary-stone by which I have made halt. It is the northern boundary-stone of the City of the Horizon. I will not pass beyond it down-stream for ever and ever. Make the north boundary-stone which is to be on the western hills opposite it exactly.

“And the City of the Horizon of Aton extends from the south boundary-stone as far as the north boundary-stone, measured between boundary-stone and boundary-stone on the eastern, hills [which measurement] amounts to 6 ater,[44] ¾ khe, and 4 cubits. Likewise from the south-west boundary-stone to the north-west boundary-stone on the western hills [the measurement] amounts to 6 ater, ¾ khe, and 4 cubits likewise exactly.

“And the area within these four boundary-stones from the eastern hills to the western hills is the City of the Horizon of Aton in its proper self. It belongs to my father Ra-Horakhti Aton: mountains, deserts, meadows, islands, high-ground, low-ground, land, water, villages, embankments, men, beasts, groves, and all things which the Aton my father shall bring into existence for ever and ever.

“I will not neglect this oath which I have made to the Aton my father for ever and ever; nay, but it shall be set on a tablet of stone as the south-east boundary, likewise as the north-east boundary of the City of the Horizon; and it shall be set likewise on a tablet of stone as the south-west boundary, likewise as the north-west boundary of the City of the Horizon. It shall not be erased, it shall not be washed out, it shall not be kicked, it shall not be struck with stones, its spoiling shall not be brought about. If it be missing, if it be spoilt, if the tablet on which it is shall fall, I will renew it again afresh in the place in which it was.”

5. THE DEPARTURE FROM THEBES.

From the above inscription one sees that Akhnaton had now decided to include the west bank of the river, opposite to the original site, in the new domain; and the great boundary tablets are there to be found as on the eastern side. By the time these decrees were engraved the Pharaoh was nearly eighteen years of age; and these developments in his plans are the natural signs of the progress of his brain towards that of a grown man.

Having laid the foundations of the city, the king probably returned to Thebes, where he waited as patiently as possible for his dream to take concrete form. This period of waiting must have been peculiarly trying to him, for his troubles with the Amon priesthood must have embittered his days. He seems, however, to have been extremely devoted to his wife, Nefertiti, who had now grown, it would seem, into a beautiful young woman of fifteen or sixteen years of age; and the arrival of the second baby afforded an interest which meant much to him. One may now picture the king and queen living, in the seclusion of the palace, a homely, simple existence, ever dwelling in a happy day-dream upon the future glories of the new city, and the rising power of the religion of Aton. Akhnaton’s ill-health, of course, must have caused both his friends and himself much anxiety; but even this had its compensations, for those who suffer from epilepsy are by the gods beloved, and Akhnaton, no doubt, believed the hallucinations due to his disease to be god-given visions. There must have been a very considerable amount of business to be worked through in connection with the building of the city, and he could have had little time to brood upon what he now considered to be the wrongs inflicted upon him and his house by the priests of Amon.

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.

Akhnaton and Nefertiti with their three Daughters.

Thus was the king’s city planned and laid out. The two years of feverish work had probably produced considerable results, and already we may picture the city taking form. The royal palace was perhaps almost finished by now, and the villas of some of the nobles were habitable. With many a sigh of relief Akhnaton must have bade farewell to Thebes. A third daughter, who was named Ankhsenpaaton, had just been born; and one may thus picture the royal party which sailed down the river as being very distinctly a family. One sees Akhnaton, a sickly young man of nineteen years of age, walking to and fro upon the deck of the royal vessel, with his hand upon the shoulder of his fair young wife, now some seventeen years old, in whose arms the baby princess is carried. Toddling beside them are the two other princesses, one somewhat over two years of age, the other about four years. The queen’s sister, Nezemmut, records of whose existence soon become apparent, was perhaps also of the party, having left the court of Mitanni to be a companion to Nefertiti. Ay and Ty, the foster-parents of Nefertiti, were doubtless with the royal family now as they sailed down the river; and several of the nobles who play a part in the following pages no doubt formed the suite which attended to the royal commands.

6. THE AGE OF AKHNATON.

We have spoken of the king as being nineteen years old. The story has now reached a point at which we must pause to consider this vexed question of Akhnaton’s age. In the above pages it has been said that the Pharaoh was about eleven years old at his marriage and accession to the throne; was fifteen when the canons of art were changed and the symbols of the Aton religion introduced; was seventeen when the foundations of the new city were laid; and was nineteen when he took up his residence there. Let us study these ages in the above order.

The Head of the Mummy of Thothmes IV., the grandfather of Akhnaton.

Firstly, then, as to the king’s marriage. The mummy of Thothmes IV., the grandfather of Akhnaton, has been shown by Dr Elliot Smith to be that of a man not more than about twenty-six years of age. That king was succeeded by his son Amonhotep III., who is known to have been married to Queen Tiy before the second year of his reign, and to have been old enough at that time to begin to hunt big game. It would be difficult to believe that he would be permitted to join any hunting party, however secure against accident, before the twelfth year of his age; but, on the other hand, if he was more than that age, his father would have to have been less than twelve at his marriage. Thus the only possible conclusion is that both Thothmes IV. and Amonhotep III. were barely thirteen when they were married, and very possibly even younger. This is shown to be a correct conclusion by the fact that the mummy of Amonhotep III. has been pronounced by Dr Elliot Smith to be that of a man of forty-five or fifty; and as he reigned thirty-six years he must have been at most fourteen, and probably some years younger, at his accession and marriage.

There is not sufficient evidence to show at what ages the previous Pharaohs of the dynasty had married, but as Akhnaton’s father and grandfather entered into matrimony at this early age, it would not be safe to suppose that he himself delayed his marriage till a later age. Queen Tiy was in all probability married when she was ten or eleven years old.[45] Akhnaton’s daughter Merytaton, who was born in the fourth or fifth year of his reign, was, as will be seen in due course, married before the seventeenth year of the reign—that is to say, when she was twelve or younger. The Princess Ankhsenpaaton, who was born in the eighth year, was married, at latest, two years after Akhnaton’s death—i.e., when she was eleven. Another of Akhnaton’s daughters, Nefernefernaton, who has not yet appeared, was born in her father’s eleventh year and was married before the fifteenth, and therefore could only have been four or five years of age.

Child-marriages such as these are common in Egypt, even at the present day. Those who have lived on the Nile, and have studied the national habits, will assuredly fix the probable age of a royal mariage de convenance at about thirteen years, and will agree that eleven and twelve are also highly likely ages.

Secondly, as to Akhnaton’s age at the changing of the art. In the biography of Bakenkhonsu, the High Priest of Amon under Rameses II., that official tells us that he arrived at the state of manhood at the age of sixteen, and one may therefore suppose that this was the recognised legal age at which a man became a responsible agent in Egypt. Now it has been clearly seen that Akhnaton was under the regency of his mother during the first years of his reign, and mention has been made of the inscription at Wady Hammamât, where, although the new symbol of the religion is shown, Queen Tiy’s name is placed beside that of her son in an equally honourable position. She was thus still Queen Regent when the art was changed, and her son could not yet have come of age—i.e., he must then have been under sixteen.

Thirdly, we have to consider the question of his age when he laid the foundations of the new city. This was the first decisive action performed by the king in which his mother has no concern, and of which she perhaps even disapproved, and it surely marks the period at which he took the government into his own hands. If, like Bakenkhonsu, he came of age at sixteen, in the fifth year of his reign, the founding of the new capital in the following year would well fit in with the supposition that the abandoning of Thebes marks the date of the king’s arrival at maturity.

It may be asked how so young a person could conceive that great dream of the new city dedicated to the Aton. But, after all, he was seventeen years of age when the idea came to him, nineteen when he had properly developed the plan, and perhaps as much as twenty when he took up his residence there. Akhnaton’s greatness, as will be seen later, dates from the height of his reign in the City of the Horizon, and not from his early years. Still, when one calls to mind the infant prodigies, the child preachers who stir an audience at the age of twelve, one may credit a boy of sixteen or seventeen with the planning of a new city. Even in the cold Occident such youthful wiseacres are not rare, and surely they blossom forth less infrequently in the maturing warmth of the Orient.

[IV.]
AKHNATON FORMULATES THE RELIGION OF ATON.

“No such grand theology had ever appeared in the world before, so far as we know; and it is the forerunner of the later monotheist religions.”—Petrie: ‘The Religion of Ancient Egypt.’

1. ATON THE TRUE GOD.

Amidst the fair palaces and verdant gardens of the new city, Akhnaton, now a man of some twenty years, turned his thoughts fully to the development of his religion. It is necessary, therefore, for us to glance at the essential features of this the most enlightened doctrine of the ancient world, and in some degree to make ourselves acquainted with the creed which the king himself was evolving out of that worship of Ra-Horakhti Aton in which he had been educated.

Originally the Aton was the actual sun’s disk; but, as has been said, the god was now called “Heat-which-is-in-Aton,” and Akhnaton, concentrating his attention on this aspect of the godhead, drew the eyes of his followers towards a force far more intangible and distant than the dazzling orb to which they bowed down. Akhnaton’s conception of God, as we now begin to observe it, was as the power which created the sun, the energy which penetrated to this earth in the sun’s heat and caused all things to grow. At the present day the scientist will tell you that God is the ultimate source of life, that where natural explanation fails there God is to be found: He is, in a word, the author of energy, the primal motive-power of all known things. Akhnaton, centuries upon centuries before the birth of the scientist, defined God in just this manner. In an age when men believed, as some do still, that a deity was but an exaggerated creature of this earth, having a form built on material lines, this youthful Pharaoh proclaimed God to be the formless essence, the intelligent germ, the loving force, which permeated time and space. Let it be clearly understood that the Aton as conceived by the young Pharaoh was in no sense one of those old deities which our God ultimately replaced in Egypt. The Aton is God as we conceive Him. There is no quality attributed by the king to the Aton which we do not attribute to our God. Like a flash of blinding light in the night-time the Aton stands out for a moment amidst the black Egyptian darkness, and disappears once more,—the first signal to this world of the future religion of the West. No man whose mind is free from prejudice will fail to see a far closer resemblance to the teachings of Christ in the religion of Akhnaton than in that of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The faith of the patriarchs is the lineal ancestor of the Christian faith; but the creed of Akhnaton is its isolated prototype. One might believe that Almighty God had for a moment revealed himself to Egypt, and had been more clearly, though more momentarily, interpreted there than ever He was in Syria or Palestine before the time of Christ.

2. ATON THE TENDER FATHER OF ALL CREATION.