Chapter VII

THE LAST TWO YEARS OF THE REIGN OF AKHNATON.

“I know, he said, what you like is to look at the mountains,
or to go up among them and kill things. But I like the running
water in a quiet garden, with a rose reflected in it, and the
nightingale singing to it. Listen!”--MIRZA MAHOMED in ‘The Story
of Valeh and Hadijeh.’

1. THE HITTITE INVASION OF SYRIA.

The eastern end of the Mediterranean is bounded on the south by Egypt and the desert, on the east by Palestine and Syria, and on the north by Asia Minor, these roughly forming the three sides of a square. The conquests of the great warrior-Pharaoh Thothmes III. had carried the Egyptian power as far as the north-east corner of this formation--that is to say, to the point where Syria meets Asia Minor. The island of Cyprus is in shape not unlike a hand with index finger extended; and this finger may be said to be pointing to the limit of Egyptian conquest, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Amanus Mountains. The kingdom of Mitanni, the home of Queen Nefertiti, was situated on the banks of the Euphrates some distance inland from these mountains; and as it acted as a buffer state between the Egyptian possessions in Syria and the unconquered lands beyond, the Pharaohs had taken care to unite themselves by marriage, as we have seen, with its rulers. Behind Mitanni to the north-east, the friendly kingdoms later known as Assyria marked the limits of the known world; while to the north the hostile lands of Asia Minor lay in the possession of the Hittites, a warlike confederacy of peoples, perhaps the ancestors of the modern Armenians. From these hardy warriors the greatest danger to the Egyptian Empire in Syria was to be expected; and the statesmen of Egypt must have cast many an anxious look towards those forbidding mountains which loomed beyond Mitanni. A southern movement of the Hittites, indications of which were already very apparent, would bring them swarming over and around the Amanus Mountains, either along the eastern and inland route through Mitanni, or along the western route beside the sea and over the Lebanon, or again, midway between these two routes, past the great cities of Tunip, Kadesh, and others, which stood to block the way.

When Akhnaton ascended the throne, Seplel was king of the Hittites, and was by way of being friendly to Egypt. Some of his people, however, crossed the frontiers of Mitanni and were repulsed by Dushratta, the king of that country, who was father-in-law to Akhnaton. This caused some coldness between Seplel and the Pharaoh; and although the former sent an embassy to the City of the Horizon, the correspondence between the two monarchs presently ceased. The young idealist of Egypt seems to have held warfare in horror; and the Hittites were so essentially a fighting race that Akhnaton could have had no friendly feelings towards them. Soon we find that these Hittites, unable to overflow into the land of Mitanni, have moved along the eastern route and have seized the land of Amki, which lay on the sea-coast between the Amanus Mountains and the Lebanon. This movement might have been stopped by Aziru, an Amorite prince who ruled the territory between Amki and Mitanni, and whose duty, as an Egyptian vassal, was to check the southern incursions of the Hittites. But Aziru, like his father Abdashirta before him, was a man as ambitious as he was faithless, and his dealings both with the Hittites and with the Egyptians during the following years were unscrupulous in the extreme. It was his policy to play the one nation against the other, and to extend the scope of his own power at the expense of both.

2. AKHNATON’S CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTIONS TO WARFARE.

Akhnaton’s policy in Syria, when considered from the point of view of an ordinary man, was of the weakest. Ideals cannot govern an empire, and those who would apply the doctrine of “peace and goodwill” to subject races endanger the very principles which they would teach. While the young Pharaoh was singing his imperial psalms to the Atom in his growing capital, the princes of Syria were whistling the revolutionary ditties which presently were to ring in the ears of the isolated Egyptian garrisons. Little did they care for that tender Father of Mankind to whom Akhnaton’s thin finger so earnestly pointed. They knew nothing of monotheism; they found no satisfaction in One who was the gentle ruler of all men without distinction of race. A true god to them was a vanquisher of other gods, a valiant leader in battle, a relentless avenger of insult. The furious Baal, the bloodthirsty Tishub, the terrible Ishtar--these were the deities that a man could love. How they scorned that God of Peace who was called the Only One! How they laughed at the young Pharaoh who had set aside the sword for the psalter, who hoped to rule his restless dominions by love alone!

Love! One stands amazed at the reckless idealism, the beautiful folly, of this Pharaoh who, in an age of turbulence, preached a religion of peace to seething Syria. Three thousand years later mankind is still blindly striving after these same ideals in vain. Nowadays one is familiar with the doctrine: a greater than Akhnaton has preached it, and has died for it. To-day God is known to us, and the peace of God is a thing hoped for; but at that far-off period, thirteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, two or three centuries before the age of David and Solomon, and many a year before the preaching of Moses, one is utterly surprised to behold the true light shining forth for a short moment like the sun through a rift in the clouds, and one knows that it has come too soon. Mankind, even now not ready, was then most wholly unprepared, and the price which Egypt paid for the ideals of her Pharaoh was no less than the complete loss of her dominions.

Akhnaton believed in God, and to him that belief meant a practical abhorrence of war. Marshalling the material available for the study of this period of history, one can interpret the events in Syria in only one way: Akhnaton definitely refused to do battle, believing that a resort to arms was an offence to God. Whether fortune or misfortune, gain or loss, was to be his lot, he would hold to his principles, and would not return to the old gods of battle.

It must be remembered that at this time the empire was the personal property of the Pharaoh, as every kingdom was of its king. Nobody ever considered a possession as belonging to the nation which had laid hands upon it, but only to that nation’s king. It mattered very little to the Syrian peoples whether their owner was an Egyptian or a Syrian, though perhaps they preferred to be possessed by one of their own race. Akhnaton was thus doing his will with his own property. He was refusing to fight for his own possessions; he was acting literally upon the Christian principle of giving the cloak to him who had stolen the coat. Patriotism was a sentiment unknown to the world: devotion to the king’s personal interest was all that actuated loyalty in the subject, and the monarch himself had but his own interests to consider. Thus Akhnaton cannot be accused of ruining his country by his refusal to go to war. He was entitled to do what he liked with his own personal property, and if he sacrificed his possessions to his principles, the sacrifice was made upon God’s high altar, and the loss would be felt by him alone. Such a loss, it is true, would probably break his heart; for he loved Syria dearly, and he had had such great hopes of uniting the empire by the tie of a common religion. But for good or ill, he was determined to stand aloof from the struggles upon which Syria was now entering.

3. THE FAITHLESSNESS OF AZIRU.

While Aziru, the Amorite, schemed on the borders of Asia Minor, a Syrian prince named Itakama suddenly set up an independent kingdom at Kadesh and joined hands with the Hittites, thus cutting off the loyal city of Tunip, the friendly kingdom of Mitanni, and the territory of the faithless Aziru from direct intercourse with the Lebanon and Egypt’s remaining possessions in Palestine and Syria. Three loyal vassal kings, perhaps assisted by Dushratta of Mitanni, attacked the rebels, but were repulsed by Itakama and his Hittite allies.

Aziru at once turned the situation to his own advantage. Hemmed in between the Hittites on the north and this new kingdom of Kadesh on the south, he collected his armies and marched down the Orontes to the Mediterranean coast, capturing the cities near the mouth of that river and adding them to his possessions. Should the Hittites ask him to give an account of these proceedings, he could reply that he was, as it were, the advance-guard of the Hittite invasion of Syria, and was preparing the road for them. Should Itakama question him, he could say that he was, with friendly hands, linking the Hittites with Kadesh. And should Akhnaton call upon him for an explanation, he could answer that he was securing the land for the Egyptians against the Hittite advance.

No doubt Aziru preferred to keep his peace with the Hittites the most secure, for it was obvious that they were the rising people; but at the same time he did not yet dare to show any hostility to Egypt, whose armies might at any moment be launched across the Mediterranean. Unable to hold a position of independence, he now thought it most prudent to allow the northmen to swarm southwards through his dominions, from Amki over and around the Lebanon to Kadesh, where their ally Itakama dwelt. In return for this assistance he seems to have been allowed a free hand in the forwarding of his own interests, and we now find him turning his attention to the sea-coast cities of Simyra and Byblos, which nestled at the western foot of the Lebanon. Here, however, he received a check, and failed to obtain a footing. He therefore marched eastwards to the city of Niy, which he captured, slaying its king; and both to the Hittites and to the Egyptians he seems to have pretended that he had taken this step in their interests.

On hearing of the fall of this city the governor of Tunip wrote a pathetic appeal to Akhnaton, asking for help; for he was now quite isolated, and he knew that Aziru was a free-lance who cared not a jot for any but his own welfare.

“To the King of Egypt, my lord,” runs the letter. “The
inhabitants of Tunip, thy servant. May it be well with thee, and
at the feet of our lord we fall. My lord, Tunip, thy servant,
speaks, saying: Who formerly could have plundered Tunip without
being plundered by Thothmes III.? The gods ... of the King of
Egypt, my lord, dwell in Tunip. May our lord ask his old men [if
it be not so.] Now, however, we belong no more to our lord, the
King of Egypt.... If his soldiers and chariots come too late,
Aziru will make us like the city of Niy. If, however, we have
to mourn, then the King of Egypt will mourn over these things
which Aziru has done, for he will turn his hand against our lord.
And when Aziru enters Simyra Aziru will do to us as he pleases,
in the territory of our lord the King, and on account of these
things our lord will have to lament. And now Tunip, thy city,
weeps, and her tears are flowing, and there is no help for us.
For twenty years we have been sending to our lord the King, the
King of Egypt, but there has not come to us a word--no, not one.”

Several points become apparent from this letter. One sees that in the more distant cities of Syria the significance of Akhnaton’s new religion was not understood. The governor of Tunip refers to the old gods of Egypt worshipped in that town, and he knows not, or cannot be brought to believe, that Akhnaton has become a monotheist. One sees that the memory of the terrible Thothmes III. and his victorious armies was still in men’s minds, and was probably one of the main causes of the long-continued peace in Syria. Akhnaton’s father, Amonhotep III., had not concerned himself greatly with regard to his foreign dominions, and, as the people of Tunip had been asking for assistance for twenty years, it would seem that the danger which now beset them was already feared before that Pharaoh’s death.

(British Museum, No. 29,801.)]

How, one asks, could Akhnaton read such a letter as this, and yet refuse to send a relieving army to Syria? Byblos and Simyra were still loyally holding out; and troops disembarked at these ports could speedily be marched inland to Tunip, could crush Hakama at Kadesh, and could frighten Aziru into giving real assistance to Dushratta and other loyal kings in holding the Hittites back behind the Amanus Mountains. But this was Akhnaton’s Gethsemane, if one may say so with reverence; and like that greater Teacher who, thirteen hundred years later, was to preach the self-same doctrine of personal sacrifice, one may suppose that the Pharaoh suffered a very Agony as he realised that his principles were leading him to the loss of all his dearest possessions. His restless generals in Egypt, eager to march into Syria, must have brought every argument to bear upon him; but the boy would not now turn back. “Put up thy sword into his place,” he seems to have said; “for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”

4. THE FIGHTING IN SYRIA BECOMES GENERAL.

At this time the King of Byblos was one named Ribaddi, a fine old soldier who was loyal to Egypt in his every thought and deed. He wrote to Akhnaton urging him to send troops to relieve the garrison of Simyra, upon which Aziru was again pressing close; for if Simyra fell, he knew that Byblos could not for long hold out. Presently we find that Zimrida, the king of the neighbouring port of Sidon, has opened his gates to Aziru, and has marched with him against Tyre. Abimilki, the King of Tyre, at once wrote to Akhnaton asking for assistance; but on receiving no reply he, too, appears to have thrown in his lot with Aziru. Ribaddi was now quite isolated at Byblos; and from the beleaguered city he wrote to the Pharaoh telling him that “Simyra is like a bird in a snare.” Akhnaton made no reply; and in a short time Ribaddi wrote again, saying, “Simyra, your fortress, is now in the power of the Khabiri.”

These Khabiri were the Beduin from behind Palestine, who were being used as mercenaries by Aziru, and who themselves were making small conquest in the south on their own behalf. Thus the southern cities of Megiddo, Askalon, Gezer, and others, write to the Pharaoh asking for aid against them. Exasperated, however, by Akhnaton’s inaction, Askalon and Gezer, together with the city of Lachish, threw off the Egyptian yoke and attacked Jerusalem, which was still loyal to Egypt, being held by an officer named Abdkhiba. This loyal soldier at once sent a despatch to Akhnaton, part of which read as follows:--

The King’s whole land, which has begun hostilities with me, will
be lost. Behold the territory of Seir, as far as Carmel, its
princes are wholly lost; and hostility prevails against me....
As long as ships were upon the sea the strong arm of the King
occupied Naharin and Kash, but now the Khabiri are occupying
the King’s cities. There remains not one prince to my lord, the
King; every one is ruined.... Let the King take care of his land,
and ... let him send troops.... For if no troops come in this
year, the whole territory of my lord the King will perish.... If
there are no troops in this year, let the King send his officer
to fetch me and my brothers, that we may die with our lord, the
King.

To this letter the writer added a postscript addressed to Akhnaton’s secretary, with whom he was evidently acquainted. “Bring these words plainly before my lord the King,” runs this pathetic appeal. “The whole land of my lord, the King, is going to ruin.”

The letters sent to Akhnaton from the few princes who remained loyal form a collection which even now moves the reader. To Akhnaton they must have been so many sword-thrusts, and one may picture him praying passionately for strength to set them aside. Soon it would seem that the secretaries hardly troubled to show them to him; and ultimately they were so effectually pigeon-holed that they have only recently been discovered. The Pharaoh permitted himself to answer some of them, and seems to have asked questions as to the state of affairs; but never does he offer any encouragement. Lapaya, one of the princes of the south, who had evidently received a communication from Akhnaton in which his fidelity was questioned, wrote saying that if the Pharaoh ordered him to drive a sword of bronze into his heart he would do so. It is a commentary upon the veracity of the Oriental that in subsequent letters this prince is stated to have attacked Megiddo, and ultimately to have been slain while fighting against the Egyptian loyalists.

Addudaian, a king of some unknown city of south Judea, acknowledges the receipt of a letter from Akhnaton in which he was asked to remain loyal; and he complains, in reply, of the loss of various possessions. Dagantakala, the king of another city, writes imploring the Pharaoh to rescue him from the Khabiri. Ninur, a queen of a part of Judea, who calls herself Akhnaton’s handmaid, entreats the Pharaoh to save her, and records the capture of one of her cities by the Khabiri.

And so the letters run on, each telling of some disaster to the Egyptian cause, and each voicing the bitter complaint of those who were being sacrificed to the principles of a king who had grasped the meaning of civilisation too soon.

5. AZIRU AND RIBADDI FIGHT TO A FINISH.

Meanwhile Ribaddi was holding Byblos valiantly against Aziru’s armies, and many were the despatches which he sent to Akhnaton asking for assistance against Aziru. Nothing could have been easier than the despatch of a few hundred men across the Mediterranean to the beleaguered port, and the number which Ribaddi asks for is absurdly small. Akhnaton, however, would not send a single man, but instead wrote a letter of gentle rebuke to Aziru, telling him to come to the City of the Horizon to explain his conduct. Aziru wrote at once to one of Akhnaton’s courtiers who was his friend, telling him to speak to the Pharaoh and to set matters right.

He explained that he could not leave Syria at that time, for he must remain to defend Tunip against the Hittites. The reader, who has seen the letter written by the governor of Tunip asking for help against Aziru, will realise the perfidy of this Amorite, who was now, no doubt, preparing to capture Tunip for the sake of its riches, and, having done so, would tell Akhnaton that he had entered it to hold it against the Hittites.

Akhnaton then wrote to Aziru insisting that he should rebuild the city of Simyra, which he had destroyed; but Aziru again replied that he was too busy in defending Egyptian interests against the inroads of the Hittites to give his attention to this matter for at least a year. To this Akhnaton sent a mild reply; but Aziru, fearing that the letter might contain some matter which it would be better for him not to hear, contrived to evade the messenger, and the despatch was brought back to Egypt. He wrote to the Pharaoh, however, saying that he would see to it that the cities captured by him should continue to pay tribute as usual to Egypt.

The tribute seems to have reached the City of the Horizon in correct manner until the last years of the reign,[77] though probably it was much less in quantity than had been customary. There was general confusion in Syria, as we have seen; but, as in the case of the struggle between Aziru and Ribaddi, where both professed their loyalty to Egypt, so, in all the chaos, there was a make-believe fidelity to the Pharaoh. The tribute was thus paid each year by a large number of cities, and it was probably not till the seventeenth and last year of Akhnaton’s reign that this pretence of loyalty was altogether discarded.

In desperate straits at Byblos, Ribaddi made a perilous journey to the neighbouring city of Beyrût in order to attempt to collect reinforcements. No sooner had he left, however, than an insurrection occurred at Byblos, and Ribaddi paid for his loyalty to Egypt by losing the support of his own subjects. Presently Beyrût surrendered to Aziru, and Ribaddi was forced to fly. After many an adventure the stout old king managed to regain control of Byblos, and to set about the further defence of the city.

Meanwhile Aziru had paid a rapid visit to Egypt, partly to justify his conduct and partly, no doubt, to ascertain the condition of affairs on the Nile. With Oriental cunning he managed to satisfy Akhnaton that his intentions were not hostile to Egypt, and so returned to the Lebanon. Ribaddi, hearing of this, at once sent his son to the City of the Horizon to expose Aziru’s perfidy and to plead for assistance against him. At the same time he wrote to Akhnaton a pathetic account of his misfortunes. Four members of his family had been taken prisoners; his brother was constantly conspiring against him; old age and disease pressed heavily upon him. All his possessions had been taken from him, all his lands devastated; he had been reduced by famine and the privations of a long siege to a state of utter destitution, and he could not much longer hold out. “The gods of Byblos,” he writes, “are angry with me and sore displeased; for I have sinned against the gods, and therefore I do not come before my lord the King.” Was his sin, one wonders, the adoption for a while of Akhnaton’s faith? To this communication Akhnaton seems to have made no reply.

6. AKHNATON CONTINUES TO REFUSE TO SEND HELP.

The messengers who arrived at the City of the Horizon of Aton, dusty and travel-stained, to deliver the many letters asking for help, must have despaired indeed when they observed the manner in which the news was received. Hateful to these hardy soldiers of the empire were the fine quays at which their galleys moored; hateful the fair villas and shaded avenues of the city; and thrice hateful the rolling hymns to the Aton which came to them from the temple halls as they hurried to the Pharaoh’s palace. The townspeople smiled at their haste in this city of dreams; the court officials delayed the delivery of their letters, scoffing at the idea of urgency in the affairs of Asia; and finally these wretched documents, written--if ever letters were so written--with blood and with tears, were pigeon-holed in the city archives and utterly forgotten save by Akhnaton himself. Instead of the brave music of the drums and bugles of the relieving army which these messengers had hoped to muster, there rang in their maddened ears only the ceaseless chants of the priestly ceremonies and the pattering love-songs of private festivals. Newly come from the sweat and the labour of the road, their brains still racked with the horror of war and yet burning with the vast hopes of empire, they looked with scorn at the luxury of Egypt’s new capital, and heard with disgust the dainty tales of the flowers. The lean, sad-eyed Pharaoh, with his crooked head and his stooping shoulders, would speak only of his God; and, clad in simple clothes unrelieved by a single jewel, there was nothing martial in his appearance to give them hope. From the beleaguered cities which they had so lately left there came to them the bitter cry for succour; and it was not possible to drown that cry in words of peace, nor in the jangle of the systrum or the warbling of the pipes. Who, thought the waiting messengers, could resist that piteous call: “Thy city weeps, and her tears are flowing”? Who could sit idle in the City of the Horizon when the proud empire, won with the blood of the noblest soldiers of the great Thothmes, was breaking up before their eyes? What mattered all the philosophies in the world, and all the gods in heaven, when Egypt’s great dominions were being wrested from her? The splendid Lebanon, the white kingdoms of the sea, Askalon and Ashdod, Tyre and Sidon, Simyra and Byblos, the hills of Jerusalem, Kadesh and the great Orontes, the fair Jordan, Tunip, Aleppo, the distant Euphrates.... What counted a creed against these? God? The truth? The only god was He of the Battles, who had led Egypt into Syria; the only truth the doctrine of the sword, which had held her there for so many years.

Looking back across these thirty-two centuries, can one yet say whether the Pharaoh was in the right, or whether his soldiers were the better minded? On the one hand there is culture, refinement, love, thought, prayer, goodwill, and peace; on the other hand, power, might, health, hardihood, bravery, and struggle. One knows that Akhnaton’s theories were the more civilised, the more ideal; but is there not a pulse which stirs in sympathy with those who were holding the citadels of Asia? We can give our approval to the ideals of the young king, but we cannot see his empire fall without bitterly blaming him for the disaster. Yet in passing judgment, in calling the boy to account for the loss of Syria, there is the consciousness that above our tribunal sits a judge to whom war must assuredly be abhorrent, and in whose eyes the struggle of the nations must utterly lack its drama. Thus, even now, Akhnaton eludes our criticism, and but raises once more that eternal question which as yet has no answer.

7. AKHNATON’S HEALTH GIVES WAY.

It is possible that the Pharaoh now realised his position, and one may suppose that he tried as best he could to pacify the turbulent princes by all the arts of diplomacy. It does not seem, however, that he yet fully appreciated the catastrophe which was now almost inevitable--the complete loss of Syria. He could not bring himself to believe that the princes of that country would play him false; and he could have had no idea that he was being so entirely fooled by such men as Aziru. But when at last the tribute ceased to come in regularly, then, too late, he knew that disaster was upon him.

The thoughts which now must have held sway in his mind could not have failed to carry him down the dark steps of depression to the very pit of despair, and one may picture him daily cast prone upon the floor before the high altar of the Aton, and nightly tossing sleepless upon his royal bed. It seems that he had placed great reliance upon a certain official, named Bikhuru, who was acting as Egyptian commissioner in Palestine; but now it is probable that he received news of that unfortunate personage’s flight, and later of his murder.[78] Then came the report that Byblos had fallen, and one is led to suppose that that truly noble soldier Ribaddi did not survive the fall of the city which he had so tenaciously held. The news of the surrender of other important Egyptian strongholds followed rapidly, and still there came the pathetic appeal for help from the minor posts which yet held out.

Akhnaton was now about twenty-eight years of age, and already the cares of the whole world seemed to rest upon his shoulders. Lean and lank was his body; his face was thin and lined with worry; and in his eye one might, perhaps, have seen that hunted look which comes to those who are dogged by disaster. It is probable that he now suffered acutely from the distressing malady to which he was a victim, and there must have been times when he felt himself upon the verge of madness. His misshapen skull came nigh to bursting with the full thoughts of his aching brain, and the sad knowledge that he had failed must have pressed upon his mind like some unrelenting finger. The invocations to the Aton which rang in his head made confusion with the cry of Syria. Now he listened to the voices of his choirs lauding the sweetness of life; and now, breaking in upon the chant, did he not hear the solemn voices of his fathers calling to him from the Hills of the West to give account of his stewardship? Could he then find solace in trees and in flowers? Could he cry “Peace” when there was red tumult in his brain?

His moods at this time must have given cause for the greatest alarm, and his behaviour was, no doubt, sufficiently erratic to render even those nobles who had so blindly followed him mistrustful of their leader. In a frenzy of zeal in the adoration of the Aton, Akhnaton now gave orders that the name of all other gods should suffer the same fate as that of Amon, and should be erased from every inscription throughout the land. This order was never fully carried out; but one may still see in the temples of Karnak, Medinet Habu, and elsewhere, and upon many lesser monuments, the chisel marks which have partially blurred out the names of Ptah, Hathor, and other deities, and have obliterated the offending word “gods.”

The consternation which this action must have caused was almost sufficient to bring about a revolution in the provinces, where the old gods were still dearly loved by the people. The erasing of the name of Amon had been, after all, a direct war upon a certain priesthood, and did not very materially affect any other localities than that of Thebes. But the suppression of the numerous priesthoods of the many deities who held sway throughout Egypt threw into disorder the whole country, and struck at the heart not of one but of a hundred cities. Was the kindly old artificer Ptah, with his hammer and his chisel, to be tumbled into empty space? Was the beautiful, the gracious Hathor--the Venus of the Nile--to be thrown down from her celestial seat? Was it possible to banish Khnum, the goat-headed potter who lived in the caves of the Cataract, from the life of the city of Elephantine; the mysterious jackal Wepwat from the hearts of the men of Abydos; or the ancient crocodile Sebek from the ships and the fields of Ombos? Every town had its local god, and every god its priesthood; and surely the Pharaoh was mad who attempted to make war upon these legions of heaven. This Aton, whom the king called upon them to worship, was so remote, so infinitely above their heads. Aton did not sit with them at their hearth-side to watch the kettle boil; Aton did not play a sweet-toned flute amongst the reeds of the river; Aton did not bring a fairy gift to the new-born babe. Where was the sacred tree in whose branches one might hope to see him seated?--where was the eddy of the Nile in which he loved to bathe?--and where was the rock at whose foot one might place, as a fond offering, a bowl of milk? The people loved their old gods, whose simple ways, kind hearts, and quick tempers made them understandable to mortal minds. But a god who reigned alone in solitary isolation, who, more remote even than the Jehovah of the Hebrews, rode not upon the clouds nor moved upon the wings of the wind, was hardly a deity to whom they could open their hearts. True, the sunrise and the sunset were the visible signs of the godhead; but let the reader ask any modern Egyptian peasant whether there is aught to stir the pulses in these two great phenomena, and he will realise that the glory of the skies could not have appealed particularly to the lesser subjects of Akhnaton, who, moreover, were not permitted to bow the knee to the flaming orb itself. When the Christian religion took hold of these peasants, and presented for their acceptance the same idea of a remote though loving and considerate God, it was only by the elevation of saints and devils, angels and powers of darkness, almost to the rank of demigods, that the faith prospered. But Akhnaton allowed no such tampering with the primary doctrine, and St George and all the saints would have suffered the erasure of their very names.

8. AKHNATON’S LAST DAYS AND DEATH.

The troubles which Akhnaton by such actions gathered around himself, while disturbing to his adherents, must have given some degree of pleasure to those nobles who saw in the king’s downfall the only hope of Egypt. Horemheb, the commander-in-chief of the inactive armies, could now begin to prepare himself against the time when he should lead a force into Syria to restore Egyptian prestige. Tutankhaton, betrothed to Akhnaton’s third daughter, could dream of the days when he would make himself Pharaoh, and carry the court back to glorious Thebes. Even Meryra, the High Priest of Aton, seems to have allowed his thoughts to drift away from the City of the Horizon wherein the sun of Egypt’s glory had set, for it does not seem that he ever made use of the tomb there prepared for him. These last stages of Akhnaton’s life must thus have been embittered by a doubt of the sincerity of his closest friends, and by the knowledge that, in spite of all their protestations, he had failed to plant “the truth” in their hearts.

The queen had borne him no son to succeed to the throne, and there appeared to be nobody to whom he could impart what he felt to be his last instructions. There can be no question that he was still greatly loved by those who surrounded his person, but there were few who hoped that his religion, so disastrous to Egypt, would survive him. In this extremity Akhnaton turned to a certain noble, probably not of royal blood, whose name seems to have been Smenkhkara, though some have read it Saakara.[79] Nothing is known regarding his previous career, but one may suppose that he appeared to Akhnaton to be the least unreliable of his followers. To him the king imparted his instructions, revealing all that words could draw from his teeming brain. The little Princess Merytaton, now but twelve years of age, was called from her games, and with pomp and ceremony was married to this Smenkhkara, thus making him the legitimate heir to the throne, Merytaton being the eldest daughter and sole heiress of the Pharaoh.

Feeling that his days were numbered, Akhnaton then associated Smenkhkara upon the throne with him as co-ruler, and was thus able to familiarise the people with their future lord. In later years, after Akhnaton’s death, Smenkhkara was wont to write after his name the words “beloved of Akhnaton,” as though to indicate that his claim to the throne was due to Akhnaton’s affection for him, as well as to the rights derived from his wife.

But what mattered the securing of the succession to the throne when that throne had been shaken to its very foundations, and now seemed to be upon the verge of utter wreck? Akhnaton could no longer stave off the impending crash, and from all sides there gathered the forces which were to overwhelm him. His government was chaotic. The plotting and scheming of the priests of Amon showed signs of coming to a successful issue. The anger of the priesthoods of the other gods of Egypt hung over the palace like some menacing storm-cloud. The soldiers, eager to march upon Syria as in the days of the great Thothmes III., chafed at their enforced idleness, and watched with increasing restlessness the wreck of the empire.

Now through the streets of the city there passed the weary messengers of Asia hurrying to the palace, no longer bearing the appeals of kings and generals for support, but announcing the fall of the last cities of Syria and the slaughter of the last left of their rulers. The scattered remnants of the garrisons staggered back to the Nile at the heels of these messengers, pursued to the very frontiers of Egypt by the triumphant Asiatics. From the north the Hittites poured into Syria; from the south the Khabiri swarmed over the land. As the curtain is rung down on the turbulent scene, one catches a glimpse of the wily Aziru, his hands still stained with the blood of Ribaddi and of many another loyal prince, snatching at this city and trampling on that. At last he has cast aside his mask, and with the tribute which had been promised to Egypt he now, no doubt, placates the ascending Hittites, whose suzerainty alone he admits.

The tribute having ceased, the Egyptian treasury soon stood empty, for the government of the country was too confused to permit of the proper gathering of the taxes, and the working of the gold-mines could not be organised. Much had been expended on the building of the City of the Horizon, and now the king knew not where to turn for money. In the space of a few years Egypt had been reduced from a world power to the position of a petty state, from the richest country known to man to the humiliating condition of a bankrupt kingdom.

Surely one may picture Akhnaton now in his last hours, his jaw fallen, his sunken eyes widely staring, as the full realisation of the utter failure of all his hopes came to him. He had sacrificed Syria to his principles; but the sacrifice was of no avail, since his doctrines had not taken root even in Egypt. He knew now that the religion of the Aton would not outlive him, that the knowledge of the love of God was not yet to be made known to the world. Even at this moment the psalms of the Aton were beating upon his ears, the hymns to the God who had forsaken him were drifting into his palace with the scent of the flowers; and the birds which he loved were singing as merrily in the luxuriant gardens as ever they sang when they had inspired a line in the king’s great poem. But upon him now there had fallen the blackness of despair, and already the darkness of coming death was closing around him. The misery of failure must have ground him down as beneath the very mountains of the west themselves, and the weight of the knowledge of all that he had lost could not be borne by his enfeebled frame.

History tells us only that, simultaneously with the fall of his empire, Akhnaton died; and the doctors who have examined his body report that death may well have been due to some form of stroke or fit. But in the imagination there seems to ring across the years a cry of complete despair, and one can picture the emaciated figure of this “beautiful child of the Aton” fall forward upon the painted palace-floor and lie still amidst the red poppies and the dainty butterflies there depicted.