Chapter 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.