Akhenaten

“ The reasons for Akhenaton’s break with the religious traditions of his day are complex. In part the revolt certainly represents the desire of a young Pharaoh to free himself from the yoke of a firmly entrenched priestly class. Yet the break was far more than an act of political expediency. The influence of the priesthood of Heliopolis, perennial rivals of the Theban priests, and the development of Atonism in the years preceding his accession to the throne are all factors that cannot be overlooked. ”

“ While Akhenaton seems to have spiritualized the Egyptian sun worship, he never divorced himself completely from it. Biblical monotheism asserts that the One God made “lights in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth” (Gen. 1:15) . The Hymn of the Aton reaches a high point in the devotional literature of Egypt, but its monotheism was radically different from that presented on the pages of Scripture. ”

“ People thronged in the seven courts of the temple down below, on the pylons, the staircases, the roofs of both temples; it was like a living mountain of people and the highest point of it was one man—the king.
"I come to glorify Thy rays, living Aton, one eternal God!" he said stretching out his arms to the Sun.
"Praise be to Thee, living Aton, who hast made the heavens and the mysteries thereof," answered the high priest Merira, who stood at the base of the pyramid. "Thou art in heaven and Thy beloved son Akhnaton is on earth!" ”

“ Atonism did not long survive its most loyal adherents. Meritaton became Meritamon, and the famed King Tut is known by his later name, Tutankhamon, rather than the earlier Tuntankhaton. In many ways Akhenaton seems to have been a man whose life was a failure. All for which he stood was quickly obliterated during the scant generation after his death. Yet this judgment is too hasty. Even the priests of Amon could not wholly turn back the reforms in art and literature which Akhenaton encouraged. ”

“ In effect, the sun is the source of all life upon this earth, and so Akhunaten caused its rays to be depicted each with a hand holding out the sign of life to the earth. The monotheistic worship of the sun alone is certainly the highest form of pagan religion, but Akhunaten saw further than this. His doctrine was that there was a deity behind the sun, whose glory shone through it and gave us life. ”

“ Increasingly they were compelled to combine and hyphenate their gods; more and more the family of gods contracted. Ikhnaton had associated the flaming disc of the heavens with the creator God, and this idea continued to flame up in the hearts of men, even of the priests, long after the young reformer had passed on. Never did the concept of monotheism die out of the hearts of men in Egypt and in the world. It persisted even to the arrival of the Creator Son of that same divine Father, the one God whom Ikhnaton had so zealously proclaimed for the worship of all Egypt. ”

“ Perhaps we should conclude that Akhenaton chose to devote himself to religious matters, and that the chaos in Asia was a result of neglect rather than self-conscious policy.
The Amarna tomb inscriptions give extravagant praise to Aton and his son, the Pharaoh:
How prosperous is he who hears thy doctrine of life and is sated with beholding thee, and unceasingly his eyes look upon Aton every day. ”

“ There may even be a measure of compensation 23 for physical inadequacies in the vigorous measures he took to establish Aton as the sole god of Egypt. Whatever historical or psychological motivations may be suggested, Akhenaton’s whole life gives evidence of the fact that he was piously devoted to Aton, the god whose beneficent rays bring life to all mankind. ”

“ Aton became the only object of worship tolerated by the Pharaoh, and his domain was extended beyond the boundaries of Egypt. Not only was the Egyptian capital moved to a city dedicated to Aton, but other cities were dedicated to him in Nubia and in Asia. The Hymn to the Aton expresses the same type of universalism, envisioning Aton (the sun) as the god who blesses all people everywhere. While the Nile might have served as a god to unite all Egyptians, the sun was a deity who might unite all men in a common brotherhood. This, at any rate, seems to have been Akhenaton’s dream. ”

“ Jeumalōy, whose tomb is still to be seen not far from the principal mosque of Acheh, is universally revered as a saint by the Achehnese. Pòteu Uëʾ, for whose sake his younger brother drove out the sayyid, and that too with the help of subjects turned from their allegiance, is the founder of the present Achehnese dynasty. No wonder then that the scions of the royal house of Acheh will brook no mention of the Hikayat Pòchut Muhamat and regard it as a forbidden thing for anyone of their family to order or listen to its recitation. ”

“ The worship of Aton appears as early as the reign of Thutmose IV (ca. 1414-1406 B.C.) , who issued a commemorative scarab stating that the Pharaoh fought “with the Aton before him,” and that he campaigned abroad, “to make the foreigners to be like the (Egyptian) people, in order to serve the Aton forever.” [8]
Aton occupied an important place in the Egyptian pantheon during the reign of Akhenaton’s father, Amenhotep III. A stele of the king’s architects, Hori and Suti, describes the sun god as the deity who holds sway over all peoples and lands. ”

“ It is not surprising that the faithful frequenters of the mosque suffer from apam-indigestion during this month, or that in spite of the large share that falls into the hands of the youthful hordes that lurk in the vicinity, many apam-cakes have in the end to be thrown away.
The story goes that once on a time a certain Achehnese, possessed by curiosity as to what befalls man in the tomb, and especially as to the investigations of the angels of the grave, Munkar and Nakir, and the punishments they are supposed to inflict, feigned death and was buried alive. ”

“ His death followed speedily; and, resting in the splendid coffin in which we found him, he was laid in the tomb prepared for him in the hills behind his new capital. The throne fell to the husband of one of his daughters, Smenkhkara, who, after an ephemeral reign, gave place to another of the sons-in-law of Akhnaton, Tutankhaton. This king was speedily persuaded to change his name to Tutankhamon, to abandon the worship of Aton, and to return to Thebes. Akhnaton's city fell into ruins, and soon the temples and palaces became the haunt of jackals and the home of owls. ”

“ Picking his way between them and climbing over them, Merira approached the inner wall of the Holy of Holies, where there was a figure of a Sphinx, with a lion's body and human arms, raising to Aton the Sun a figure of the goddess Maat, the Truth, as a sacrificial offering. The Sphinx had the face of King Akhnaton; if a man had been tortured for a thousand years in hell and then came to the earth again, he would have such a face. ”

“ We see from this what an Egyptian artist could do when his shackles were removed, but unluckily Egypt never produced another king who was at the same time an original genius, an artist, and a thinker. When Akhunaten died, the Egyptian artists’ shackles were riveted tighter than ever. The reaction was strong. The kingdom had fallen into anarchy, and the foreign empire which his predecessors had built up had practically been thrown to the winds by Akhunaten. The whole is an example of the confusion and disorganization which ensue when a philosopher rules. ”

“ The needle of the obelisk showed black against the moonlit sky: the hieroglyphics on the mirror-like polished surface of its granite glorified King Akhnaton, the Joy of the Sun, and someone was sitting hunched up against the base of it—-dead or alive Dio could not make out. She came nearer and, bending down, saw a dead woman, thin as a skeleton, stiffly pressing a dead baby to her wrinkled, black, charred-looking breasts, as she gazed at it with glassy eyes; her white teeth were bared as though she were laughing. It was the beggar woman from the province of the Black Heifer. ”

“ Grandson of General Amenemheb, fellow-soldier of the great Tutmose the Third, the Conqueror, he had covered himself with glory in the different campaigns he led against the wild tribes of Kush and the Sinai nomads. He had been promoted to the rank of Vizier under King Amenhotep the Third, Akhnaton's father, and the people were fond of him and called him 'a just man.' He would have given his life for the king, but he regarded the new faith in Aton and the betrayal of the old gods as madness and disaster. ”

“ But at the sanctuary they learned that at the first news of mutiny the golden figure of Khonsu had been removed and hidden in the treasury of Amon's temple.
"Come, good people, you have been saving the god long enough, it is time you thought about yourselves!" Kiki the Noseless shouted to the crowd, jumping on the empty pedestal of Khonsu's statue. "There is nothing to be got here, Aton's rabble have cleared the place, but on the other side of the river in the Chanik Palace there is still plenty of stuff left. ”

“ The closing years of the lives of Nofretete and Akhenaton are largely a blank. Their third daughter Meritaton married Smenkhkare, a young architect who was much favored by Akhenaton 24 and occupied the throne for a short time after his death. ”

“ The fate of the mummy of Akhenaton’s successor Smenkhara is unknown: but Tutankhamen came after him, and Mr Howard Carter’s discovery has shown that he displayed his return to strict orthodoxy by making his tomb in the Eastern Valley among the worshippers of Amen. For some reason which has not been fully elucidated, his successor Ay made his tomb in the Western Valley and so was laid to rest alongside Amenhotep III, whose Minister he seems to have been during his life. He is supposed by some historians to have been the father or the foster-father of Nefertiti, the wife of Akhenaton. ”

“ Tuta said at last. "From that accursed hole, the City of the Sun, damnation take it! Our friend Panehesy is still hiding there like a scorpion in a chink—there is no catching him...."
Panehesy, the second priest of Aton, a mild fanatic, a 'holy fool,' in Ay's words, was one of the few people who had remained faithful to King Akhnaton.
"And it is not only he," Tuta continued. "All sorts of rascals keep going there. Living fools do their best for the dead, spreading seditious rumours among the people...." ”

“ A great number of moulds for making pottery rings are found here in factories; and those of Tut ankhamen are as common and as varied as of Khuenaten, showing that he was an important ruler here for a considerable time. Of Ai rings are occasionally found here, as also of Horemheb, who has left a block of sculpture with his cartouche in the temple of Aten. So it is certain that he actually upheld the worship of Aten early in his reign, and added to the buildings here, far from being a destructive rival overthrowing this place from Thebes. ”

“ But the beauty of the work seems to have restrained the hand of the destroyer. Then came the religious fanaticism of Akhenaton, mutilating all figures of Ammon and all inscriptions containing his name; this made havoc of the exquisite monuments of Hatshepsut; and the restorers of the XIXth Dynasty, refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the queen, had no scruples in replacing her names by those of the associate kings Tethmosis I., II. or III. These acts of vandalism took place throughout Egypt, but in the distant mines of Sinai the cartouches of Hatshepsut are untouched. ”

“ Those who relied on Pharaoh and remained loyal as their fathers had done sent letter after letter appealing for aid against their foes. But though a general was despatched with some troops, he seems to have done more harm than good in misjudging the quarrels. At length the tone of the letters becomes one of despair, in which flight to Egypt appears the only resource left for the adherents of the Egyptian cause. Before the end of the reign Egyptian rule in Syria had probably ceased altogether. Akhenaton died in or about the seventeenth year of his reign, c. ”

“ The Tell-el-Amarna letters testify to Tiy's influence in the Egyptian "Foreign Office", and we know that at home she was joint ruler with her husband and took part with him in public ceremonials. During their reign a temple was erected to the mother goddess Mut, and beside it was formed a great lake on which sailed the "barque of Aton" in connection with mysterious religious ceremonials. After Akhenaton's religious revolt was inaugurated, the worship of Mut was discontinued and Tiy went into retirement. ”

“ He is all for the world and all the world is for him. A man like that is certain to reign. You will be king over the mice, you cat! Akhnaton will disappear, Tutankhaton will remain. He will go through the ages in his Amon's sandals, trampling on the Great Spirit. And the kingdom of this world will be Tuta's kingdom! ”

“ Dio gazed at this face, trying in vain to recall something. All of a sudden she remembered.
In the Charuk Palace near Thebes, where Akhnaton was born and spent his childhood, she had seen his sculptured head: a boy looking like a girl; an oval, egg-shaped face, childishly, girlishly charming, quiet and gentle as that of the god whose name is Quiet-Heart.
A man dreams sometimes a dream of paradise, as though his soul returned to its heavenly home; and long after waking he refuses to believe that it had only been a dream and is full of sadness and yearning. Such was the sadness in that face. ”