of feverish work had probably produced considerable results, and
already we may picture the city taking form. The royal palace was
perhaps almost finished by now, and the villas of some of the
nobles were habitable. With many a sigh of relief Akhnaton must
have bade farewell to Thebes. A third daughter, who was named
Ankhsenpaaton, had just been born; and one may thus picture the
royal party which sailed down the river as being very distinctly
a family. One sees Akhnaton, a sickly young man of nineteen years
of age, walking to and fro upon the deck of the royal vessel,
with his hand upon the shoulder of his fair young wife, now some
seventeen years old, in whose arms the baby princess is carried.
Toddling beside them are the two other princesses, one somewhat
over two years of age, the other about four years. The queen’s
sister, Nezemmut, records of whose existence soon become apparent,
was perhaps also of the party, having left the court of Mitanni
to be a companion to Nefertiti. Ay and Ty, the foster-parents of
Nefertiti, were doubtless with the royal family now as they sailed
down the river; and several of the nobles who play a part in the
following pages no doubt formed the suite which attended to the
royal commands.
6. THE AGE OF AKHNATON.
We have spoken of the king as being nineteen years old. The story
has now reached a point at which we must pause to consider this
vexed question of Akhnaton’s age. In the above pages it has been
said that the Pharaoh was about eleven years old at his marriage
and accession to the throne; was fifteen when the canons of art
were changed and the symbols of the Aton religion introduced; was
seventeen when the foundations of the new city were laid; and was
nineteen when he took up his residence there. Let us study these
ages in the above order.
[Illustration: _The Head of the Mummy of Thothmes IV., the
grandfather of Akhnaton._]
Firstly, then, as to the king’s marriage. The mummy of Thothmes
IV., the grandfather of Akhnaton, has been shown by Dr Elliot
Smith to be that of a man not more than about twenty-six years of
age. That king was succeeded by his son Amonhotep III., who is
known to have been married to Queen Tiy before the second year
of his reign, and to have been old enough at that time to begin
to hunt big game. It would be difficult to believe that he would
be permitted to join any hunting party, however secure against
accident, before the twelfth year of his age; but, on the other
hand, if he was more than that age, his father would have to have
been less than twelve at _his_ marriage. Thus the only possible
conclusion is that both Thothmes IV. and Amonhotep III. were barely
thirteen when they were married, and very possibly even younger.
This is shown to be a correct conclusion by the fact that the mummy
of Amonhotep III. has been pronounced by Dr Elliot Smith to be
that of a man of forty-five or fifty; and as he reigned thirty-six
years he must have been _at most_ fourteen, and probably some years
younger, at his accession and marriage.
There is not sufficient evidence to show at what ages the previous
Pharaohs of the dynasty had married, but as Akhnaton’s father and
grandfather entered into matrimony at this early age, it would not
be safe to suppose that he himself delayed his marriage till a
later age. Queen Tiy was in all probability married when she was
ten or eleven years old.[45] Akhnaton’s daughter Merytaton, who
was born in the fourth or fifth year of his reign, was, as will
be seen in due course, married before the seventeenth year of the
reign--that is to say, when she was twelve or younger. The Princess
Ankhsenpaaton, who was born in the eighth year, was married, at
latest, two years after Akhnaton’s death--_i.e._, when she was
eleven. Another of Akhnaton’s daughters, Nefernefernaton, who has
not yet appeared, was born in her father’s eleventh year and was
married before the fifteenth, and therefore could only have been
four or five years of age.
Child-marriages such as these are common in Egypt, even at the
present day. Those who have lived on the Nile, and have studied the
national habits, will assuredly fix the probable age of a royal
_mariage de convenance_ at about thirteen years, and will agree
that eleven and twelve are also highly likely ages.
Secondly, as to Akhnaton’s age at the changing of the art. In the
biography of Bakenkhonsu, the High Priest of Amon under Rameses
II., that official tells us that he arrived at the state of manhood
at the age of sixteen, and one may therefore suppose that this was
the recognised legal age at which a man became a responsible agent
in Egypt. Now it has been clearly seen that Akhnaton was under the
regency of his mother during the first years of his reign, and
mention has been made of the inscription at Wady Hammamât, where,
although the new symbol of the religion is shown, Queen Tiy’s name
is placed beside that of her son in an equally honourable position.
She was thus still Queen Regent when the art was changed, and her
son could not yet have come of age--_i.e._, he must then have been
under sixteen.
Thirdly, we have to consider the question of his age when he laid
the foundations of the new city. This was the first decisive action
performed by the king in which his mother has no concern, and of
which she perhaps even disapproved, and it surely marks the period
at which he took the government into his own hands. If, like
Bakenkhonsu, he came of age at sixteen, in the fifth year of his
reign, the founding of the new capital in the following year would
well fit in with the supposition that the abandoning of Thebes
marks the date of the king’s arrival at maturity.
It may be asked how so young a person could conceive that great
dream of the new city dedicated to the Aton. But, after all, he was
seventeen years of age when the idea came to him, nineteen when he
had properly developed the plan, and perhaps as much as twenty when
he took up his residence there. Akhnaton’s greatness, as will be
seen later, dates from the height of his reign in the City of the
Horizon, and not from his early years. Still, when one calls to
mind the infant prodigies, the child preachers who stir an audience
at the age of twelve, one may credit a boy of sixteen or seventeen
with the planning of a new city. Even in the cold Occident such
youthful wiseacres are not rare, and surely they blossom forth less
infrequently in the maturing warmth of the Orient.
IV.
AKHNATON FORMULATES THE RELIGION OF ATON.
“No such grand theology had ever appeared in the world before, so
far as we know; and it is the forerunner of the later monotheist
religions.”--PETRIE: ‘The Religion of Ancient Egypt.’
1. ATON THE TRUE GOD.
Amidst the fair palaces and verdant gardens of the new city,
Akhnaton, now a man of some twenty years, turned his thoughts fully
to the development of his religion. It is necessary, therefore, for
us to glance at the essential features of this the most enlightened
doctrine of the ancient world, and in some degree to make ourselves
acquainted with the creed which the king himself was evolving out
of that worship of Ra-Horakhti Aton in which he had been educated.
Originally the Aton was the actual sun’s disk; but, as has been
said, the god was now called “Heat-which-is-in-Aton,” and Akhnaton,
concentrating his attention on this aspect of the godhead, drew
the eyes of his followers towards a force far more intangible
and distant than the dazzling orb to which they bowed down.
Akhnaton’s conception of God, as we now begin to observe it, was
as the power which created the sun, the energy which penetrated
to this earth in the sun’s heat and caused all things to grow.
At the present day the scientist will tell you that God is the
ultimate source of life, that where natural explanation fails there
God is to be found: He is, in a word, the author of energy, the
primal motive-power of all known things. Akhnaton, centuries upon
centuries before the birth of the scientist, defined God in just
this manner. In an age when men believed, as some do still, that a
deity was but an exaggerated creature of this earth, having a form
built on material lines, this youthful Pharaoh proclaimed God to
be the formless essence, the intelligent germ, the loving force,
which permeated time and space. Let it be clearly understood that
the Aton as conceived by the young Pharaoh was in no sense one of
those old deities which our God ultimately replaced in Egypt. The
Aton is God as we conceive Him. There is no quality attributed by
the king to the Aton which we do not attribute to our God. Like a
flash of blinding light in the night-time the Aton stands out for
a moment amidst the black Egyptian darkness, and disappears once
more,--the first signal to this world of the future religion of the
West. No man whose mind is free from prejudice will fail to see a
far closer resemblance to the teachings of Christ in the religion
of Akhnaton than in that of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The faith of
the patriarchs is the lineal ancestor of the Christian faith; but
the creed of Akhnaton is its isolated prototype. One might believe
that Almighty God had for a moment revealed himself to Egypt, and
had been more clearly, though more momentarily, interpreted there
than ever He was in Syria or Palestine before the time of Christ.
2. ATON THE TENDER FATHER OF ALL CREATION.
Amon-Ra and the old gods of Egypt were, for the most part, but
deified mortals, endued with monstrous, though limited, powers, and
still having around them traditions of aggrandised human deeds.
Others, we have seen, had their origin in natural phenomena: the
wind, the Nile, the starry heavens, and the like. All were terrific
or revengeful, if so they had a mind to be, and all were able
to be moved by human emotions. But to Akhnaton, although he had
absolutely no precedent upon which to launch his thoughts, God
was the intangible and yet ever-present Father of mankind, made
manifest in sunshine. The youthful high priest called upon his
subjects to search for their God not in the confusion of battle
or behind the smoke of human sacrifices, but amidst the flowers
and the trees, amidst the wild duck and the fishes. He preached an
enlightened nature-study: in some respects he was, perhaps, the
first apostle of the Simple Life.
He strove to break down conventional thought, and ceaselessly he
urged his people to worship “in truth,” simply, without an excess
of ceremonial. While the elder gods had been apparent in natural
convulsions and in the more awful incidents of life, Akhnaton’s
kindly father could be seen in the little details of existence, in
the growing poppies, in the soft wind which filled the sails of the
ships, in the fish which leapt from the river. Like a greater than
he, Akhnaton taught his disciples to address their maker as their
“Father which art in Heaven.” The Aton was the joy which caused
the young sheep “to dance upon their legs,” and the birds “to
flutter in their marshes.” He was the god of the simple pleasures
of life; and although Akhnaton himself was indeed a man of sorrows,
plenteously acquainted with grief, happiness was the watchword
which he gave to his followers.
Akhnaton did not permit any graven image to be made of the Aton.
The True God, said the king, had no form; and he held to this
opinion throughout his life. The symbol of the religion was
the sun’s disk, from which there extended numerous rays, each
ray ending in a hand; but this symbol was not worshipped. To
Christians, in the same way, the cross is the symbol of their
creed; but the cross itself is not worshipped. Never before had
man conceived a formless deity, a god who was not endowed with the
five human senses. The Hebrew patriarchs believed God to be capable
of walking in a garden in the cool of the evening, to have made
man in his own image, to be possessed of face, form, and hinder
parts. But Akhnaton, stemming with his hand the flood of tradition,
boldly proclaimed God to be a life-giving, intangible essence: the
_heat_ which is in the sun. He was “the living Aton,”--that is to
say, the power which produced and sustained the energy and movement
of the sun. Although he was so often called “the Aton,” he was
more closely defined as “the Master of the Aton.”[46] The flaming
glory of the sun was the most practical symbol of the godhead, and
the warm rays of sunshine constituted the most obvious connection
between heaven and earth; but always Akhnaton attempted to raise
the eyes of the thinkers beyond this visible or understandable
expression of divinity, to strain them upwards in the effort to
discern that which was “behind the veil.” In lighting on a motive
power more remote than the sun, and acting through the sun, the
young Pharaoh may be said to have penetrated as far behind the
eternal barrier as one may ever hope to penetrate this side the
churchyard. But though so remote, the Aton was the tender, loving
Father of all men, ever-present and ever-mindful of his creatures.
There dropped not a sigh from the lips of a babe that the
intangible Aton did not hear; no lamb bleated for its mother but
the remote Aton hastened to soothe it. He was the loving “Father
and Mother of all that He had made,” who “brought up millions by
His bounty.”
The destructive qualities of the sun were never referred to, and
that pitiless orb under which Egypt sweats and groans for the
summer months each year had nothing in common with the gentle
Father conceived by Akhnaton. The Aton was “the Lord of Love.”
He was the tender nurse who “creates the man-child in woman, and
soothes him that he may not weep”; whose love, to use an Egyptian
phrase of exquisite tenderness, “makes the hands to faint.” His
beams were “beauteous with love” as they fell upon His people and
upon His city, “very rich in love.” “Thy love is great and large,”
says one of Akhnaton’s psalms. “Thou fillest the two lands of Egypt
with Thy love;” and another passage runs: “Thy rays encompass the
lands.... Thou bindest them with Thy love.”
Surely never in the history of the world had man conceived a god
who “so loved the world.” One may search the inscriptions in vain
for any reference to a malignant power, to vengeance, to jealousy,
or to hatred. The Hebrew psalmist said of God, “Like as a father
pitieth his children, even so is the Lord merciful”; and Akhnaton,
many a century before those words were written, attributed just
such a nature to the Aton. The Aton was compassionate, was
merciful, was gentle, was tender; He knew not anger, and there
was no wrath in Him. His overflowing love reached down the paths
of life from mankind to the beasts of the field and to the little
flowers themselves. “All flowers blow,” says one of Akhnaton’s
hymns, “and that which grows on the soil thrives at Thy dawning, O
Aton. They drink their fill [of warmth] before Thy face. All cattle
leap upon their feet; the birds that were in the nest fly forth
with joy; their wings which were closed move quickly with praise to
the living Aton.”
One stands amazed as one reads in pompous Egypt of a god who
listens “when the chicken crieth in the egg-shell,” and gives him
life, delighting that he should “chirp with all his might” when
he is hatched forth; who finds pleasure in causing “the birds to
flutter in their marshes, and the sheep to dance upon their feet.”
For the first time in the history of man the real meaning of God,
as we now understand it, had been comprehended; and the idea of a
beneficent Creator who, though remote, spiritual, and impersonal,
could love each one of His creatures, great or small, had been
grasped by this young Pharaoh. God’s unspeakable goodness and
loving-kindness were as clearly interpreted by Akhnaton as ever
they have been by mortal man; and the wonder of it lies in this,
that Akhnaton had absolutely nothing to base his theories upon. He
was, so far as we know, the first man to whom God revealed Himself
as the passionless, all-loving essence of unqualified goodness.
3. ATON WORSHIPPED AT SUNRISE AND SUNSET.
In order to prevent the more ignorant of his disciples from
worshipping the sun itself, Akhnaton seems to have selected the
sunrise and the sunset as the two hours for ceremonial adoration;
for then the light, the beauty, the tenderness, of the celestial
phenomenon could be appreciated, and the awful majesty of the sun
was not in great prominence. Akhnaton attempted to cultivate in
his followers an appreciation of the gentle hues of daybreak and
of evening; and he taught them to believe that the oft-mentioned
“beauties” of the Aton were only to be fully understood at these
times. In the gladness of sunrise and in the hush of the sunset,
the emotions are most apt to be touched and moved; for in Egypt
there is always praise in the heart in the cool opalescence of the
dawn, and in the red dusk there is many and many a dream.
Phrases such as the following may be gleaned from Akhnaton’s hymns:
“Thy rising is beautiful in the horizon of heaven, O living Aton,
who dispensest life; shining from the eastern horizon of heaven,
Thou fillest Egypt with Thy beauty.” “Thy setting is beautiful, O
living Aton, ... who guidest ... all countries that they may make
laudations at Thy dawning and at Thy setting.” “When the Aton rises
all the land is in joy; His rays produce eyes for all that He has
created; and men say, ‘It is life to see Him, there is death in not
seeing Him.’” “When Thou settest alive,[47] O Aton, West and East
give praise to thee.” “Thou settest behind the western horizon;
Thou settest in life and gladness, and every eye rejoices though
they are in darkness after Thou settest.” “When Thou hast risen
they live; when Thou settest they die.”
The ceremonial side of the religion does not seem to have been
complex. The priests, of whom there were very few, offered
sacrifices, consisting mostly of vegetables, fruit, and flowers, to
the Aton, and at these ceremonies the king and his family often
officiated. They then sang psalms and offered prayers, and, with
much sweet music, gave praise to the great Father of joy and love.
The Aton, however, was not thought to delight in these ceremonies
as He did in more natural thanksgivings. Why should God be praised
in set phrases and studied poses when all the fair world was
shouting for the joy of Him? The young calf frisking through the
poppy-covered meadows, the birds singing upon the trees, the clouds
racing across the sky, were the true worshippers of God.
One of the recently discovered sayings of Christ closely parallels
Akhnaton’s utterances. “Ye ask,” it runs, “who are those that draw
us to the kingdom if the kingdom is in heaven? The fowls of the
air, and all the beasts that are under the earth or upon the earth,
and the fishes in the sea, these are they which draw you, and the
kingdom is within you.” The contemplation of nature was more to
Akhnaton than many ceremonies, and his thoughts were more easily
drawn upwards by the rustle of the leaves than by the shaking of
the systrum.
4. THE GOODNESS OF ATON.
In the gardens of the City of the Horizon Akhnaton was surrounded
on all sides by the joyous beauties of nature. Here the birds
sang merrily in the laden trees, here the cool north wind rustled
through the leaves, setting them dancing upon their stems, here
the many-coloured blossoms nodded to their reflections in the
still lakes; and, as he watched the sunlight playing with the blue
shadows, his heart seemed to fill to repletion with gratitude to
God. “O Lord, how manifold are Thy works!” was his constant cry.
“The whole land is in joy and holiday because of Thee. They shout
to the height of heaven, they receive joy and gladness when they
see Thee.” How “fair of form” was the formless Aton, how “radiant
of colour”! “All that Thou hast made,” said the king, “leaps before
Thee.” “Thou makest the beauty of form through Thyself alone.”
“Eyes have life at sight of Thy beauty; hearts have health when the
Aton shines.”
As the psalmist sang, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not
want,” so Akhnaton, in the fulness of his heart, cried, “There is
no poverty for him who hath set Thee in his heart; such an one
cannot say, ‘O, that I had.’” “When Thou bringest life to men’s
hearts by Thy beauty, there is indeed life.” The Aton “gave health
to the eyes by His rays,” and, “bright, great, gleaming, high
above all the earth,” he was “the cause of plenty,”--the very
“food and fatness of Egypt.” To David, several centuries later,
God seemed to be “a strong tower of defence”; and, thinking along
the same lines, Akhnaton called the Aton his “wall of brass of a
million cubits.” The Aton was “the witness of that which pertains
to eternity,” and to those whose thoughts had strayed he was “the
remembrancer of eternity.” He was the “Lord of Fate,” the “Lord
of Fortune,” the “Master of that which is ordained,” the “Origin
of Fate,” the “Chance which gives Life”; and in so describing him
Akhnaton reached a philosophical position which even to-day is
quite unassailable.
Unlike Jehovah, who was described as “great above all other gods,”
the Aton was conceived as being without rivals; and Akhnaton now
never mentions the word “gods.” “The living Aton beside whom there
is no other,” is one of the common phrases; and of Him again it is
written, “Thou art alone, but infinite vitalities are in Thee by
means of which to give life to Thy creatures.”
Unlike Jehovah again, who was not infrequently thought to be a
wrathful god, surrounded by clouds and darkness, and speaking
through the roar of the thunders, the Aton was the “Lord of Peace,”
who could not tolerate battle and strife. Akhnaton was so opposed
to war that he persistently refused to offer an armed resistance
to the subsequent revolts which occurred in his Asiatic dominions.
The Aton was a deity to whose tender heart human bloodshed made no
appeal. In an age of martial glory, when the sword and buckler,
the plumed helmet and the shirt of mail, glittered in every street
and upon every highway, Akhnaton set himself in opposition to all
heroics, and saw God without melodrama.
Above all things the Aton loved truth. Frankness, sincerity,
straightforwardness, honesty, and veracity were qualities not
always to be found in the heart of an Egyptian; and Akhnaton, in
antagonism to the sins of hypocrisy and deception which he saw
around him, always spoke of himself as “living in truth.” “I have
set truth in my inward parts,” says one of his followers, “and
falsehood is my loathing; for I know that the King rejoiceth in
truth.”
5. AKHNATON THE “SON OF GOD” BY TRADITIONAL RIGHT.
It may be understood how the boy longed for truth in all things
when one remembers the thousand exaggerated conventions of Egyptian
life at this time. Court etiquette had developed to a degree
which rendered life to the Pharaoh an endless round of unnatural
poses of mind and body. In the preaching of his doctrine of truth
and simplicity Akhnaton did not fail to call upon his subjects
to regard their Pharaoh not as a celestial god, as had been the
custom, but as a man, though, of course, one of divine origin.
It was usual for the Pharaoh to keep aloof from his people:
Akhnaton was to be found in their midst. The court demanded that
their lord should drive in solitary state through the city:
Akhnaton stood in his chariot with his wife and children, and
allowed the artist to represent him joking therein with his little
daughter. In portraying the Pharaoh the artist was expected to draw
him in some conventional attitude of dignity: Akhnaton insisted
upon being shown in all manner of natural attitudes--now leaning
languidly upon a staff, now nursing his children, and now eating
his dinner. Thus again one sees his objection to heroics, and his
love of naturalness.
[Illustration: _Akhnaton driving with his Wife and Daughter._]