various complaints, and stating that his messengers had been robbed
in territory belonging to the Pharaoh, who must therefore make good
their losses. A third letter makes similar complaints, and hints
at future trouble. Meanwhile the King of Mitanni was on none too
friendly terms with Akhnaton, and appears to have detained the
Pharaoh’s envoy, named Mani, thereby causing Akhnaton considerable
anxiety. There was, in fact, a general tendency to disparage
the Egyptian king, which must have been exceedingly galling to
Akhnaton, who had the power to let loose upon Asia an army which
would silence all insult, but did not find such a step consistent
with his principles. In a letter which he wrote to one of the
Syrian princes whose fidelity was doubtful, Akhnaton ends his
despatch with the words: “I am very well, I the sun in the heavens,
and my chariots and soldiers are exceedingly numerous; and from
Upper Egypt even unto Lower Egypt, and from the place where the
sun riseth even unto the place where he setteth, the whole country
is in good cause and content.” Thus we see that Akhnaton knew his
power, and wished that others should know it; and it is therefore
the more surprising that, as we shall presently find, he never
chose to use it.
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.
[Illustration: _Letter from Ribaddi to the King of Egypt, reporting
the progress of the rebellion under Aziru._
(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.