dusty and travel-stained, to deliver the many letters asking for
help, must have despaired indeed when they observed the manner
in which the news was received. Hateful to these hardy soldiers
of the empire were the fine quays at which their galleys moored;
hateful the fair villas and shaded avenues of the city; and thrice
hateful the rolling hymns to the Aton which came to them from
the temple halls as they hurried to the Pharaoh’s palace. The
townspeople smiled at their haste in this city of dreams; the court
officials delayed the delivery of their letters, scoffing at the
idea of urgency in the affairs of Asia; and finally these wretched
documents, written--if ever letters were so written--with blood
and with tears, were pigeon-holed in the city archives and utterly
forgotten save by Akhnaton himself. Instead of the brave music of
the drums and bugles of the relieving army which these messengers
had hoped to muster, there rang in their maddened ears only the
ceaseless chants of the priestly ceremonies and the pattering
love-songs of private festivals. Newly come from the sweat and the
labour of the road, their brains still racked with the horror of
war and yet burning with the vast hopes of empire, they looked with
scorn at the luxury of Egypt’s new capital, and heard with disgust
the dainty tales of the flowers. The lean, sad-eyed Pharaoh, with
his crooked head and his stooping shoulders, would speak only of
his God; and, clad in simple clothes unrelieved by a single jewel,
there was nothing martial in his appearance to give them hope. From
the beleaguered cities which they had so lately left there came to
them the bitter cry for succour; and it was not possible to drown
that cry in words of peace, nor in the jangle of the systrum or
the warbling of the pipes. Who, thought the waiting messengers,
could resist that piteous call: “Thy city weeps, and her tears are
flowing”? Who could sit idle in the City of the Horizon when the
proud empire, won with the blood of the noblest soldiers of the
great Thothmes, was breaking up before their eyes? What mattered
all the philosophies in the world, and all the gods in heaven, when
Egypt’s great dominions were being wrested from her? The splendid
Lebanon, the white kingdoms of the sea, Askalon and Ashdod, Tyre
and Sidon, Simyra and Byblos, the hills of Jerusalem, Kadesh and
the great Orontes, the fair Jordan, Tunip, Aleppo, the distant
Euphrates.... What counted a creed against these? God? The truth?
The only god was He of the Battles, who had led Egypt into Syria;
the only truth the doctrine of the sword, which had held her there
for so many years.
Looking back across these thirty-two centuries, can one yet say
whether the Pharaoh was in the right, or whether his soldiers were
the better minded? On the one hand there is culture, refinement,
love, thought, prayer, goodwill, and peace; on the other hand,
power, might, health, hardihood, bravery, and struggle. One knows
that Akhnaton’s theories were the more civilised, the more ideal;
but is there not a pulse which stirs in sympathy with those who
were holding the citadels of Asia? We can give our approval to the
ideals of the young king, but we cannot see his empire fall without
bitterly blaming him for the disaster. Yet in passing judgment,
in calling the boy to account for the loss of Syria, there is the
consciousness that above our tribunal sits a judge to whom war
must assuredly be abhorrent, and in whose eyes the struggle of
the nations must utterly lack its drama. Thus, even now, Akhnaton
eludes our criticism, and but raises once more that eternal
question which as yet has no answer.
7. AKHNATON’S HEALTH GIVES WAY.
It is possible that the Pharaoh now realised his position, and one
may suppose that he tried as best he could to pacify the turbulent
princes by all the arts of diplomacy. It does not seem, however,
that he yet fully appreciated the catastrophe which was now almost
inevitable--the complete loss of Syria. He could not bring himself
to believe that the princes of that country would play him false;
and he could have had no idea that he was being so entirely fooled
by such men as Aziru. But when at last the tribute ceased to come
in regularly, then, too late, he knew that disaster was upon him.
The thoughts which now must have held sway in his mind could not
have failed to carry him down the dark steps of depression to the
very pit of despair, and one may picture him daily cast prone upon
the floor before the high altar of the Aton, and nightly tossing
sleepless upon his royal bed. It seems that he had placed great
reliance upon a certain official, named Bikhuru, who was acting as
Egyptian commissioner in Palestine; but now it is probable that he
received news of that unfortunate personage’s flight, and later of
his murder.[78] Then came the report that Byblos had fallen, and
one is led to suppose that that truly noble soldier Ribaddi did
not survive the fall of the city which he had so tenaciously held.
The news of the surrender of other important Egyptian strongholds
followed rapidly, and still there came the pathetic appeal for help
from the minor posts which yet held out.
Akhnaton was now about twenty-eight years of age, and already the
cares of the whole world seemed to rest upon his shoulders. Lean
and lank was his body; his face was thin and lined with worry; and
in his eye one might, perhaps, have seen that hunted look which
comes to those who are dogged by disaster. It is probable that he
now suffered acutely from the distressing malady to which he was a
victim, and there must have been times when he felt himself upon
the verge of madness. His misshapen skull came nigh to bursting
with the full thoughts of his aching brain, and the sad knowledge
that he had failed must have pressed upon his mind like some
unrelenting finger. The invocations to the Aton which rang in his
head made confusion with the cry of Syria. Now he listened to
the voices of his choirs lauding the sweetness of life; and now,
breaking in upon the chant, did he not hear the solemn voices of
his fathers calling to him from the Hills of the West to give
account of his stewardship? Could he then find solace in trees and
in flowers? Could he cry “Peace” when there was red tumult in his
brain?
His moods at this time must have given cause for the greatest
alarm, and his behaviour was, no doubt, sufficiently erratic
to render even those nobles who had so blindly followed him
mistrustful of their leader. In a frenzy of zeal in the adoration
of the Aton, Akhnaton now gave orders that the name of all other
gods should suffer the same fate as that of Amon, and should be
erased from every inscription throughout the land. This order was
never fully carried out; but one may still see in the temples
of Karnak, Medinet Habu, and elsewhere, and upon many lesser
monuments, the chisel marks which have partially blurred out the
names of Ptah, Hathor, and other deities, and have obliterated the
offending word “gods.”
The consternation which this action must have caused was almost
sufficient to bring about a revolution in the provinces, where
the old gods were still dearly loved by the people. The erasing
of the name of Amon had been, after all, a direct war upon a
certain priesthood, and did not very materially affect any other
localities than that of Thebes. But the suppression of the numerous
priesthoods of the many deities who held sway throughout Egypt
threw into disorder the whole country, and struck at the heart
not of one but of a hundred cities. Was the kindly old artificer
Ptah, with his hammer and his chisel, to be tumbled into empty
space? Was the beautiful, the gracious Hathor--the Venus of the
Nile--to be thrown down from her celestial seat? Was it possible to
banish Khnum, the goat-headed potter who lived in the caves of the
Cataract, from the life of the city of Elephantine; the mysterious
jackal Wepwat from the hearts of the men of Abydos; or the ancient
crocodile Sebek from the ships and the fields of Ombos? Every town
had its local god, and every god its priesthood; and surely the
Pharaoh was mad who attempted to make war upon these legions of
heaven. This Aton, whom the king called upon them to worship, was
so remote, so infinitely above their heads. Aton did not sit with
them at their hearth-side to watch the kettle boil; Aton did not
play a sweet-toned flute amongst the reeds of the river; Aton did
not bring a fairy gift to the new-born babe. Where was the sacred
tree in whose branches one might hope to see him seated?--where
was the eddy of the Nile in which he loved to bathe?--and where
was the rock at whose foot one might place, as a fond offering, a
bowl of milk? The people loved their old gods, whose simple ways,
kind hearts, and quick tempers made them understandable to mortal
minds. But a god who reigned alone in solitary isolation, who, more
remote even than the Jehovah of the Hebrews, rode not upon the
clouds nor moved upon the wings of the wind, was hardly a deity to
whom they could open their hearts. True, the sunrise and the sunset
were the visible signs of the godhead; but let the reader ask any
modern Egyptian peasant whether there is aught to stir the pulses
in these two great phenomena, and he will realise that the glory
of the skies could not have appealed particularly to the lesser
subjects of Akhnaton, who, moreover, were not permitted to bow the
knee to the flaming orb itself. When the Christian religion took
hold of these peasants, and presented for their acceptance the same
idea of a remote though loving and considerate God, it was only by
the elevation of saints and devils, angels and powers of darkness,
almost to the rank of demigods, that the faith prospered. But
Akhnaton allowed no such tampering with the primary doctrine, and
St George and all the saints would have suffered the erasure of
their very names.
8. AKHNATON’S LAST DAYS AND DEATH.
The troubles which Akhnaton by such actions gathered around
himself, while disturbing to his adherents, must have given some
degree of pleasure to those nobles who saw in the king’s downfall
the only hope of Egypt. Horemheb, the commander-in-chief of the
inactive armies, could now begin to prepare himself against the
time when he should lead a force into Syria to restore Egyptian
prestige. Tutankhaton, betrothed to Akhnaton’s third daughter,
could dream of the days when he would make himself Pharaoh, and
carry the court back to glorious Thebes. Even Meryra, the High
Priest of Aton, seems to have allowed his thoughts to drift away
from the City of the Horizon wherein the sun of Egypt’s glory
had set, for it does not seem that he ever made use of the tomb
there prepared for him. These last stages of Akhnaton’s life must
thus have been embittered by a doubt of the sincerity of his
closest friends, and by the knowledge that, in spite of all their
protestations, he had failed to plant “the truth” in their hearts.
The queen had borne him no son to succeed to the throne, and there
appeared to be nobody to whom he could impart what he felt to
be his last instructions. There can be no question that he was
still greatly loved by those who surrounded his person, but there
were few who hoped that his religion, so disastrous to Egypt,
would survive him. In this extremity Akhnaton turned to a certain
noble, probably not of royal blood, whose name seems to have been
Smenkhkara, though some have read it Saakara.[79] Nothing is known
regarding his previous career, but one may suppose that he appeared
to Akhnaton to be the least unreliable of his followers. To him
the king imparted his instructions, revealing all that words could
draw from his teeming brain. The little Princess Merytaton, now
but twelve years of age, was called from her games, and with pomp
and ceremony was married to this Smenkhkara, thus making him the
legitimate heir to the throne, Merytaton being the eldest daughter
and sole heiress of the Pharaoh.
Feeling that his days were numbered, Akhnaton then associated
Smenkhkara upon the throne with him as co-ruler, and was thus able
to familiarise the people with their future lord. In later years,
after Akhnaton’s death, Smenkhkara was wont to write after his name
the words “beloved of Akhnaton,” as though to indicate that his
claim to the throne was due to Akhnaton’s affection for him, as
well as to the rights derived from his wife.
But what mattered the securing of the succession to the throne when
that throne had been shaken to its very foundations, and now seemed
to be upon the verge of utter wreck? Akhnaton could no longer stave
off the impending crash, and from all sides there gathered the
forces which were to overwhelm him. His government was chaotic. The
plotting and scheming of the priests of Amon showed signs of coming
to a successful issue. The anger of the priesthoods of the other
gods of Egypt hung over the palace like some menacing storm-cloud.
The soldiers, eager to march upon Syria as in the days of the great
Thothmes III., chafed at their enforced idleness, and watched with
increasing restlessness the wreck of the empire.
Now through the streets of the city there passed the weary
messengers of Asia hurrying to the palace, no longer bearing the
appeals of kings and generals for support, but announcing the fall
of the last cities of Syria and the slaughter of the last left of
their rulers. The scattered remnants of the garrisons staggered
back to the Nile at the heels of these messengers, pursued to
the very frontiers of Egypt by the triumphant Asiatics. From the
north the Hittites poured into Syria; from the south the Khabiri
swarmed over the land. As the curtain is rung down on the turbulent
scene, one catches a glimpse of the wily Aziru, his hands still
stained with the blood of Ribaddi and of many another loyal prince,
snatching at this city and trampling on that. At last he has cast
aside his mask, and with the tribute which had been promised to
Egypt he now, no doubt, placates the ascending Hittites, whose
suzerainty alone he admits.
The tribute having ceased, the Egyptian treasury soon stood empty,
for the government of the country was too confused to permit of the
proper gathering of the taxes, and the working of the gold-mines
could not be organised. Much had been expended on the building of
the City of the Horizon, and now the king knew not where to turn
for money. In the space of a few years Egypt had been reduced from
a world power to the position of a petty state, from the richest
country known to man to the humiliating condition of a bankrupt
kingdom.
Surely one may picture Akhnaton now in his last hours, his jaw
fallen, his sunken eyes widely staring, as the full realisation of
the utter failure of all his hopes came to him. He had sacrificed
Syria to his principles; but the sacrifice was of no avail, since
his doctrines had not taken root even in Egypt. He knew now that
the religion of the Aton would not outlive him, that the knowledge
of the love of God was not yet to be made known to the world. Even
at this moment the psalms of the Aton were beating upon his ears,
the hymns to the God who had forsaken him were drifting into his
palace with the scent of the flowers; and the birds which he loved
were singing as merrily in the luxuriant gardens as ever they sang
when they had inspired a line in the king’s great poem. But upon
him now there had fallen the blackness of despair, and already the
darkness of coming death was closing around him. The misery of
failure must have ground him down as beneath the very mountains of
the west themselves, and the weight of the knowledge of all that he
had lost could not be borne by his enfeebled frame.
History tells us only that, simultaneously with the fall of his
empire, Akhnaton died; and the doctors who have examined his body
report that death may well have been due to some form of stroke or
fit. But in the imagination there seems to ring across the years a
cry of complete despair, and one can picture the emaciated figure
of this “beautiful child of the Aton” fall forward upon the painted
palace-floor and lie still amidst the red poppies and the dainty
butterflies there depicted.
VIII.
THE FALL OF THE RELIGION OF AKHNATON.
“Thus disappeared the most remarkable figure in early Oriental
history.... There died with him such a spirit as the world had
never seen before.”--BREASTED: ‘History of Egypt.’
1. THE BURIAL OF AKHNATON.
The body of Akhnaton was embalmed in the city which he had founded;
and while these mortal parts of the great idealist were undergoing
the lengthy process of mummification, the new Pharaoh Smenkhkara
made a feeble attempt to retain the spirit of his predecessor in
the new _régime_. Practically nothing is known of his brief reign,
but it is apparent from subsequent events that he entirely failed
to carry on the work of Akhnaton, and the period of his sovereignty
is marked by a general tendency to abandon the religion of the
Aton. Smenkhkara had dated the first year of his reign from the
day of his accession as co-ruler with Akhnaton, and thus it is
that there are no inscriptions found which record his first year,
although there are many references to his second year. The main
event must have occurred some three months after the commencement
of his sole reign, when the body of Akhnaton was carried in solemn
state through the streets of the city and across the desert to the
tomb which had been made for him in the distant cliffs.
[Illustration: _Death Mask of Akhnaton._]
The mummy had been wrapped, as was usual, in endless strips of
linen; and amongst these there was placed upon the royal breast a
necklace of gold, and over the face an ornament cut in flat gold
foil representing a vulture with wings outstretched--a Pharaonic
symbol of divine protection. In many burials of this dynasty a
vulture such as this was placed upon the mummy; and representations
of an exactly similar ornament are shown in the tombs of Sennefer
and others at Thebes. It is somewhat surprising that the body
of Akhnaton, who was so averse to all old customs, should thus
have this royal talisman upon it; and it would seem that some of
the strict rules of the Aton worshipper had already been relaxed
by his successor. Akhnaton had retained but three of the ancient
divine symbols, so far as one can tell from the reliefs and
paintings--namely, the uræus or cobra, the sphinx, and the hawk,
which were often used as ornaments. But one may ask whether the
vulture had really been dispensed with by him. It is true that
he banned the vulture-hieroglyph in the inscriptions, as we have
already seen on the outer coffin of Queen Tiy;[80] but his reason
for so doing was that by such a hieroglyph the name of the goddess
Mut was called to mind, and that goddess, being the consort of
Amon, was not to be tolerated. The vulture which was laid upon
the mummy, however, had nothing to do with Mut, nor had it any
likeness to the hieroglyph. It was originally a representation of
the presiding genius of Upper Egypt, and corresponded to the uræus,
which primarily represented the power of Lower Egypt. It is true,
again, that it was the custom for the Pharaohs to be shown in the
sculptures and paintings with this vulture hovering in protection
over their heads, and that Akhnaton seems to have dispensed with
such a symbol. But this was perhaps due to the fact that the disk
and rays, symbolic of Aton, had taken its place above the royal
figure. There is no reason, after all, to suppose that this form
of vulture was absolutely banned, since the uræus and the hawk
were retained;[81] and though, as will presently be seen, it will
be natural to think that it was placed on Akhnaton’s mummy at his
successor’s suggestion, there is nothing to show that Akhnaton
himself did not desire it to be laid there.
Over the linen bandages on the body there were placed ribbons of
gold foil encircling the mummy--probably around the shoulders, the
middle, and the knees,--joined to other ribbons running the length
of the body at the back and front. These ribbons were inscribed
with Akhnaton’s name and titles, and thus recorded for all time the
identity of the mummy to which they adhered. Money being somehow
found, the body was wrapped in sheets of pure gold, sufficiently
thin to be flexible, and was placed in a splendid coffin, designed
in the usual form of a recumbent figure, and inlaid in a dazzling
manner with rare stones and coloured glass. Down the front of this
coffin ran a simple inscription, the hieroglyphs of which were
also inlaid. It read: “The beautiful prince, The Chosen One of
Ra, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, living in Truth, Lord of
the Two Lands, Akhnaton, the beautiful child of the living Aton,
whose name shall live for ever and ever.”[82] There is one curious
feature about this inscription. When Akhnaton made the outer coffin
for his mother, in or about the twelfth year of his reign, he was
particularly careful not to use the hieroglyph representing the
goddess Maat when writing the word _maat_, “truth.” But this sign
is employed now upon his own coffin; and one can only presume,
therefore, that the coffin was made after Akhnaton’s death, and
that the new Pharaoh Smenkhkara had not the same objection to the
representation of the goddess as had his predecessor. We may now
better understand the presence of the vulture symbol also; for
it is obvious that before Akhnaton’s funeral had taken place his
strict _régime_ had been relaxed.
The royal mummy was now carried to its tomb and there deposited,
together with such funeral furniture and offerings as were
considered necessary. The four alabaster canopic jars, always
conspicuous in an Egyptian burial, were here not wanting. The
stopper of each jar was exquisitely carved to represent the head
of Akhnaton, wearing the usual male wig of the period, and having
the royal cobra upon the forehead. From these heads one sees that
the art of Akhnaton was modified immediately after his death, and
its more pronounced characteristics were already being toned down.
This slackening in the rules which Akhnaton had made shows us how
entirely dependent the movement had been upon its leader; and we
realise the more clearly how strong a character was his. Ere even
the king’s burial had taken place the death of his religion was
assured.
2. THE COURT RETURNS TO THEBES.
Smenkhkara died, or was deposed, about a year after Akhnaton’s
death. He was succeeded by another noble, Tutankhaton,[83] who, in
order to legitimise his accession, obtained in marriage Akhnaton’s
second daughter Ankhsenpaaton, a girl barely twelve years old. Thus
Smenkhkara’s wife, Merytaton, became a dowager-queen at the age
of thirteen or so, and her little sister took her place upon the
throne.
By this time the priests of Amon had begun to hold up their heads
once more, and to scheme for the downfall of Aton with renewed
energy. Pressure was soon brought to bear on Tutankhaton, and he
had not been upon the throne more than a year or so when he was
persuaded to consider the abandonment of the City of the Horizon
and his return to Thebes. He did not yet turn entirely from the
religion of the Aton, but attempted to take a middle course between
the two factions, giving full licence both to the worshippers of
the Aton and to those of Amon. Horemheb, the commander-in-chief
of the idle army, seems to have been one of the leaders of the
reactionary movement. He did not concern himself so much with the
religious aspect of the question: there was as much to be said on
the one side as on the other. But it was he who knocked at the
doors of the heart of Egypt and urged the nation to awake to the
danger in Asia. For him there were no scruples as to warfare, and
the doctrine of the sword found favour in his sight. An expedition
was fitted out, and the reigning Pharaoh was persuaded to lead it.
Thus we read that Horemheb was “the companion of his Lord upon
the battlefield on that day of the slaying of the Asiatics.”[84]
Akhnaton had dreamed of the universal peace which still is a
far-off wraith to mankind; but Horemheb was a practical man in
whom that dream would have been but weakness which was such mighty
strength in the dead king.
The new Pharaoh now changed his name from Tutankhaton to
Tutankhamon, and, to the sound of martial music, returned to
Thebes. The City of the Horizon was left to its fate, and it was
not long before the palaces and the villas became the home of the
jackals and the owls, while the temples were partly pulled down to
provide stone for other works. However much the reigning Pharaoh
differed in views from Akhnaton, it would not have been possible
to leave the royal body lying in sight of this wreck of all the
hopes that had been his. Akhnaton, moreover, was Tutankhamon’s
father-in-law, and it was only through the rights of Akhnaton’s
daughter that the Pharaoh held the throne. His memory was still
regarded with reverence by many of his late followers, and there
could be no question of leaving his body in the deserted city. It
was therefore carried to Thebes in its coffin, together with the
four canopic jars, and was placed, for want of a proper sepulchre,
in the tomb of Queen Tiy, which had been reopened for the purpose.
Tutankhamon showed the trend of his policy by both restoring the
temple of the Aton at Karnak and at the same time repairing the
damage done by Akhnaton to the works of Amon. The style of art
which he favoured was a modified form of Akhnaton’s method, and the
influence of his movement is still apparent in the new king’s work.
He did not reign long enough, however, to display much originality,
and after a few years he disappears, almost unnoticed, from the
stage. On his death the question of inviting Horemheb to fill the
vacant throne must have been seriously considered, but there was
another candidate in the field. This was Akhnaton’s father-in-law,
Ay, who had been one of the most important nobles in the group of
courtiers at the City of the Horizon. It was he who had sheltered
Queen Nefertiti before she had passed into Akhnaton’s palace, and
it was in his tomb that the great hymn to the Aton was inscribed.
He had been loudest in the praises of the preacher king and of his
doctrines, and he still retained the title “Father-in-law” as his
most cherished designation.