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 and occupied the throne for
a short time after his death. Another daughter Ankhsenpaton, married
Tutankhaton, a loyal follower of her father. His brief reign left no
impress on Egyptian history. The discovery of his tomb, however, in the
Valley of the Kings, has made him the best known of all Pharaohs.
[Illustration: A Princess at Akhetaton. A limestone relief showing one
of the daughters of Akhenaton and his wife Nofretete discovered at
Amarna.]
[Illustration: Princess Manyet-aton. A representation of the princess
was adapted for use as the lid of a canopic jar used in the burial of
Akhenaton. Discovered in the tomb of Smenkhkare in the Valley of the
Kings, Thebes.]
The circumstances concerning the deaths of Nofretete and Akhenaton are
not known, although we do know that Akhenaton died in the seventeenth
year of his reign, when he was but thirty years of age. 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. While
such terms as "monotheist" and "pacifist" when applied to him bear a
different connotation from their meaning in contemporary life, still his
meditation upon the Aton bringing blessing to all men has within it the
seed of something that finds its highest expression in the prophetic
spokesmen of ancient Israel. Akhenaton went too far for his own
generation in Egypt, but the Biblical affirmation of God as creator of
heaven and earth and redeemer of mankind was hardly apprehended by
Akhenaton.
[Illustration: King Tutankhamon. Under the famed "King Tut" the
religious reforms of Akhenaton were renounced and Amon was restored to
his place as the principal god of Egypt. Statue from Medinet Habu.]
III
THE HORIZON OF ATON
When Akhenaton determined to build a new city which would be sacred to
his god Aton, he chose a site on the east bank of the Nile, three
hundred miles north of Thebes, where the flanking cliffs recede to leave
a semicircular plain eight miles long and three broad. Here Akhenaton
built the capital city which he named Akhetaton, "the horizon of Aton."
The city itself was five miles long but only about eleven hundred yards
broad. It had no walls, for the Nile formed its western boundary and a
semicircle of cliffs bound it on the east. The fertile land along the
river bank was kept for cultivation.