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.
Religious feeling at this time was running high, for the partisans of Amon and those of Aton seem still to have been struggling for the supremacy, and Ay appeared to have been regarded as the most likely man to bridge the gulf between the two factions. A favourite of Akhnaton, and still tolerant of all that was connected with the late movement, he was not averse to the cult of Amon, and by conciliating both parties he managed to obtain the throne for himself. His power, however, did not last for long, and as the priests of Amon regained the confidence of the nation at the expense of the worshippers of the Aton, so the prestige of Ay declined. His past relationship to Akhnaton, which even as king be carefully recorded within his cartouche, now told against him rather than for him, and about eight years after the death of Akhnaton he disappeared like his predecessors.