3. MERYRA IS MADE HIGH PRIEST OF ATON.
The religion of the Aton had now assumed shape and symmetry, and had been firmly established in the new capital as the creed of the court. Akhnaton was thus able to intrust its administration and organisation there to one of his nobles who had hearkened to his teaching, and to turn his attention to other affairs, and more especially to the conversion of the rest of Egypt. As head of the state a thousand matters daily claimed his consideration, and his high principles led him to stray further along the by-paths of administration than had been the wont of the Pharaohs before him. His ill-health did not permit him to tax his brain with impunity, and yet there was never a king of Egypt before or after him whose mind was so fruitful of thoughts and of schemes. The young king himself expounded to his followers the doctrines which he wished them to embrace, and one may suppose that he sat for many an hour in the halls of his palace, or under the trees in the gardens beside the Nile, earnestly telling of the beauties of the Aton to officials and nobles.
No one had accepted the king’s teaching with greater readiness than a certain Meryra, who seems to have early associated himself with the movement; and it was to him that Akhnaton now handed over the office of “High Priest of the Aton in the City of the Horizon of Aton,” in order to free himself for the great task of administering his kingdom and converting it to his way of thinking. Unfortunately we know very little of the career of Meryra, but on the walls of his tomb in the hills behind the capital there are a few reliefs which may here be described as illustrating events in his life and in the life of Akhnaton.
One of these scenes shows us the investiture of Meryra as High Priest. The king is seen with his wife and one of his daughters standing at a window of the gaily decorated loggia of the palace. The sill of the window is massed with bright-coloured cushions, and over these the royal personages lean forward to address Meryra and the company assembled in the pillared gallery outside. The outer surface of the loggia wall is brightly ornamented either with real or painted garlands of lotus-flowers, and with the many-coloured patterns usual upon such buildings in ancient Egypt. Ribbons, fluttering in the breeze, hang from the delicate lotus-pillars which support the roof, and vie in brilliancy with the red and blue ostrich-plume fans and standards carried by the officials.
Leaning from the window, with arm outstretched, Akhnaton bids Meryra rise from his knees, on to which he had cast himself on reaching the royal presence. Then solemnly the king addresses his favoured disciple in the following words:—“Behold, I make thee High Priest of the Aton for me in the Temple of the Aton in the City of the Horizon of Aton. I do this for love of thee, and I say unto thee: O my servant who hearkenest to the teaching, my heart is satisfied with everything which thou hast done. I give thee this office, and I say unto thee: thou shalt eat the food of Pharaoh, thy lord, in the Temple of Aton.”
Immediately the assembled company crowd round Meryra and lift him shoulder-high, while the new High Priest cries, “Abundant are the rewards which the Aton knows to give when his heart is pleased.” The king then presents Meryra with the insignia of his office, and with various costly gifts, which are taken charge of by the servants and attendants who stand outside the gallery. Behind these attendants, at the outskirts of the scene, one observes the chariot which is to convey the High Priest back to his villa; fan-bearers who shall run before and behind him; women of the household who shall beat upon tambourines at the head of the procession, and who already dance with excitement as they see Meryra hoisted on to his friend’s shoulder; and still other women who shall make the roadway rich with flowers.
This is no solemn and occult initiation of an ascetic into the mystery of the new religion, but rather the elevation of a good fellow to a popular post of honour. There was no mystery in the faith of the Aton. Frankness, openness, and sincerity were the dominant themes of Akhnaton’s teaching,—a worship of God in the blessed light of the day, the singing of merry psalms in the open courts of the temple; and the chosen High Priest was more likely to have been a deep-thinking, clean-lived, honest-hearted, God-fearing, family man, than an ascetic who had abandoned the pomps and the vanities of this world. The point at which Akhnaton’s religion differs most widely from Christianity is here to be observed: the Pharaoh, while encouraging the Simple Life, did not preach the mortification of the flesh, but only the control of the body. The comforts of life, the brilliancy of decoration, the charms of music, the beauties of painting and sculpture, the pleasure of good company, the tonic of a bowl of wine, were all as acceptable to him, in moderation, as to the Preacher in Ecclesiastes.