6. AKHNATON CONTINUES TO REFUSE TO SEND HELP.
The messengers who arrived at the City of the Horizon of Aton, 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.