6. THE AGE OF AKHNATON.
We have spoken of the king as being nineteen years old. The story has now reached a point at which we must pause to consider this vexed question of Akhnaton’s age. In the above pages it has been said that the Pharaoh was about eleven years old at his marriage and accession to the throne; was fifteen when the canons of art were changed and the symbols of the Aton religion introduced; was seventeen when the foundations of the new city were laid; and was nineteen when he took up his residence there. Let us study these ages in the above order.
The Head of the Mummy of Thothmes IV., the grandfather of Akhnaton.
Firstly, then, as to the king’s marriage. The mummy of Thothmes IV., the grandfather of Akhnaton, has been shown by Dr Elliot Smith to be that of a man not more than about twenty-six years of age. That king was succeeded by his son Amonhotep III., who is known to have been married to Queen Tiy before the second year of his reign, and to have been old enough at that time to begin to hunt big game. It would be difficult to believe that he would be permitted to join any hunting party, however secure against accident, before the twelfth year of his age; but, on the other hand, if he was more than that age, his father would have to have been less than twelve at his marriage. Thus the only possible conclusion is that both Thothmes IV. and Amonhotep III. were barely thirteen when they were married, and very possibly even younger. This is shown to be a correct conclusion by the fact that the mummy of Amonhotep III. has been pronounced by Dr Elliot Smith to be that of a man of forty-five or fifty; and as he reigned thirty-six years he must have been at most fourteen, and probably some years younger, at his accession and marriage.
There is not sufficient evidence to show at what ages the previous Pharaohs of the dynasty had married, but as Akhnaton’s father and grandfather entered into matrimony at this early age, it would not be safe to suppose that he himself delayed his marriage till a later age. Queen Tiy was in all probability married when she was ten or eleven years old.[45] Akhnaton’s daughter Merytaton, who was born in the fourth or fifth year of his reign, was, as will be seen in due course, married before the seventeenth year of the reign—that is to say, when she was twelve or younger. The Princess Ankhsenpaaton, who was born in the eighth year, was married, at latest, two years after Akhnaton’s death—i.e., when she was eleven. Another of Akhnaton’s daughters, Nefernefernaton, who has not yet appeared, was born in her father’s eleventh year and was married before the fifteenth, and therefore could only have been four or five years of age.
Child-marriages such as these are common in Egypt, even at the present day. Those who have lived on the Nile, and have studied the national habits, will assuredly fix the probable age of a royal mariage de convenance at about thirteen years, and will agree that eleven and twelve are also highly likely ages.
Secondly, as to Akhnaton’s age at the changing of the art. In the biography of Bakenkhonsu, the High Priest of Amon under Rameses II., that official tells us that he arrived at the state of manhood at the age of sixteen, and one may therefore suppose that this was the recognised legal age at which a man became a responsible agent in Egypt. Now it has been clearly seen that Akhnaton was under the regency of his mother during the first years of his reign, and mention has been made of the inscription at Wady Hammamât, where, although the new symbol of the religion is shown, Queen Tiy’s name is placed beside that of her son in an equally honourable position. She was thus still Queen Regent when the art was changed, and her son could not yet have come of age—i.e., he must then have been under sixteen.
Thirdly, we have to consider the question of his age when he laid the foundations of the new city. This was the first decisive action performed by the king in which his mother has no concern, and of which she perhaps even disapproved, and it surely marks the period at which he took the government into his own hands. If, like Bakenkhonsu, he came of age at sixteen, in the fifth year of his reign, the founding of the new capital in the following year would well fit in with the supposition that the abandoning of Thebes marks the date of the king’s arrival at maturity.
It may be asked how so young a person could conceive that great dream of the new city dedicated to the Aton. But, after all, he was seventeen years of age when the idea came to him, nineteen when he had properly developed the plan, and perhaps as much as twenty when he took up his residence there. Akhnaton’s greatness, as will be seen later, dates from the height of his reign in the City of the Horizon, and not from his early years. Still, when one calls to mind the infant prodigies, the child preachers who stir an audience at the age of twelve, one may credit a boy of sixteen or seventeen with the planning of a new city. Even in the cold Occident such youthful wiseacres are not rare, and surely they blossom forth less infrequently in the maturing warmth of the Orient.
[IV.]
AKHNATON FORMULATES THE RELIGION OF ATON.
“No such grand theology had ever appeared in the world before, so far as we know; and it is the forerunner of the later monotheist religions.”—Petrie: ‘The Religion of Ancient Egypt.’