7. AKHNATON’S HEALTH GIVES WAY.
It is possible that the Pharaoh now realised his position, and one may suppose that he tried as best he could to pacify the turbulent princes by all the arts of diplomacy. It does not seem, however, that he yet fully appreciated the catastrophe which was now almost inevitable—the complete loss of Syria. He could not bring himself to believe that the princes of that country would play him false; and he could have had no idea that he was being so entirely fooled by such men as Aziru. But when at last the tribute ceased to come in regularly, then, too late, he knew that disaster was upon him.
The thoughts which now must have held sway in his mind could not have failed to carry him down the dark steps of depression to the very pit of despair, and one may picture him daily cast prone upon the floor before the high altar of the Aton, and nightly tossing sleepless upon his royal bed. It seems that he had placed great reliance upon a certain official, named Bikhuru, who was acting as Egyptian commissioner in Palestine; but now it is probable that he received news of that unfortunate personage’s flight, and later of his murder.[78] Then came the report that Byblos had fallen, and one is led to suppose that that truly noble soldier Ribaddi did not survive the fall of the city which he had so tenaciously held. The news of the surrender of other important Egyptian strongholds followed rapidly, and still there came the pathetic appeal for help from the minor posts which yet held out.
Akhnaton was now about twenty-eight years of age, and already the cares of the whole world seemed to rest upon his shoulders. Lean and lank was his body; his face was thin and lined with worry; and in his eye one might, perhaps, have seen that hunted look which comes to those who are dogged by disaster. It is probable that he now suffered acutely from the distressing malady to which he was a victim, and there must have been times when he felt himself upon the verge of madness. His misshapen skull came nigh to bursting with the full thoughts of his aching brain, and the sad knowledge that he had failed must have pressed upon his mind like some unrelenting finger. The invocations to the Aton which rang in his head made confusion with the cry of Syria. Now he listened to the voices of his choirs lauding the sweetness of life; and now, breaking in upon the chant, did he not hear the solemn voices of his fathers calling to him from the Hills of the West to give account of his stewardship? Could he then find solace in trees and in flowers? Could he cry “Peace” when there was red tumult in his brain?
His moods at this time must have given cause for the greatest alarm, and his behaviour was, no doubt, sufficiently erratic to render even those nobles who had so blindly followed him mistrustful of their leader. In a frenzy of zeal in the adoration of the Aton, Akhnaton now gave orders that the name of all other gods should suffer the same fate as that of Amon, and should be erased from every inscription throughout the land. This order was never fully carried out; but one may still see in the temples of Karnak, Medinet Habu, and elsewhere, and upon many lesser monuments, the chisel marks which have partially blurred out the names of Ptah, Hathor, and other deities, and have obliterated the offending word “gods.”
The consternation which this action must have caused was almost sufficient to bring about a revolution in the provinces, where the old gods were still dearly loved by the people. The erasing of the name of Amon had been, after all, a direct war upon a certain priesthood, and did not very materially affect any other localities than that of Thebes. But the suppression of the numerous priesthoods of the many deities who held sway throughout Egypt threw into disorder the whole country, and struck at the heart not of one but of a hundred cities. Was the kindly old artificer Ptah, with his hammer and his chisel, to be tumbled into empty space? Was the beautiful, the gracious Hathor—the Venus of the Nile—to be thrown down from her celestial seat? Was it possible to banish Khnum, the goat-headed potter who lived in the caves of the Cataract, from the life of the city of Elephantine; the mysterious jackal Wepwat from the hearts of the men of Abydos; or the ancient crocodile Sebek from the ships and the fields of Ombos? Every town had its local god, and every god its priesthood; and surely the Pharaoh was mad who attempted to make war upon these legions of heaven. This Aton, whom the king called upon them to worship, was so remote, so infinitely above their heads. Aton did not sit with them at their hearth-side to watch the kettle boil; Aton did not play a sweet-toned flute amongst the reeds of the river; Aton did not bring a fairy gift to the new-born babe. Where was the sacred tree in whose branches one might hope to see him seated?—where was the eddy of the Nile in which he loved to bathe?—and where was the rock at whose foot one might place, as a fond offering, a bowl of milk? The people loved their old gods, whose simple ways, kind hearts, and quick tempers made them understandable to mortal minds. But a god who reigned alone in solitary isolation, who, more remote even than the Jehovah of the Hebrews, rode not upon the clouds nor moved upon the wings of the wind, was hardly a deity to whom they could open their hearts. True, the sunrise and the sunset were the visible signs of the godhead; but let the reader ask any modern Egyptian peasant whether there is aught to stir the pulses in these two great phenomena, and he will realise that the glory of the skies could not have appealed particularly to the lesser subjects of Akhnaton, who, moreover, were not permitted to bow the knee to the flaming orb itself. When the Christian religion took hold of these peasants, and presented for their acceptance the same idea of a remote though loving and considerate God, it was only by the elevation of saints and devils, angels and powers of darkness, almost to the rank of demigods, that the faith prospered. But Akhnaton allowed no such tampering with the primary doctrine, and St George and all the saints would have suffered the erasure of their very names.