The glory of the Pharaohs

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

Nothing, of course, could yet be touched, and for several days, during the lengthy process of photographing and recording the contents of the tomb in situ, no further information could be obtained as to the identity of the owner of the tomb. The shrine was certainly made for Queen Tiy, and so too were the toilet utensils, judging by an inscription upon one of them which gave the names of Tiy and her husband, King Amenophis III., the parents of Akhnaton. It was, therefore, not a surprise when a passing doctor declared the much broken bones to be those of a woman—that is to say, those of Queen Tiy. For reasons which will presently become apparent, it had been difficult to believe that Akhnaton could have been buried in this Valley, and one was very ready to suppose that the coffin bearing his name had but been given by him to his mother.

The important discovery was now announced, and caused considerable interest and excitement. At the end of the winter the various archæologists departed to their several countries, and it fell to me to despatch the antiquities to the Cairo Museums, and to send the bones, soaked in wax to prevent their breakage, to Dr. Elliot Smith, to be examined by that eminent authority. It may be imagined that my surprise was considerable when I received a letter from him reading—“Are you sure that the bones you sent me are those which were found in the tomb? Instead of the bones of an old woman, you have sent me those of a young man. Surely there is some mistake.”

There was, however, no mistake. Dr. Elliot Smith later informed me that the bones were those of a young man of about thirty years of age, and at first this description did not seem to tally with that of Akhnaton, who was always thought to have been a man of middle age. But there is now no possibility of doubt that the coffin and mummy were those of this extraordinary Pharaoh, although the tomb and funeral furniture belonged to Queen Tiy. Dr. Elliot Smith’s decision was, of course, somewhat disconcerting to those who had written of the mortal remains of the great Queen; but it is difficult to speak of Tiy without also referring to her famous son Akhnaton, and in these articles he had received full mention.

About the year B.C. 1500 the throne of Egypt fell to the young brother of Queen Hatshepsut, Thutmosis III., and under his vigorous rule the country rose to a height of power never again equalled. Amenophis II. succeeded to an empire which extended from the Sudan to the Euphrates and to the Greek Islands; and when he died he left these great possessions almost intact to his son, Thutmosis IV., the grandfather of Akhnaton. It is important to notice the chronology of this period. The mummy of Thutmosis IV. has been shown by Dr. Elliot Smith to be that of a man of not more than twenty-six years of age; but we know that his son Amenophis III. was old enough to hunt lions at about the time of his father’s death, and that he was already married to Queen Tiy a year later. Thus one must suppose that Thutmosis IV. was a father at the age of thirteen or fourteen, and that Amenophis III. was married to Tiy at about the same age. The wife of Thutmosis IV. was probably a Syrian princess, and it must have been during her regency that Amenophis III. married Tiy, who was not of royal blood. Amenophis and Tiy introduced into Egypt the luxuries of Asia; and during their brilliant reign the Nile Valley was more open to Syrian influence than it had ever been before. The language of Babylon was perhaps the Court tongue, and the correspondence was written in cuneiform instead of in the hieratic script of Egypt. Amenophis III., as has been said, was probably partly Asiatic; and there is, perhaps, some reason to suppose that Yuaa, the father of Queen Tiy, was also a Syrian. One has, therefore, to picture the Egyptian Court at this time as being saturated with foreign ideas, which clashed with those of the orthodox Egyptians.

Queen Tiy bore several children to the King; but it was not until they had reigned over twenty years that a son and heir was born, whom they named Amenophis, that being changed later to Akhnaton. It is probable that he first saw the light in the royal palace at Thebes, which was situated on the edge of the desert at the foot of the western hills. It was an extensive and roomy structure lightly built and gaily decorated. The ceiling and pavements of its halls were fantastically painted with scenes of animal life: wild cattle ran through reedy swamps beneath one’s feet, and many-coloured fish swam in the water; while overhead flights of pigeons, white against a blue sky, passed across the hall, and the wild duck hastened towards the open casements. Through curtained doorways one might obtain glimpses of a garden planted with flowers foreign to Egypt; and on the east of the palace the King had made a great pleasure-lake for the Queen, surrounded by the trees of Asia. Here, floating in her golden barge, which was named Aton-gleams, the Queen might look westwards over the tree-tops to the splendid Theban hills towering above the palace, and eastwards to the green valley of the Nile and the three great limestone hills beyond. Amenophis III. has been rightly called the “Magnificent,” and one may well believe that his son Akhnaton was born to the sound of music and to the clink of golden wine-cups. Fragments of countless thousands of wine-jars and blue fayence drinking vessels have been found in the ruins of the palace; and contemporary objects and paintings show us some of the exquisitely wrought bowls of gold and silver which must have graced the royal tables, and the charming toilet utensils which were to be found in the sleeping apartments.

While the luxurious Court rejoiced at the birth of this Egypto-Asiatic prince, one feels that the ancient priesthood of Amon-Ra must have stood aloof, and must have looked askance at the baby who was destined one day to be their master. This priesthood was perhaps the proudest and most conservative community which conservative Egypt ever produced. It demanded implicit obedience to its stiff and ancient conventions, and it refused to recognise the growing tendency towards religious speculation. One of the great gods of Syria was Aton, the god of the sun; and his recognition at the Theban Court was a source of constant irritation to the ministers of Amon-Ra.

Probably they would have taken stronger measures to resist this foreign god had it not been for the fact that Atum of Heliopolis, an ancient god of Egypt, was on the one hand closely akin to Ra, the associated deity with Amon, and on the other hand to Aton of Syria. Thus Aton might be regarded merely as another name for Ra or Amon-Ra; but the danger to the old régime lay in the fact that with the worship of Aton there went a certain amount of free-thought. The sun and its warm rays were the heritage of all mankind; and the speculative mind of the Asiatic, always in advance of the less imaginative Egyptian, had not failed to attach to the Aton-worship a number of semi-philosophical teachings far broader than the strict doctrines of Amon-Ra could tolerate.

There is much reason to suppose that Queen Tiy was the prime factor in the new movement. It may, perhaps, be worth noting that her father was a priest of the Egyptian god Min, who corresponded to the North Syrian Aton in his capacity as a god of vegetation; and she may have imbibed something of the broader doctrines from him. It is the barge upon her pleasure-lake which is called Aton-gleams, and it is her private artist who is responsible for one of the first examples of the new style of art which begins to appear at this period. Egyptian art was bound down by conventions jealously guarded by the priesthood, and the slight tendency to break away from these, which now becomes apparent, is another sign of the broadening of thought under the reign of Amenophis III. and Tiy.

King Amenophis III. does not seem to have been a man of strong character, and in the changes which took place at this time he does not appear to have taken so very large a part. He always showed the most profound respect for, and devotion to his Queen; and one is inclined to regard him as a tool in her hands. According to some accounts he reigned only thirty years, but there are contemporary monuments dated in his thirty-sixth year, and it seems probable that for the last few years he was reigning only in name, and that in reality his ministers, under the regency of Queen Tiy, governed the land. Amenophis III. was perhaps during his last years insane or stricken with some paralytic disease, for we read of an Asiatic monarch sending a miracle-working image to Egypt, apparently for the purpose of attempting to cure him. It must have been during these six years of absolute power, while Akhnaton was a boy, that the Queen pushed forward her reforms and encouraged the breaking down of the old traditions, especially those relating to the worship of Amon-Ra.

Amenophis III. died in about the forty-ninth year of his age, after a total reign of thirty-six years; and Akhnaton, who still bore the name of Amenophis, ascended the throne. One must picture him now as an enthusiastic boy, filled with the new thought of the age, and burning to assert the broad doctrines which he had learned from his mother and her friends, in defiance of the priests of Amon-Ra. He was already married to a lady named Nefertiti, and certainly before he was sixteen years of age he was the father of two daughters.