The Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

At Memphis the tribal god was the little dwarf Ptah, the European Vulcan, the blacksmith, the artificer, and the potter of the gods. In this city also, as in many other districts of Egypt, there was a sacred bull, here called Apis, who was worshipped with divine honours and was regarded as an aspect of Ptah. At Elephantine a ram-headed deity named Khnum was adored, and there was a sacred ram kept in his temple for ceremonial purposes. As Khnum had some connection with the First Cataract of the Nile, which is situated near Elephantine, he was regarded as of some importance throughout Egypt. Moreover, he was supposed by some to have used the mud at the bottom of the Nile to form the first human being, and thus he found a place in the mythology of several districts.

A vulture, named Nekheb, was the tribal deity of the trading city of Eileithiaspolis; a ferocious crocodile, Sebek, was the god of a second city of the name of Ombos; an ibis, Thoth, was that of Hermopolis; a cat, Bast, that of Bubastis; and so on—almost every city having its tribal god. Besides these there were other more abstract deities: Nut, the heavens, who, in the form of a woman, spread herself across the sky; Seb, the earth; Shu, the vastness of space; and so forth. The old gods of Egypt were indeed a multitude. Here were those who had marched into the country at the head of conquering tribes; here were ancient heroes and Chieftains individually deified, or often identified with the god whom their tribe had served; here were the elements personified; here the orbs of heaven which man could see above him. As intercourse between city and city became more general, one set of beliefs had been brought into line with another, and myths had developed to explain the discrepancies. Thus in the time of Thothmes IV. the heavens were crowded with gods; but standing above them all, the reader will do well to familiarise himself with the figure of Amon-Ra, the god of Thebes, and with Ra-Horakhti, the god of Heliopolis. In the following pages the lesser denizens of the Egyptian Olympus play no great part, save as a routed army hurled back into the ignorant darkness from which they came.

3. THE DEMIGODS AND SPIRITS—THE PRIESTHOODS.

The sacred bulls and rams mentioned above were relics of an ancient animal-worship, the origin of which is lost in the obscurity of prehistory. The Egyptians paid homage to a variety of animals, and almost every city or district possessed its particular species to which special protection was extended. At Hermopolis and in other parts of Egypt the baboon was sacred, as well as the ibis, which typified the god Thoth. Cats were sacred both at Bubastis, where the cat-goddess, Bast, resided, and in various other districts. Crocodiles were very generally held in reverence, and several river fish were thus treated. The snake was much feared and reverenced; and, as a pertinent example of this superstition, it may be mentioned that Amonhotep III., the father of Akhnaton, placed a figure of the agathodemon serpent in a temple at Benha. The cobra was reverenced as the symbol of Uazet, the goddess of the Delta, and, first used as a royal emblem by the archaic kings of that country, it became the main emblem of sovereignty in Pharaonic times. It is unnecessary here to look more closely at this aspect of Egyptian religion; and but a word need be said of the thousand demons and spirits which, together with the gods and the sacred animals, crowded the regions of the unknown. Many were the names which the magician might call upon in the hour of his need, and many were the awful forms which the soul of a man who had died was liable to meet. Osiris, the great god of the dead, was served by four such genii, and under his authority there sat no less than forty-two terrible demons whose business it was to judge the quavering soul. The numerous gates of the underworld were guarded by monsters whose names alone would strike terror into the heart, and the unfortunate soul had to repeat endless and peculiarly tedious formulæ before admittance was granted.

To minister to these hosts of heaven there had of necessity to be vast numbers of priests. At Thebes the priesthood of Amon formed an organisation of such power and wealth that the actions of the Pharaoh had largely come to be controlled by it. The High Priest of Amon-Ra was one of the most important personages in the land, and his immediate subordinates, the Second, Third, and Fourth Priests, as they were called, were usually nobles of the highest rank. The High Priest of Amon was at this period often Grand Vizir also, and thus combined the highest civil appointment with the highest sacerdotal office. The priesthood of Ra at Heliopolis, although of far less power than that of Amon, was also a body of great importance. The High Priest was known as “the Great One of Visions,” and he was probably less of a politician and more of a priest than his Theban colleague. The High Priest of Ptah at Memphis was called “the Great Master Artificer,” Ptah being the Vulcan of Egypt. He, however, and the many other high priests of the various gods, did not rank with the two great leaders of the Amon and the Ra priesthoods.

4. THOTHMES IV. AND MUTEMUA.

When Thothmes IV. ascended the throne he was confronted by a very serious political problem. The Heliopolitan priesthood at this time was chafing against the power of Amon, and was striving to restore the somewhat fallen prestige of its own god Ra, who in the far past had been the supreme deity of Egypt, but had now to play an annoying second to the Theban god. Thothmes IV., as we shall presently be told by Akhnaton himself,[8] did not altogether approve of the political character of the Amon priesthood, and it may have been due to this dissatisfaction that he undertook the repairing of the great Sphinx at Gizeh, which was in the care of the priests of Heliopolis. The sphinx was thought to represent a combination of the Heliopolitan gods Horakhti, Khepera, Ra, and Atum, who have been mentioned above; and, according to a later tradition, Thothmes IV. had obtained the throne over the heads of his elder brothers through the mediation of the Sphinx—that is to say, through that of the Heliopolitan priests. By them he was called “Son of Atum and Protector of Horakhte, ... who purifies Heliopolis and satisfies Ra,”[9] and it seems that they looked to him to restore to them their lost power. The Pharaoh, however, was a physical weakling, whose small amount of energy was entirely expended upon his army, which he greatly loved, and which he led into Syria and into the Sudan. His brief reign of somewhat over eight years, from 1420 to 1411 B.C., marks but the indecisive beginnings of the struggle between Amon and Ra, which culminated in the early years of the reign of his grandson Akhnaton.

Thothmes IV. slaying Asiatics.

Some time before he came to the throne he had married a daughter of the King of Mitanni, a North-Syrian state which acted as a buffer between the Egyptian possessions in Syria and the hostile lands of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and which it was desirable, therefore, to placate by such a union. There is little doubt that this princess is to be identified with the Queen Mutemua, of whom several monuments exist, and who was the mother of Amonhotep III., the son and successor of Thothmes IV. A foreign element was thus introduced into the court which much altered its character, and led to numerous changes of a very radical nature. It may be that this Asiatic influence induced the Pharaoh to give further encouragement to the priest of Heliopolis. The god Atum, the aspect of Ra as the setting sun, was, as has been said, of common origin with Aton or Adonis, who was largely worshipped in North Syria; and the foreign queen with her retinue may have therefore felt more sympathy with Heliopolis than with Thebes. Moreover, it was the Asiatic tendency to speculate in religious questions, and the doctrines of the priests of the northern god were more flexible and more adaptable to the thinker than was the stiff, formal creed of Amon. Thus, the foreign thought which had now been introduced into Egypt, and especially into the palace, may have contributed somewhat to the dissatisfaction with the state religion which becomes apparent during this reign.