The Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

High Priest of Ra-Horakhti, rejoicing in the horizon in his name, “Heat-which-is-in-Aton.”

Let the boy be said to be beloved of Amon-Ra till the walls of Thebes reverberate with the cry; let Amon-Ra be called Lord of Heaven till the priestly heralds can shout no more: the doom of the god of Thebes cannot now be averted, for the reigning Pharaoh is dedicated to another god.

Akhnaton.

It is obvious that a boy of eleven years of age could not himself have claimed the office of the High Priest of Ra-Horakhti. Queen Tiy and her advisers must have deliberately endowed the youthful king with this office, largely in order to set the seal upon the fate of Amon. There were, perhaps, other reasons why this remarkable step was decided upon. It may be, as has been said, that the queen, before the birth of her son, had vowed him to Ra-Horakhti. Again, the boy was epileptic, was subject to hallucinations; and it may be that while in this condition he had seen visions or uttered words which led his mother to believe him to be the chosen one of the Heliopolitan god, whose name the prince must have been constantly hearing. In a palace where the mystical “Heat-which-is-in-Aton,” which was the new elaboration of the god’s name, was being daily invoked, and where the youthful master of Egypt was constantly falling into what appeared to be holy frenzy, it is not unlikely that the rising deity would be connected with the eccentricities of the young Pharaoh. The High Priest of Ra-Horakhti was always called “The Great of Visions,” and was thus essentially a visionary prophet either by nature or by circumstance; and the unfortunate boy’s physical condition may have been turned, thus, to account in the struggle against Amon-Ra.

One may now imagine the Pharaoh as a pale, sickly youth. His head seemed too large for his body; his eyelids were heavy; his eyes as one imagines them were wells of dream. His features were delicately moulded, and his mouth, in spite of a somewhat protruding lower jaw, is reminiscent of the best of the art of Rossetti. He seems to have been a quiet, studious boy, whose thoughts wandered in fair places, searching for that happiness which his physical condition had denied to him. His nature was gentle; his young heart overflowed with love. He delighted, it would seem, to walk in the gardens of the palace, to hear the birds singing, to watch the fish in the lake, to smell the flowers, to follow the butterflies, to warm his small bones in the sunshine. There was a grave dignity in his gait, or the artists have lied; and his words were already fraught with wisdom. The great crown of the Pharaohs sat easily upon his head, for his every movement was royal. He accepted as his due the homage of the court; yet he does not seem to have acted with arrogance, and was ever a tender-hearted, impulsive child. Already he was sometimes called “Lord of the Breath of Sweetness”;[24] and already he was so much beloved by his subjects that their adherence to him through the rough places of his future life was assured. For the first years of his reign he was, of course, entirely under the regency of his mother. Dushratta, the King of Mitanni, writing to congratulate the boy on his accession, addressed himself to Queen Tiy, as though he thought the king would hardly yet be able to understand a letter; and in a later communication he asks the Pharaoh to inquire of his mother as to certain matters of international policy. But although so young, the king was wise beyond his years, as the reader will presently see.

6. THE FIRST YEARS OF AKHNATON’S REIGN.

In a subsequent chapter it will be the writer’s purpose to show to what heights of ideal thought, and to what profundities of religious and moral philosophy, this boy, in the years of his early manhood, attained; and it will but enhance our respect for his abilities when he reached maturity, if we find in his early training all manner of shortcomings. The beautiful doctrines of the religion with which this Pharaoh’s name is identified were productions of his later days; and until he was at least seventeen years of age neither his exalted monotheism nor any of his future principles were really apparent. Some time after the eighth year of his reign one finds that he had evolved a religion so pure that one must compare it with Christianity in order to discover its faults; and the reader will presently see that this superb theology was not derived from his education.

One of the first acts of the king’s reign, undertaken at the desire of Queen Tiy or of the royal advisers, was the erection of a temple to Ra-Horakhti Aton at Karnak.[25] This was in no way an insult to Amon, for Thothmes III. and other Pharaohs had dedicated temples at Karnak to gods other than Amon. The priesthood of Amon-Ra recognised the existence of the many deities of Egypt, and gave them their place in the constitution of heaven, reserving for their own god the title of “King of the Gods.” There was a temple of Ptah here; there were shrines set apart for the worship of Min; and other gods, unconnected with Amon, were here accommodated. The priests of Amon-Ra thus could not offer any serious objection to the project. The building[26] was to be constructed of sandstone, and therefore various officials were dispatched to the great quarries of Gebel Silsileh, which lie on the river between Edfu and Kom Ombo, and to those near Esneh. Large tablets were there carved upon the cliffs towards the close of the work, and on them the figure of the Pharaoh was represented worshipping Amon, who was thus still the state god. Above the king’s figure, however, the disk of the sun is seen, and from it a number of lines, representing rays, project downwards towards the royal figure. These rays terminate in hands, which thus seem to be distributing the “Heat-which-is-in-Aton” around the Pharaoh. This is the first representation of the afterwards famous symbol of the religion of Aton, and it is significant that it should make its début in a scene representing the worship of Amon.