The Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

The king is called the High Priest of Ra-Horakhti; but the title “Living in truth,” which he took to himself in later years, and which had reference to the religion of Aton which he was soon to evolve, does not yet appear.

A large number of fragments from this shrine have been discovered, and on these one sees references to the gods Horus, Set, Wepwat, and others. The king is still called by the name Amonhotep, which was later banned, and the names of Aton, afterwards always written within the royal ovals or cartouches, are still lacking in that distinction. The temple was called “Aton-is-found-in-the-House-of-Aton,” a curious name of which the meaning is not clear.[27] A certain official named Hataay was “Scribe and Overseer of the Granary of the House of the Aton,” by which this temple is probably meant; and in the tomb of Rames a reference is made to the building by its full name, and a picture of it is given, but otherwise one knows little about it. The rapidity with which it was desired to be set up is shown by the fact that the great, well-trimmed blocks of stone usually employed in the construction of sacred buildings were largely dispensed with, and only small easily-handled blocks were used. The imperfections in the building were then hidden by a judicious use of plaster and cement, and thus the walls were smoothed for the reception of the reliefs. The quarter in which the temple stood was now called “Brightness of Aton the Great,” and Thebes received the new name of “City of the Brightness of Aton.”

There are two other monuments which date from these early years of the king’s reign: both are tombs of great nobles. At this period one of the greatest personages in the land was the above-mentioned Rames, the Vizir of Upper Egypt. This official was now engaged in constructing and decorating a magnificent sepulchre for himself in the Theban necropolis. In the great hall of this tomb the artists were busy preparing the beautiful sculptures and paintings which were to cover the walls, and ere half their work was finished they set themselves to the making of a fine figure of Amonhotep IV. seated upon his throne, with the goddess Maat standing behind him. The scene was probably executed a few months before the making of the tablets at the quarries. The sun’s rays do not appear, and the work was carried out strictly according to the canons of art obtaining during the last years of Amonhotep III. and the first of his son. But hardly had the figures been finished before the order came that the Aton rays had to be included, and certain changes in the art had to be recognised; and therefore the artists set to work upon another figure of the king standing under these many-handed beams of “heat,” and now accompanied by his, as yet, childless wife. The two scenes may be seen by visitors to Thebes standing side by side, and nowhere may the contrast between the old order of things and the new be so clearly observed.

While Rames was providing a tomb for himself at Thebes, another great noble named Horemheb, who ultimately usurped the throne, was constructing his sepulchre at Sakkârah, the Memphite necropolis near Cairo. Horemheb was commander-in-chief of the army, and in his tomb some superb reliefs are carved showing him receiving rewards in that capacity from the king. Some of the scenes represent the arrival of Asiatic refugees in Egypt, who ask to be allowed to take up their abode on the banks of the Nile, and the figures of these foreigners rank amongst the finest specimens of Egyptian art. In the inscriptions, Horemheb, who is supposed to be addressing the king, states that the Pharaoh owes his throne to Amon,[28] but yet we see that the figure of the king is drawn in that style of art which is typical of the new religion.[29]

7. THE NEW ART.

This sudden change in the style of the reliefs which we have observed in these two tombs and on the quarry tablets seems to be attributable to about the fourth year of the king’s reign. The reliefs which were now carved upon the walls of the new temple of Ra-Horakhti at Karnak show us a style of art quite different from that of the king’s early years. The figure of the Pharaoh, which the artists in the tomb of Rames represented as standing below the newly-invented sun’s rays, is as different from the earlier figure there executed as chalk is from cheese. The Pharaoh whom we see in the tomb of Horemheb and on the quarry tablets is represented, according to canons of art, entirely different from those existing at the king’s accession.

In the drawing of the human figure, and especially that of the Pharaoh, there are three very distinct characteristics in this new style of art. Firstly, as to the head: the skull is elongated; the chin, as seen in profile, is drawn as though it were sharply pointed; the flesh under the jaw is skimped, thus giving an upward turn to the line; and the neck is represented as being long and thin. Secondly, the stomach is made to obtrude itself upon the attention by being drawn as though from a fat and ungainly model. And thirdly, the hips and thighs are abnormally large, though from the knee downwards the legs are of more natural size. This distortion of human anatomy is marked in a lesser degree in all the lines of the body; and the whole figure becomes a startling type of an art which seems at first to have sprung fully developed from the brain of the boy-Pharaoh or from one of the eccentrics of the court.

The king was now fifteen years old, and seems to have been extraordinarily mature for his age. It may be that he had objected to be represented in the conventional manner, and had told his artists to draw him as he was. The elongated skull, the pointed chin, and even, perhaps, the protruding paunch, may thus have originated. But the ungainly thighs could only be accounted for by some radical deformity in the royal model, and that he was a well-made man in this respect his recently discovered bones most clearly show.