The court officials blindly followed their young king, and to every word which he spoke they listened attentively. Sometimes the thoughts which he voiced came direct from the mazes of his own mind; sometimes perhaps he repeated the utterances of his deep-thinking mother; and sometimes there passed from his lips the pearls of wisdom which he had gleaned from the wise men of his court. It had been the boy’s desire to listen to the dreams of the East, to receive into his brain those speculations which ever meander so charmedly through the lands more near the sunrise. At his behest the dreamers of Asia related to him their visions; the philosophers made pregnant his mind with the mystery of knowledge; the poets sung to him harp-songs in which echoed the cry of the elder days; the priests of strange gods submitted to him the creeds of strange people. To him was made known the sweetness of the legends of Greece. The laughter of the woods rang in his ears, though never in narrow Egypt had he felt the enchantment of great forests. He had not seen the mountains, and the wooded slopes which rise from the Mediterranean were scenes but dreamed of; and yet it was the flute of Pan and the song of the nymphs in the mountain streams which set the thoughts dancing within his misshapen skull. He had not walked in the shadow of the cedars of Lebanon, nor had he ascended the Syrian hills; but nevertheless the hymns of Adonis and the chants of Baal were as familiar to him as were the solemn chants of Amon-Ra. The rose-gardens of Persia, the incense-groves of Araby, added their philosophies to his dreams, and the haunting lips of Babylon whispered to him tales of far-off days. From Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, and Cyprus there came to him the doctrines of those who had business in great waters; and Libya and Ethiopia disclosed their mysteries to his eager ears. The fertile brain of the Pharaoh was thus sown at an early age with the seed of all that was wonderful in the world of thought.
It must always be remembered that the king had much foreign blood in his veins. On the other hand, those men to whom he spoke, though highly educated, were but superstitious Egyptians who could not relieve themselves of the belief that a divine power rested upon the Pharaoh. Thus his speculative young brain poured its fantasies into attentive minds unbiassed by rival speculations, though narrowed by conventions. Egyptians, ever lacking in originality, have always possessed the power to imitate and adapt; and those nobles whose fortunes were dependent upon the royal favour soon learnt to attune their minds to the note of their king. Daily they must have gone about their business, ostentatiously attempting to hold to the difficult path of truth; laboriously telling themselves what wonders the new thought revealed to them; loudly praising the wisdom of the boy-Pharaoh; and nervously asking themselves whether and when the wrath of Amon would smite them.
Thus encouraged, the king and his mother developed their speculations, and drew into their circle of followers some of the greatest nobles of the land. A striking example of this proselytising is to be found in the tomb of the Vizir Rames. It has already been stated that that official had constructed for himself a sepulchre in the Theban necropolis, upon the walls of which he had first caused a portrait of the young king to be sculptured in the old conventional style, and later had added another portrait of the Pharaoh standing beneath the radiating beams of the sun, executed in the new style. Rames now added various other scenes and inscriptions, and he records a certain speech made by the king to him, and his own reply.
“The words of Ra,” the king had said, “are before thee.... My august father[32] taught me their essence and [revealed] them to me.... They were known in my heart, opened to my face. I understood....”
“Thou art the Only One of Aton; in possession of his designs,” replied Rames. “Thou hast directed the mountains. The fear of thee is in the midst of their secret chambers, as it is in the hearts of the people. The mountains hearken to thee as the people hearken.”
Thus one sees how the king was already formulating some kind of doctrine in his head, and that the nobles were receiving it; but it is significant that there are here representations of Rames loaded with gifts by the Pharaoh, as though in reward for his allegiance. The Pharaoh seems, indeed, to have showered honours upon those who appeared to grasp intelligently the thoughts which were still immature in his own head; and there must have been many an antagonist who rallied to his standard from the sheer love of gold. The king was in need of all the support which he could muster, for an open break with the priesthood of Amon-Ra grew more and more probable as his doctrines shaped themselves in his mind; and although the people of Egypt as a whole would, without question, follow their Pharaoh for the one reason that he was Pharaoh, there was every probability that the Amon priesthood and the Theban populace would make something of a stand against any infringement of the rights of their local god.
The young Pharaoh seems to have been very popular, and one may presume that he inherited, from his illustrious fathers, the charm of manner which there is not a little evidence to show they possessed. Throughout his life, and for some years after his death, he retained the affection of his people; and when one considers how faithfully his nobles followed him so long as he had strength and health to lead them, and how completely lost they were at his death, one realises how great an influence he must have exerted over them. Even at this early age they seem to have possessed a deep regard for the grave, thoughtful boy; and behind all the pretence, the hypocrisy, and the merely conventional loyalty, one surely catches a glimpse of a strong, personal affection for the king.
We must here record the birth of the king’s first daughter, which occurred in about the fifth year of his reign, when he was some sixteen years of age, and when Nefertiti was about thirteen years old. The child was named Merytaton, “Beloved of Aton”; and though the advent of a daughter instead of a son must have been a grave disappointment to the royal couple, a remarkable degree of affection was lavished upon the little girl, as will be apparent in the sequel.
9. THE NATURE OF THE NEW RELIGION.
There was nothing strikingly exalted in the religion which was now so filling the king’s mind. Ra-Horakhti Aton was in no wise considered as the only god: there were as yet no ideas of monotheism in the doctrine. In the new temple at Karnak, as we have seen, Horus, Set, Wepwat, and other gods were named; and elsewhere Amon was reluctantly recognised. The goddess Maat, in the tomb of Rames, was not obliterated from the walls, but still stood protecting the king; and in the same tomb Horus of Edfu is invoked. In the tomb of Horemheb, Horus, Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, and Hathor are mentioned, and the gods of the Necropolis still receive honour; Horemheb himself still holds the honorary post of High Priest of Horus, Lord of Alabastronpolis; Thoth and Maat are referred to; and there is a magical prayer to Ra, which is by no means of lofty character. Scarabs of this period speak of the Pharaoh as beloved of Thoth. And in a letter to the king dated in the fifth year of his reign, Ptah and “the gods and goddesses” of Memphis are referred to.