The temple, which will be described later, is this day garlanded with flowers, and every altar is heaped high with offerings. Now the king has entered the building, and a further scene shows the royal family worshipping at the high altar, which is piled up with offerings of joints of meat, geese, vegetables, fruit, and flowers, surmounted by bronze bowls filled with burning oil. Akhnaton and Nefertiti stand before the altar, each with the right arm raised in the act of sprinkling the fragrant gums of Araby upon the flames. The upper part of the king’s body is bare, but from his waist depends a graceful skirt of fine linen, ornamented with sash-like ribbons of a red material, which flutter about his bare legs. The queen’s robe covers the whole of her body, but is so transparent that one can see her fair form with almost the distinctness of nudity. A red sash is bound round her waist, and the two ends fall almost to the ground. Neither of the two wears any jewels; and the simplicity of the soft, flowing robes, with their bright-red sashes, is extremely marked. Two little princesses stand behind the king and queen, each shaking from a systrum a note of praise to God. Meryra, accompanied by an assistant, stands bowing before the king, and near by another priest burns some sweet-smelling incense. Not far away there sits a group of eight blind musicians,—fat elderly men, who clap their hands and sing to the accompaniment of a seven-stringed harp, giving praise to the sunlight which they cannot see, but yet can feel as “the heat which is in Aton” penetrates into their bones.
In still another series of reliefs we are shown a scene representing the reward of Meryra by Akhnaton on some occasion when he had been particularly successful in collecting the yearly dues of the temple from the estates on the opposite bank of the river. The ceremony took place in the granary buildings at the edge of the water. One sees a group of boats moored at the quay, and on the shore are several cattle-pens filled with lowing cattle. The granaries are stored with all manner of good things, and Meryra stands triumphant in front of them as the king addresses him.
“Let the Superintendent of the Treasury of the Jewels take Meryra,” says Akhnaton, “and hang gold on his neck at the front, and gold on his feet, because of his obedience to the teaching of Pharaoh;” and immediately the attendants literally heap the gold collars and necklaces one above the other upon the High Priest’s neck. Scribes write down a rapid summary of the events; the attendants and fan-bearers bow low; and Meryra is conducted back to his village with music and with dancing, while Akhnaton returns to his palace, and, no doubt, sinks exhausted on to his cushions.
5. AKHNATON IN HIS PALACE.
The reliefs and paintings upon the tombs often show the Pharaoh reclining thus, in a languid manner, as though the duties of his high calling had sapped all the strength from him. Never before had a Pharaoh been represented to his subjects in such human attitudes. The privacy of the palace is penetrated in these scenes, and we see the king, who loved to teach his followers the beauty of family life, in the midst of his own family. One or two of these representations must here be described. In one instance the royal family is shown inside a beautiful pavilion, the roof of which is supported by wooden pillars painted with many colours and having capitals carved in high relief to represent wild geese suspended by their legs, and above them bunches of flowers: just such a grouping as one might see in some sporting house of the present day. The pillars are hung with garlands of flowers, and from the ceiling there droop festoons of flowers and trailing branches of vines. The roof of the pavilion on the outside is edged by an endless line of gleaming cobras, probably wrought in bronze.
Inside this fair arbor stand a group of naked girls playing upon the harp, the lute, and the lyre, and, no doubt, singing to that accompaniment the artless love-songs of the period. Servants are shown attending to the jars of wine which stand at the side of the enclosure. The king is seen leaning back upon the cushions of an arm-chair, as though tired out and sick at heart. In the fingers of his left hand he idly dandles a few flowers, while with his right hand he languidly holds out a delicate bowl in order that the wine in it may be replenished. This is done by the queen, who is standing before him, all solicitous for his comfort. She pours the wine from a vessel, causing it to pass through a strainer before flowing into the bowl. Three little princesses stand near by: one of them laden with bouquets of flowers, another holding out some sweetmeat upon a dish, and a third talking to her father.
In another scene the king and queen are both shown seated upon comfortable chairs, while a servant waits upon them. The king is eating a roasted pigeon, holding it in his fingers; and Nefertiti is represented drinking from a prettily shaped cup. The light, transparent robes which they wear indicate that this is the midday meal; but unfortunately the painting is so much damaged that nothing but the royal figures remains.
6. HISTORICAL EVENTS OF THIS PERIOD OF AKHNATON’S REIGN.
There is very little historical information to be procured for these years of the king’s reign. When he had been about ten or eleven years upon the throne, and was some twenty-one years of age, his fourth daughter, Nefernefernaton, was born. The queen had presented no son to Akhnaton to succeed him, but he does not seem in this emergency to have cared to turn to any secondary wives; and, as far as we can tell, he remained all his life a monogamist, although this was in direct opposition to all traditional custom. Steadily during these years the king’s health seems to have grown more precarious, for almost daily he must have overtaxed his strength. His brain was so active that he could not submit to be idle; and even when he reclined amidst the flowers in his garden, his whole soul was straining upwards in the attempt to pierce the barrier which lay between him and the God who had caused those flowers to bloom. The maturity of his creed at this period leads one to suppose that he had given to it his very life’s force; and when it is remembered that at the same time his attention was occupied by the administration of a kingdom which he had twisted out of all semblance to its former shape, the wonder is that his brain was at all able to stand the incessant strain. Rare indeed must have been those idle moments which the artists of the City of the Horizon attempted to represent.