The Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

2. AKHNATON’S CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTIONS TO WARFARE.

Akhnaton’s policy in Syria, when considered from the point of view of an ordinary man, was of the weakest. Ideals cannot govern an empire, and those who would apply the doctrine of “peace and goodwill” to subject races endanger the very principles which they would teach. While the young Pharaoh was singing his imperial psalms to the Atom in his growing capital, the princes of Syria were whistling the revolutionary ditties which presently were to ring in the ears of the isolated Egyptian garrisons. Little did they care for that tender Father of Mankind to whom Akhnaton’s thin finger so earnestly pointed. They knew nothing of monotheism; they found no satisfaction in One who was the gentle ruler of all men without distinction of race. A true god to them was a vanquisher of other gods, a valiant leader in battle, a relentless avenger of insult. The furious Baal, the bloodthirsty Tishub, the terrible Ishtar—these were the deities that a man could love. How they scorned that God of Peace who was called the Only One! How they laughed at the young Pharaoh who had set aside the sword for the psalter, who hoped to rule his restless dominions by love alone!

Love! One stands amazed at the reckless idealism, the beautiful folly, of this Pharaoh who, in an age of turbulence, preached a religion of peace to seething Syria. Three thousand years later mankind is still blindly striving after these same ideals in vain. Nowadays one is familiar with the doctrine: a greater than Akhnaton has preached it, and has died for it. To-day God is known to us, and the peace of God is a thing hoped for; but at that far-off period, thirteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, two or three centuries before the age of David and Solomon, and many a year before the preaching of Moses, one is utterly surprised to behold the true light shining forth for a short moment like the sun through a rift in the clouds, and one knows that it has come too soon. Mankind, even now not ready, was then most wholly unprepared, and the price which Egypt paid for the ideals of her Pharaoh was no less than the complete loss of her dominions.

Akhnaton believed in God, and to him that belief meant a practical abhorrence of war. Marshalling the material available for the study of this period of history, one can interpret the events in Syria in only one way: Akhnaton definitely refused to do battle, believing that a resort to arms was an offence to God. Whether fortune or misfortune, gain or loss, was to be his lot, he would hold to his principles, and would not return to the old gods of battle.

It must be remembered that at this time the empire was the personal property of the Pharaoh, as every kingdom was of its king. Nobody ever considered a possession as belonging to the nation which had laid hands upon it, but only to that nation’s king. It mattered very little to the Syrian peoples whether their owner was an Egyptian or a Syrian, though perhaps they preferred to be possessed by one of their own race. Akhnaton was thus doing his will with his own property. He was refusing to fight for his own possessions; he was acting literally upon the Christian principle of giving the cloak to him who had stolen the coat. Patriotism was a sentiment unknown to the world: devotion to the king’s personal interest was all that actuated loyalty in the subject, and the monarch himself had but his own interests to consider. Thus Akhnaton cannot be accused of ruining his country by his refusal to go to war. He was entitled to do what he liked with his own personal property, and if he sacrificed his possessions to his principles, the sacrifice was made upon God’s high altar, and the loss would be felt by him alone. Such a loss, it is true, would probably break his heart; for he loved Syria dearly, and he had had such great hopes of uniting the empire by the tie of a common religion. But for good or ill, he was determined to stand aloof from the struggles upon which Syria was now entering.

3. THE FAITHLESSNESS OF AZIRU.

While Aziru, the Amorite, schemed on the borders of Asia Minor, a Syrian prince named Itakama suddenly set up an independent kingdom at Kadesh and joined hands with the Hittites, thus cutting off the loyal city of Tunip, the friendly kingdom of Mitanni, and the territory of the faithless Aziru from direct intercourse with the Lebanon and Egypt’s remaining possessions in Palestine and Syria. Three loyal vassal kings, perhaps assisted by Dushratta of Mitanni, attacked the rebels, but were repulsed by Itakama and his Hittite allies.

Aziru at once turned the situation to his own advantage. Hemmed in between the Hittites on the north and this new kingdom of Kadesh on the south, he collected his armies and marched down the Orontes to the Mediterranean coast, capturing the cities near the mouth of that river and adding them to his possessions. Should the Hittites ask him to give an account of these proceedings, he could reply that he was, as it were, the advance-guard of the Hittite invasion of Syria, and was preparing the road for them. Should Itakama question him, he could say that he was, with friendly hands, linking the Hittites with Kadesh. And should Akhnaton call upon him for an explanation, he could answer that he was securing the land for the Egyptians against the Hittite advance.

No doubt Aziru preferred to keep his peace with the Hittites the most secure, for it was obvious that they were the rising people; but at the same time he did not yet dare to show any hostility to Egypt, whose armies might at any moment be launched across the Mediterranean. Unable to hold a position of independence, he now thought it most prudent to allow the northmen to swarm southwards through his dominions, from Amki over and around the Lebanon to Kadesh, where their ally Itakama dwelt. In return for this assistance he seems to have been allowed a free hand in the forwarding of his own interests, and we now find him turning his attention to the sea-coast cities of Simyra and Byblos, which nestled at the western foot of the Lebanon. Here, however, he received a check, and failed to obtain a footing. He therefore marched eastwards to the city of Niy, which he captured, slaying its king; and both to the Hittites and to the Egyptians he seems to have pretended that he had taken this step in their interests.