The Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

His moods at this time must have given cause for the greatest alarm, and his behaviour was, no doubt, sufficiently erratic to render even those nobles who had so blindly followed him mistrustful of their leader. In a frenzy of zeal in the adoration of the Aton, Akhnaton now gave orders that the name of all other gods should suffer the same fate as that of Amon, and should be erased from every inscription throughout the land. This order was never fully carried out; but one may still see in the temples of Karnak, Medinet Habu, and elsewhere, and upon many lesser monuments, the chisel marks which have partially blurred out the names of Ptah, Hathor, and other deities, and have obliterated the offending word “gods.”

The consternation which this action must have caused was almost sufficient to bring about a revolution in the provinces, where the old gods were still dearly loved by the people. The erasing of the name of Amon had been, after all, a direct war upon a certain priesthood, and did not very materially affect any other localities than that of Thebes. But the suppression of the numerous priesthoods of the many deities who held sway throughout Egypt threw into disorder the whole country, and struck at the heart not of one but of a hundred cities. Was the kindly old artificer Ptah, with his hammer and his chisel, to be tumbled into empty space? Was the beautiful, the gracious Hathor—the Venus of the Nile—to be thrown down from her celestial seat? Was it possible to banish Khnum, the goat-headed potter who lived in the caves of the Cataract, from the life of the city of Elephantine; the mysterious jackal Wepwat from the hearts of the men of Abydos; or the ancient crocodile Sebek from the ships and the fields of Ombos? Every town had its local god, and every god its priesthood; and surely the Pharaoh was mad who attempted to make war upon these legions of heaven. This Aton, whom the king called upon them to worship, was so remote, so infinitely above their heads. Aton did not sit with them at their hearth-side to watch the kettle boil; Aton did not play a sweet-toned flute amongst the reeds of the river; Aton did not bring a fairy gift to the new-born babe. Where was the sacred tree in whose branches one might hope to see him seated?—where was the eddy of the Nile in which he loved to bathe?—and where was the rock at whose foot one might place, as a fond offering, a bowl of milk? The people loved their old gods, whose simple ways, kind hearts, and quick tempers made them understandable to mortal minds. But a god who reigned alone in solitary isolation, who, more remote even than the Jehovah of the Hebrews, rode not upon the clouds nor moved upon the wings of the wind, was hardly a deity to whom they could open their hearts. True, the sunrise and the sunset were the visible signs of the godhead; but let the reader ask any modern Egyptian peasant whether there is aught to stir the pulses in these two great phenomena, and he will realise that the glory of the skies could not have appealed particularly to the lesser subjects of Akhnaton, who, moreover, were not permitted to bow the knee to the flaming orb itself. When the Christian religion took hold of these peasants, and presented for their acceptance the same idea of a remote though loving and considerate God, it was only by the elevation of saints and devils, angels and powers of darkness, almost to the rank of demigods, that the faith prospered. But Akhnaton allowed no such tampering with the primary doctrine, and St George and all the saints would have suffered the erasure of their very names.

8. AKHNATON’S LAST DAYS AND DEATH.

The troubles which Akhnaton by such actions gathered around himself, while disturbing to his adherents, must have given some degree of pleasure to those nobles who saw in the king’s downfall the only hope of Egypt. Horemheb, the commander-in-chief of the inactive armies, could now begin to prepare himself against the time when he should lead a force into Syria to restore Egyptian prestige. Tutankhaton, betrothed to Akhnaton’s third daughter, could dream of the days when he would make himself Pharaoh, and carry the court back to glorious Thebes. Even Meryra, the High Priest of Aton, seems to have allowed his thoughts to drift away from the City of the Horizon wherein the sun of Egypt’s glory had set, for it does not seem that he ever made use of the tomb there prepared for him. These last stages of Akhnaton’s life must thus have been embittered by a doubt of the sincerity of his closest friends, and by the knowledge that, in spite of all their protestations, he had failed to plant “the truth” in their hearts.

The queen had borne him no son to succeed to the throne, and there appeared to be nobody to whom he could impart what he felt to be his last instructions. There can be no question that he was still greatly loved by those who surrounded his person, but there were few who hoped that his religion, so disastrous to Egypt, would survive him. In this extremity Akhnaton turned to a certain noble, probably not of royal blood, whose name seems to have been Smenkhkara, though some have read it Saakara.[79] Nothing is known regarding his previous career, but one may suppose that he appeared to Akhnaton to be the least unreliable of his followers. To him the king imparted his instructions, revealing all that words could draw from his teeming brain. The little Princess Merytaton, now but twelve years of age, was called from her games, and with pomp and ceremony was married to this Smenkhkara, thus making him the legitimate heir to the throne, Merytaton being the eldest daughter and sole heiress of the Pharaoh.

Feeling that his days were numbered, Akhnaton then associated Smenkhkara upon the throne with him as co-ruler, and was thus able to familiarise the people with their future lord. In later years, after Akhnaton’s death, Smenkhkara was wont to write after his name the words “beloved of Akhnaton,” as though to indicate that his claim to the throne was due to Akhnaton’s affection for him, as well as to the rights derived from his wife.

But what mattered the securing of the succession to the throne when that throne had been shaken to its very foundations, and now seemed to be upon the verge of utter wreck? Akhnaton could no longer stave off the impending crash, and from all sides there gathered the forces which were to overwhelm him. His government was chaotic. The plotting and scheming of the priests of Amon showed signs of coming to a successful issue. The anger of the priesthoods of the other gods of Egypt hung over the palace like some menacing storm-cloud. The soldiers, eager to march upon Syria as in the days of the great Thothmes III., chafed at their enforced idleness, and watched with increasing restlessness the wreck of the empire.

Now through the streets of the city there passed the weary messengers of Asia hurrying to the palace, no longer bearing the appeals of kings and generals for support, but announcing the fall of the last cities of Syria and the slaughter of the last left of their rulers. The scattered remnants of the garrisons staggered back to the Nile at the heels of these messengers, pursued to the very frontiers of Egypt by the triumphant Asiatics. From the north the Hittites poured into Syria; from the south the Khabiri swarmed over the land. As the curtain is rung down on the turbulent scene, one catches a glimpse of the wily Aziru, his hands still stained with the blood of Ribaddi and of many another loyal prince, snatching at this city and trampling on that. At last he has cast aside his mask, and with the tribute which had been promised to Egypt he now, no doubt, placates the ascending Hittites, whose suzerainty alone he admits.

The tribute having ceased, the Egyptian treasury soon stood empty, for the government of the country was too confused to permit of the proper gathering of the taxes, and the working of the gold-mines could not be organised. Much had been expended on the building of the City of the Horizon, and now the king knew not where to turn for money. In the space of a few years Egypt had been reduced from a world power to the position of a petty state, from the richest country known to man to the humiliating condition of a bankrupt kingdom.

Surely one may picture Akhnaton now in his last hours, his jaw fallen, his sunken eyes widely staring, as the full realisation of the utter failure of all his hopes came to him. He had sacrificed Syria to his principles; but the sacrifice was of no avail, since his doctrines had not taken root even in Egypt. He knew now that the religion of the Aton would not outlive him, that the knowledge of the love of God was not yet to be made known to the world. Even at this moment the psalms of the Aton were beating upon his ears, the hymns to the God who had forsaken him were drifting into his palace with the scent of the flowers; and the birds which he loved were singing as merrily in the luxuriant gardens as ever they sang when they had inspired a line in the king’s great poem. But upon him now there had fallen the blackness of despair, and already the darkness of coming death was closing around him. The misery of failure must have ground him down as beneath the very mountains of the west themselves, and the weight of the knowledge of all that he had lost could not be borne by his enfeebled frame.