Now, one of the most remarkable events in Egyptian history was the so-called apostasy of Amen-hetep IV., some hundred and fifty years after Thothmes III.
In the time of Thothmes III. the alliance between the royal and the sacerdotal power was of the closest, and in no time of the world's history have priests been more richly endowed than were then the priests of Amen. Not content, however, with their sacred functions, they aimed at political power so obviously that Thothmes IV. and Amen-hetep III., to check their intentions, favoured the cults and priesthoods of Annu and other cities of the north. Amen-hetep III. and his son, Amen-hetep IV., also looked for alliances out of Egypt altogether, and entered into diplomatic relations with the princes of Asia, including even the king of Babylon. This brought him and the priests to open warfare. He replied to their anger by proscribing the cult of Amen, and the name of Amen was effaced from the monuments; still the priestly party was strong enough to make it unpleasant for the king in Thebes; and, to deal them yet another blow, he quitted that city and settled at Tell el-Amarna, at the same time, according to the statement of M. Virey, reviving an old Heliopolitan cult. He took for divine protection the solar disk Aten, "which was one of the most ancient forms of one of the most ancient gods of Egypt, Rā of Heliopolis."[92] Now let us say that the time of Amen-hetep IV., according to the received authorities, was about 1450 B.C. The lines of the "Temple of the Sun" at Tell el-Amarna are to be gathered from Lepsius' map, reproduced in the illustration on the next page. The orientation is 13° north of west.[93] This gives us a declination of 11° north, and the star Spica at its setting would be visible in the temple.
THE TEMPLES AT TELL EL-AMARNA. A, The Aten (Spica) Temple; B, the Set Temple.
Still the light would not enter it axially if the orientation is correct. This would have happened in 2000 B.C., that is, 600 years before the time of Amen-hetep IV. This is a point which Egyptologists must discuss; it is quite certain that such a pair of temples as those of which Lepsius gives us the plans could not have been completely built in his short reign, and they would not perhaps have been commenced on heretical lines in any previous reign during the Eighteenth dynasty. They must therefore have been commenced before 1700 B.C., perhaps in the Seventeenth dynasty. In any case they were certainly finished by Khu-en-Aten.
Professor Flinders Petrie has been good enough, in reply to an inquiry, to state his opinion that the temple was entirely built by Khu-en-Aten. Should this be confirmed, it may have been oriented directly to the sun, on the day named, or was probably built parallel to some former temple, for traces of other temples are shown on Lepsius' plan, and I presume Khu-en-Aten is not supposed to have built all of them.
What, then, was this worship which had been absent from Thebes, but which had held its own to the north to such an extent that Amen-hetep IV. went back to it so eagerly? It could not have been the worship of Capella as a star alone, for such worship had been provided for by Thothmes III. by building temple G. Nor could it have been the worship of Spica as a star alone, for in that case the precedent of Annu would not have been appealed to.
The worship he emphasised there exactly resembled that which had in early times been paramount at Heliopolis. One based on it, but not identical with it, had been in vogue at Thebes from 3200 B.C. to the time of Thothmes III., who, as the tool of the confraternity of Amen, intensified the solstitial worship, and did his best to kill that which had been based upon the Heliopolis cult.
I say exactly resembled, because Amen-hetep IV., or some one of the preceding kings of Egypt, when reintroducing the old worship at Tell el-Amarna, orients the solar temple 13° north of west according to the data available. Now when we take the difference of latitude between Heliopolis and Tell el-Amarna into account, we find that the same declination (within half a degree) is obtained from both.
Hence, at Annu in the old days, and at Tell el-Amarna afterwards, the sun was worshipped on the same day of the year. At both places the sunlight at sunset would enter the temple on April 18 and August 24 of the Gregorian year; hence both temples were probably built really to observe the sunset on a special day. In this view how appropriate was the prayer of Aāhmes, Khu-en-Aten's chief official—