All the herds are at peace in their pastures,
Trees and plants grow green,
Birds fly up from their nests …
Fish in the river leap in your presence,
Your rays are in the midst of the sea …
How manifold are your deeds,
Though hidden from sight,
Sole god, apart from whom there is no other,
You created the earth according to your desire, when you were alone.
All people, cattle, and flocks,
All upon earth that walk on legs,
All on high that fly with wings …
Your rays nurse every pasture;
When you rise they live and prosper for you.
You made the seasons to foster everything of your making:
Winter to cool them, heat that they might taste you.5
But this tone of rapturous exultation masked a darker, more repressive side to Akhenaten’s theology. After a decade on the throne, he decreed that all references to traditional deities were to be removed from official documents; even the titles of the Aten itself were purged and purified. At the king’s instigation, a systematic programme of state-sponsored iconoclasm was launched throughout Egypt. Armies of the king’s henchmen broke open tomb-chapels and burst into temples, to deface the sacred texts and images. Armed with chisels and cue cards, they shinnied up obelisks to hack out the figures and names of the traditional deities, paying special attention to Amun-Ra, whom the Aten had supplanted as chief god. Personal names that included the element “Amun” were also targeted, even though they included Akhenaten’s own father, Amenhotep III. Individuals scrambled to protect themselves, subjecting treasured personal possessions to self-censorship and even changing their own names to escape the wrath of Akhenaten’s cultural revolution.
Not only were all the old certainties overturned, but the architectural backdrop to people’s lives was fundamentally altered, too. For the Aten, whose power was manifest in sunlight itself, the traditional form of Egyptian temple, with its roofed courts and dark, hidden sanctuary, was utterly inappropriate. Instead, Akhenaten ordered the construction of open-air temples. In their vast courtyards, offering tables and altars were piled high with bread, meat, vegetables and other foodstuffs to nourish the Aten as he passed overhead. The largest of these temples, the massive “House of the Aten,” occupied 750 feet of street frontage along the Royal Road and stretched back nearly half a mile. It even had its own slaughterhouse to keep the altars stocked with choice cuts of meat.
In one sense, the entire site of Akhetaten was a temple to the Aten, since the visible orb of the sun could be observed and worshipped overhead at any time of day. However, Akhenaten’s Teaching sought to remove worship of the Aten from the popular sphere, by asserting that the only path to salvation lay through the king himself as the god’s intermediary:
There is none other who knows you,
Only your son …
Everyone who has passed by since you founded the earth,
You have raised them for your son,
The one who has come from your body …
The Son of Ra who lives on Truth, the Lord of diadems,
Akhenaten, whose life is long.6
As dictators have discovered down the centuries, a purified form of belief serves very effectively as a vehicle for elevating the status of the ruler and his family. Under Akhenaten the royal family became a holy family, supplanting the traditional pantheon. The royal chariot drive had taken the place of the gods’ processions, while statues of Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti replaced images of deities. In the tombs of favoured officials, the age-old formula designed to ensure a perpetual supply of offerings for the deceased was no longer addressed to Osiris, god of the dead, but to the king, and occasionally to Nefertiti as well.
The wealthier residents of Akhetaten kept statues and images of the royal family in their household shrines, and the size of one’s shrine was a public measure of one’s loyalty to the regime. On the outskirts of Akhetaten, five large ritual complexes, each dedicated to a prominent female member of the royal family, ensured a permanent and highly visible royal presence whichever way the inhabitants turned; while in the main residential district there was a Chapel of the King’s Statue for public worship by ordinary citizens.
But faith operates in private as well as in public. As in every religious revolution since, there were people in Akhenaten’s own time and in his own city who refused to let go of their old beliefs. While outwardly they may have subscribed to the new doctrine, in the privacy of their own homes they continued to put their trust in the traditional deities. Amulets of the mother-goddess Hathor, of the household god Bes, even of the old state god Amun, have been found in the ruins of Akhetaten’s humble dwellings. In the end, Akhenaten’s religious revolution was a personal one, it failed to capture the hearts and minds of most Egyptians, and it did not survive his death.
Before the king was even cold in his grave, the traditional temples were reopened, their priesthoods reinstated and new cult statues commissioned (paid for by the royal treasury). The counter-revolution was swift and total. The House of the Aten was abandoned, its statues of the king and queen torn down and smashed. The royal court decamped from Akhetaten, never to return. Today, thanks to the city’s rapid construction, brief occupation, swift abandonment and cursed memory, Akhetaten—modern Amarna—is a time capsule. Its buildings, great and small, its granaries and graves, even its rubbish heaps, are testament to one of the most extraordinary episodes in the Nile Valley’s long history: a failed religious revolution that, had it succeeded, would have altered not only Egyptian culture but the entire trajectory of human civilisation.
That Akhenaten’s bold experiment ultimately failed tells us as much about the Egyptians, as much about the human spirit, as its brief, brash duration. On the other hand, the rapturous tone and descriptive imagery of the Great Hymn to the Aten exerted a profound influence on later religious authors, not least the Jewish psalmists. (Compare, most notably, Psalm 104.) And the monotheism inherent in Akhenaten’s religion found fertile ground elsewhere in the Middle East, and, not long afterwards, in Egypt itself.
ON THE WEST BANK of the Nile opposite Amarna lies a monument from another remarkable period in the history of Egyptian religion. The tomb of Petosiris at Tuna el-Gebel is famous today for its hybrid decoration, combining traditional Egyptian funerary motifs with a distinctly Greek style of representation. Petosiris himself lived at a time of transition, in Egyptian politics, culture and religion. He witnessed a series of cataclysmic events in the history of the Nile Valley: the second Persian invasion of 343 BC, a failed Egyptian insurrection, the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, and finally the country’s incorporation into the Mediterranean empire of the Ptolemies. All the while he devoted his energies not, as Akhenaten had done, to overturning the established orthodoxies, but to preserving them.
A few miles to the north of Tuna el-Gebel, the city of Hermopolis (modern Ashmunein) was in ancient times a cult centre of Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing. Two very different animals, the baboon and the sacred ibis, were regarded as manifestations of Thoth; and in the fourth century BC, which saw the height of popularity of animal cults throughout Egypt, the ibis took centre stage at Hermopolis. A vast area next to the temple was set aside for rearing flocks of sacred ibis. When a bird died, even the tiniest part of eggshell, feather or nest was carefully gathered up by the temple priests for sale as a votive offering. Pilgrims came to Hermopolis in their thousands to worship Thoth, and the priests turned a good profit from their trade in religious ephemera—as attested by the costly decoration of Petosiris’ tomb. Petosiris makes no mention in his autobiographical inscription of the economic benefits of his priestly office, but he does give an account of his temple duties, emphasising his diligence in a time of uncertainty and unrest. Even though “nothing was in its former place, since fighting had started inside Egypt, the South being in turmoil, the North in rev
olt … all temples without their servants; the priests fled, not knowing what was happening,”7 Petosiris dutifully “spent seven years as controller for this god, administering his endowment without fault being found.”8 It is, perhaps, thanks to men like Petosiris, with his Middle Egyptian parochialism and his unshakeable adherence to tradition, that pharaonic religion survived, unscathed, through successive invasions and occupations by Persians, Macedonians and Romans.
Without exception, every foreign ruler who set foot in the Nile Valley in ancient times was intrigued, beguiled and ultimately won over by the might and mystery of its native beliefs. None was more entranced than the Roman emperor Hadrian. His visit to Egypt in the summer and autumn of AD 130 not only proved a turning point in his own reign, but also—unexpectedly—led to the creation of the last pagan god of the ancient world. Once again, Middle Egypt was the setting.
Hadrian was born in AD 76, three years before the destruction of Pompeii. At the age of four, he may have witnessed the opening of the Colosseum in Rome, marked by one hundred days of spectacles. Four years later, he was in the city for the triumphant return of Domitian, fresh from his conquest of Germania. Hadrian himself, like many Roman men of his time, entered the army, serving with distinction in the Danube campaign of AD 101 and rising rapidly through the ranks. Military success brought with it political recognition, and Hadrian was appointed, successively, praetor, provincial governor and consul. Eventually, this outstanding soldier was adopted by Trajan as his heir and succeeded to the imperial throne of Rome on 9 August 117, at the age of forty-one. So began a reign marked by restless energy and insatiable curiosity, and by a heady mix of militarism, religious toleration and an extravagant private life. At the northern extremity of his empire, Hadrian built a massive wall to keep out the barbarian hordes (Hadrian’s Wall). In the centre of Rome, he built an unprecedented temple to all the gods of the empire (the Pantheon). And in the hills above the city, he established a private pleasure-dome (Tivoli). These exceptional projects aside, the most striking feature of his reign was the frequency of foreign tours. Hadrian spent at least half of his time as emperor away from Rome and Italy, exploring the remoter parts of his empire.
It was during one of these royal progresses, through the lands bordering the Black Sea, that Hadrian met a beautiful Bithynian boy called Antinous. A country lad, about twelve years old, from the forested uplands of Bithynia, Antinous had tightly curled hair, high cheekbones and a sensuous mouth. Hadrian was captivated by him, and took him into his imperial retinue. Since boyhood, Hadrian had been obsessed with reviving Hellenistic culture; his friends had even nicknamed him Graeculus, “the little Greek.” Now, with Antinous, he saw himself perpetuating the traditions of classical Greek male-to-male relationships: he was the older man, the erastes, while Antinous was the beautiful youth, the eromenos. Other commentators were less charitable, regarding the intimate relationship with suspicion and speaking of Hadrian’s “burning passion for his notorious attendant Antinous.”9
Whatever the true nature of their friendship, Antinous and Hadrian became constant companions, travelling the empire together. In the late summer of AD 130 they reached Egypt. It was to prove a fateful visit. The emperor’s intention seems to have been to inspect the entire Nile Valley as far south as Philae and, in good Hellenistic tradition, to found a fourth Greek city (to stand alongside the ancient foundations of Naucratis, Alexandria and Ptolemaïs) at a site of his own choosing. The imperial progress began at Canopus, a city at the mouth of one of the Nile’s main branches, and passed via the trading community of Naucratis and the religious centre of Heliopolis. By the second half of October, the flotilla had reached Hermopolis. It was here, in Middle Egypt, that ancient Egyptian religion began to exert its peculiar influence on the emperor and his companion.
The inundation of AD 130 had been lower than normal. In fact, it was the second year in succession that the river’s flood had been inadequate. Egyptians knew only too well that a third successive low Nile would mean famine and misery for the whole land. Something needed to be done to placate the god of the Nile and ensure a return to its accustomed bounty. It was in this atmosphere of foreboding that Hadrian and Antinous arrived at Hermopolis a few days before the annual Festival of the Nile, celebrated on 22 October. This coincided with the date when the Greeks marked the drowning of Osiris—a mythical act of sacrifice which had led to a glorious and eternal resurrection.
In circumstances which remained forever shrouded in mystery, the Festival of the Nile that year would be remembered not for the usual pageantry, but for a shocking event: the death by drowning of Antinous. Hadrian maintained that it was a tragic accident. Others speculated that Antinous had gone to his death willingly to achieve a kind of immortality, for himself or for Hadrian. (Classical authors, including Herodotus and Tertullian, had written about an Egyptian belief that those who drowned in the Nile received divine honours.) Whatever the cause, the tragedy had a dramatic effect on the emperor. According to contemporary accounts, his grief “knew no bounds.”10 He set up statues to Antinous in Egypt and throughout the Roman world. He declared that he had seen a star which he took to be the resurrected youth. He had a poem composed in honour of Antinous. And, as an eternal monument, he fulfilled his ambition by founding, on 30 October AD 130, a new Greek city in Egypt, at the very spot where his companion had drowned. Its name, Antinoopolis.
When Antinous perished beneath the waters, there was little on the east bank besides a cluster of mud huts and a modest provincial temple built by Ramesses II. But within seven years of his death, a spectacular city had arisen in its place, one of the civic wonders of the Roman world. The two main streets were lined with over a thousand stone columns, in Hadrian’s own words “made as they used to be made by our forefathers and also as they are made by the Greeks.”11 The main temple had a façade eighty-two feet wide. All across the city there were dozens, if not hundreds, of statues of Antinous, including a colossal one cast in bronze that stood on its pedestal for over two centuries. Giving full rein to his love of antiquity and Greek culture, Hadrian gave Antinoopolis a constitution modelled on that of Naucratis, the first Greek city in Egypt. Settlers—lured to the site by the promise of free grain and a child support scheme—were exempted from the poll tax and the tax on goods in transit. Uniquely, non-Greeks could become citizens of Antinoopolis: Hadrian’s way of spreading the benefits (as he saw them) of Hellenism among the native Egyptian population. To boost the city’s economy, a desert road was built to the Red Sea coast (although it never competed with the shorter route to Qift). Last, but not least, the city was given the privilege of holding a regular games, the Antinocia, celebrated according to rules laid down by Hadrian himself.
Hand in hand with the foundation of Antinoopolis went the foundation of a new cult of the deified Antinous. In death, the boy from Bithynia was explicitly merged with Osiris and worshipped as a god of resurrection. On an obelisk from Antinoopolis that now stands on the Pincio in Rome, one of the last examples of an extended, high quality text composed in Egyptian hieroglyphics includes a prayer by “Osiris-Antinous” to the ancient Egyptian sun-god Ra-Horakhty to reward Hadrian with a long life. Antinous is described as “The god Osiris-Antinous, the justified, is become a youth with perfect face … on whom the eyes rejoiced,”12 while Hadrian calls himself “beloved of the inundation god.”13 The Nile had claimed one Roman citizen and ensnared another.
Accident or sacrifice, Antinous’ drowning seems to have appeased the great river, for the following year the inundation was exceptionally bountiful, in Hadrian’s own words “causing the production of abundant and beautiful crops.”14 The emperor himself left Egypt in the spring of 131, after a stay of nearly eight months. A Roman coin issued afterwards shows him in military uniform, standing on a crocodile (symbolising the Nile Valley). Whether Hadrian had conquered Egypt or vice versa is debatable.
Long after Hadrian’s death and the end of the Roman Empire, Antinoopolis retained a reputation as a reli
gious and magical location. It became a centre of early Christianity (as did Amarna, a few miles to the south), and medieval Arab writers associated it with sorcery. Following in its founder’s footsteps, later citizens of Antinoopolis became Christian martyrs and Muslim sheikhs. The spirit of sacrifice and devotion remained with it to the end. After the Arab invasion, Antinoopolis was plundered for its stone; in Egypt’s nineteenth-century push for modernisation, the columns of Hadrian’s great city were a handy source of building material for the sugar factory at nearby el-Roda, for a dam at Asyut, and for quicklime quarries throughout Middle Egypt. Today, little remains of Hadrian’s monument to the love of his life. Antinoopolis (known to the Arabs as Sheikh Ibada) is as desolate and empty as it was two millennia ago when a death in the Nile led to the birth of Egypt’s last pagan god.
The cult of Antinous spread from its remote epicentre in the Nile Valley across the Roman world. Antinous became the focus of popular worship from Holland to Cyprus, and from Naples to the Black Sea. Not surprisingly, he was especially revered in his homeland of Bithynia. He also had his own temples and priesthoods in Middle Egypt, at Hermopolis and Oxyrhynchus, at Tebtunis in the Fayum, and even in Alexandria. The numerous statues of Antinous—sometimes soft and feminine, sometimes muscular and virile—even impressed Christian writers. Clement of Alexandria remarked on their “unsurpassed beauty,”15 while St. Jerome called Antinous “a boy of uncommonly outstanding beauty.”16 (It is no coincidence that one of the finest surviving statues is today in the Vatican Museum.) Some post-classical commentators even went so far as to compare the self-sacrifice and resurrection of a youth from Bithynia with the self-sacrifice and resurrection of another young man from another provincial town of the Roman Empire: Nazareth.
WITH ITS FIRST democratically elected president having been drawn from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood and with Cairo’s al-Azhar University regarded as one of the world’s great centres of Islamic teaching, Egypt is undoubtedly a leading Muslim nation. In every city and town throughout the Nile Valley, the cry of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer five times a day is a defining feature of the soundscape. As in other Islamic countries, Friday, not Sunday, is the day of rest. In recent years, the proportion of women wearing the veil has increased markedly, even in cosmopolitan downtown Cairo, as has the number of men who get out their prayer mats and prostrate themselves in the middle of the street when “Allahu akbar” reverberates from the nearest loudspeaker.
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