Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings

by Phillips, Graham

  With the foundations of the empire having been firmly laid by Tuthmosis III, and then consolidated by three successors, the subsequent reign of Amonhotep III in the early-fourteenth century BC was the most prosperous and stable period in Egypt's history. International trade flourished, tributes flooded in from foreign lands, and the god Amun-re was venerated like no other god before. When Amonhotep's son, Akhenaten, succeeded to the throne around 1364 BC, everything mysteriously changed. Trade tricked to a standstill, the empire disintegrated, and Amun-Re was abandoned. Even today, no one really knows why. Called the Amarna period, after the site of a new capital built at the time, it is by far the most obscure era of Egyptian history. Nearly all official records of the period were destroyed by later pharaohs who considered it to have been a dark age of heresy. Yet it is during the Amarna period that we find ourselves in the age of Tutankhamun and Smenkhkare, and the time of the mysterious desecration of Tomb 55.

  Even before the discovery of their tombs, Tutankhamun and Smenkhkare were both known to Egyptologists though various inscriptions recovered from excavations. From the historical context of the inscriptions, it was apparent that they had lived during the early New Kingdom and had been Eighteenth Dynasty kings, yet, oddly, neither of them appeared on any royal list. Eventually, the reason became clear: like the other two kings of the Amarna period, Akhenaten and the pharaoh Ay, their successors had erased their names from history. In the eyes of later generations, they had committed acts of unsurpassed evil.

  At the beginning of his reign, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, Akhenaten decreed that a new god, a minor solar deity called the Aten, should replace Amun-Re as the chief god of Egypt. Within a short time, he went even further and did something completely alien to everything in Egypt's ancient culture: he proclaimed that the Aten was the only god. After abolishing the priesthood, altering all religious practices and initiating a complete change in the style of ceremonial art, he recalled the imperial army to Egypt to work on the construction of a massive new city he deemed should be built at Amarna in Middle Egypt. That he should have completely upturned every aspect of a two-thousand-year-old civilization and reduced the mighty army to humble bricklayers is strange enough, but the fact that everyone appears to have gone along with it all is utterly mystifying.

  For centuries, through thick and thin, the religious institutions of Egypt had remained virtually unchanged. The gods Horus, Osiris and Amun may have been assimilated into the principle deity, but it was essentially the same god, Re, worshipped in precisely the same way. Other gods had always been necessary, religious festivals remained essentially unchanged, and commemorative art had been rigidly tied to a specific orthodox style. Even the minor changes, such as the introduction of the co-regency and the assimilation of the gods, had followed periods of national upheaval. Yet with Egypt apparently in the most powerful and stable period of its history, Akhenaten changes everything.

  It is not just a question of why he should have done all this, but how he got away with it. The kings of the New Kingdom did not exercise such unchallenged authority as those of earlier generations. In theory, the king still had absolute power, but in reality this power was dependent on the continuing support of many other departments, in particular the priesthood. When the royal succession was disputed or there was a weak candidate, the priesthood could exercise unchallenged power by expressing or withholding divine approval. Moreover, if a king was considered unfit, the priesthood could also rule that he should be replaced. Although the pharaoh was seen as the son of Amun-Re, he was not actually considered an incarnation of the god; rather, a temporary vessel for the god to inhabit. Only when someone was actually appointed pharaoh did the god enter his body. If the circumstances arose which offended the god, the deity could quite easily inhabit the body of someone else. Accordingly, the Egyptian priesthood could simply have found another, more appropriate candidate for Amun-Re to inhabit and install him as pharaoh. In Akhenaten's case, the fact that there appears to have been no attempt to remove him is doubly puzzling. By abolishing the god whom he was supposed to personify he was actually nullifying his own authority.

  It has been suggested that Akhenaten may have had the universal support of both the army and the civil authorities. Yet they too had every reason to oppose the king. With the growth of military power there existed a regular and powerful army and a hierarchy of senior officers. The expansion of empire had also brought about an essential civil service of advisers and administrators. At Thebes this powerful bureaucracy was staffed with officials who dealt with the efficient organization of revenue and expenditure, the armouries, the granaries and the department of public works. Everything Akhenaten did went against the army's interests by neglecting the empire and leaving it virtually undefended, and against the civil authorities' interests by abandoning Thebes and almost bankrupting the country by building an extravagant new city.

  Akhenaten's revolutionary changes were seemingly in no one's interests. However, they must have had the support of nearly every aspect of the Egyptian hierarchy. Otherwise, the usurped priesthood could have impeached him on religious grounds, the bankrupted nobility could have overthrown him in a palace coup, and the humiliated army could have mutinied and seized control.

  Had they all gone along with it because they too had suddenly, and wholeheartedly, adopted Akhenaten's new god? It hardly seems credible. From what we can tell, the Aten, the god he established as the sole god of Egypt, was virtually unknown before Akhenaten's time. There are only a few brief references to the Aten, and then only as a minor sun god. The Aten seems to have been of no real importance and was revered by almost no one. From all outward appearances, what Akhenaten did would be like the Pope declaring that Jesus Christ was no longer the saviour and that everyone must worship an obscure saint like St Neots.

  That an institution that had survived so long should be so completely overturned, seemingly unopposed, and replaced by a completely new god, religious concept and mode of worship, is completely mind-boggling. The only rational explanation is that there had been some unprecedented national upheaval – something so remarkable that it completely challenged the entire social and religious fabric of Egypt. History, however, tells us nothing. Any records that may have existed were destroyed at the end of the Amarna period, when the old institutions were re-established and a wholesale attempt was made to eradicate all record of Akhenaten and his religious heresy.

  There is almost certainly a link between this, one of history's greatest unsolved mysteries, and the enigma of Tomb 55. Akhenaten's name was found to have been erased from one of the shrine panels in the tomb, implying that Akhenaten had been a part of whatever sins Smenkhkare was imagined to have committed. More significantly, as the female coffin and Canopic jars in Tomb 55 had been specifically adapted for Akhenaten before being used for Smenkhkare, the bizarre desecration would seem originally to have been intended for Akhenaten. Smenkhkare certainly co-ruled with Akhenaten, and immediately succeeded him and, from all we can tell, shared his revolutionary ideas. Had Smenkhkare's tomb therefore been violated because of his role in establishing the new religion? Although this would tie in with the anti-Atenist reprisals a few years later, it does not fit with the reign of Tutankhamun, in whose name the desecration was evidently carried out.

  When Tutankhamun became king, Akhenaten's cultural revolution had been in effect for well over a decade. As he was only about eight at the time, Tutankhamun's chief minister, Ay, appears to have been chiefly responsible for governing the country for the first few years. With Egypt close to bankruptcy and the empire in tatters, Ay and Tutankhamun soon abandoned the city of Amarna, returned to Thebes and restored Amun-Re as principal deity. However, both Tutankhamun and Ay continued to tolerate the Aten religion. This is demonstrated, for example, by the many items in Tutankhamun's tomb which were decorated with depictions of the Aten, which even included the royal sceptre and throne. Indeed, as neither Tutankhamun nor Ay, when he succeeded Tutankhamun as phara
oh himself, made any attempt to reinstate the priesthood, the restoration of Amun-Re was seemingly a token gesture to appease opposition, rather than a heartfelt religious conversion. The later attempts to eradicate all evidence of the Aten religion, and those who sanctioned it, even shows that Tutankhamun and Ay continued to venerate the Aten. Along with Akhenaten and Smenkhkare, inscriptions concerning Tutankhamun and Ay were erased from monuments, their statues were defaced and destroyed, and their names were omitted from the list of kings.

  Tutankhamun and Ay may not have been so fanatical as Akhenaten in their devotion to the Aten, but they made absolutely no attempt to suppress the new religion. Consequently, it is difficult to see either of them desecrating Smenkhkare's tomb simply because he had been an Atenist. Nevertheless, there does appear to have been something linking Smenkhkare with Akhenaten lying at the heart of the Tomb 55 enigma. We must therefore attempt to reconstruct the Amarna period by piecing together the few scraps of historical evidence that still survive, and search for any clues that may help us unravel the ever-more-bewildering mystery.

  SUMMARY

  • Even before the discovery of their tombs, Tutankhamun and Smenkhkare were both known to Egyptologists though various inscriptions recovered from excavations, yet, oddly, neither of them appeared on any royal list. Like two other kings of the period, Akhenaten and the pharaoh Ay, their successors had erased their names from history. In the eyes of later generations, they had committed acts of unsurpassed evil by proscribing the traditional gods and establishing a new monotheistic religion.

  • At the beginning of his reign, Akhenaten decreed that a new god, a minor solar deity called the Aten, should replace Amun-Re as the chief god of Egypt. Within a short time he went even further and did something completely alien to everything in Egypt's ancient culture: he proclaimed that the Aten was the only god. That he should have completely upturned every aspect of a two-thousand-year-old civilization has mystified historians for decades.

  • There is almost certainly a link between this, one of history's greatest unsolved mysteries, and the enigma of Tomb 55. Akhenaten's name was found to have been erased from one of the shrine panels in the tomb, implying that Akhenaten had been a part of whatever sins Smenkhkare was imagined to have committed. More significantly, as the female coffin and Canopic jars in Tomb 55 had been specifically adapted for Akhenaten before being used for Smenkhkare, the bizarre desecration would seem originally to have been intended for Akhenaten.

  • Smenkhkare certainly co-ruled with Akhenaten, and immediately succeeded him and, from all we can tell, shared his revolutionary ideas. Smenkhkare's tomb may therefore have been violated because of his role in establishing the new religion. However, although this would tie in with the anti-Atenist reprisals a few years later, it does not fit with the reign of Tutankhamun, in whose name the desecration was evidently carried out. It is a mystery, therefore, why Smenkhkare's tomb was desecrated.

  CHAPTER THREE

  City of the Sun

  About halfway along the Nile, between the Mediterranean Sea and what is now the Aswan Dam, lies the sandy plain of Amarna. Here, Akhenaten's capital lay ruined and forgotten for almost three thousand years before it was rediscovered in the early nineteenth century. In this scrub-covered desert tract around the village of Et Til (also called Tell el Amarna) on the east bank, low mounds of pebble-strewn rubble were all that remained of the once splendid city. The first proper account of the site was made by the British explorer John Gardner Wilkinson in the 1820s, when he surveyed a number of rock-cut tombs discovered in the hills to the east of the village. Although at the time the hieroglyphics could not be read, Wilkinson nevertheless realized that their decorations were unlike any previously found in Egypt. Concerned almost exclusively with the activities of a royal family, these illustrations differed markedly from the traditional religious or militaristic mode. The king, queen and several daughters were not depicted as triumphant conquerors, smiting their enemies, but in everyday domestic scenes, feasting, relaxing and embracing one another. Neither were they shown engaged in the formal cultic practices of the time, but in an altogether more dynamic attitude of worship. Likewise, their subjects, who would usually have been portrayed as sombre onlookers, were shown as a joyful congregation, dancing, singing and waving palms. Even the artistic style was distinct. The principal figures were not afforded the formal bearing of might and grandeur, but a demeanour of grace and sensuality, while a normally rigid and static affectation was replaced by a sinuous, more relaxed mien. Everything about the tombs was in stark contrast to the Egyptian norm. Gone entirely was the funerary ambience which pervaded the tombs at Thebes and Saqqara, and even the usual gods were absent from the scenes. It was quite clear that the people of Amarna had customs and religious beliefs very different from those practised elsewhere in ancient Egypt.

  Early Egyptologists began referring to these people as 'disc worshippers', as the upper part of nearly every scene was dominated by a glyph depicting the sun's disc, from which shone forth a dozen or so rays, each ending in a hand holding an ankh (the symbol of life). So different was everything about the Amarnans that some scholars even concluded that they had not been Egyptians at all, but foreign settlers who had merely adopted the Egyptian language. Even when the hieroglyphics were eventually deciphered, it was some time before their identity could be determined. Throughout the site, the figures of the royal family had been defaced and their cartouches erased from inscriptions. This excising – clearly an act of desecration contemporary with the ruins – had been so thorough that it was hard to find an intact royal name, or any clue to the meaning of the revered disc. Nevertheless, there had been oversights in places difficult to access, and the arcane ruins began to relinquish their secrets. The king was found to have been the previously unknown Akhenaten, the son and successor of Amonhotep III; his queen had been Nefertiti, the mother of six princesses but apparently no sons; and the strange sun glyph was found to represent a single deity called the Aten. The entire city was dedicated to this god and was even named after it. Called Akhetaten – 'the horizon (or seat) of the Aten' – the city was occupied for less than two decades, before being abandoned to the mercy of the desert.

  Sadly, many of the inscriptions and illustrations no longer exist. Following various German, French and British expeditions to Amarna during the nineteenth century, the local population began to resent foreign intrusions. To deter the Europeans from returning, they began to smash statues and destroy carvings and reliefs. Thankfully, however, many of them were copied by these early visitors. The last scholar to work at Amarna before the destruction was Norman de Garis Davies, the surveyor for the British-based Egypt Exploration Fund in the 1890s. Over a period of six years he painstakingly copied all the decorations that still survived in the cliff tombs and published them in his six-volume The Rock Tombs of El Amarna. Together with some earlier drawings in the Berlin Museum, made by a German team led by Egyptologist Richard Lepsius in the 1840s, they were almost the only means by which later scholars could piece together the lifestyle of the citizens of Akhetaten.

  The first archaeological excavation of Amarna was carried out by Ayrton and Carter's mentor, Flinders Petrie, in the 1890s, and for the first time the colossal scale and splendour of the city became apparent. Akhetaten was a straggling metropolis built along a ten-kilometre stretch of the Nile: a northern town with its royal palace and suburbs, a central city with its sacred temple, and a southern town with its mansions for the upper classes. The whole city was constructed around a great forty-metre-wide processional way, now referred to as the Royal Avenue or Kingsway, which swept down from the northern palace and on through the central city, where it was flanked by a series of official buildings, a ceremonial palace, and the new style, open-air temple to the Aten. There were many smaller temples too, such as the sun kiosks along the routes to the cliff tombs to the east of the city, where devotees could bask in the life-giving rays of the sun. This central city seems to have been an
administrative and religious centre, deserted at night except for guard patrols. Its day-time population of priests, clerks and artisans probably commuted from the suburbs, while the high officials had a separate district of mansions which stood in extensive grounds, surrounded by the lesser habitations of their attendants.

  A specific feature of these great residences revealed just how different Amarna was. In one of the principal rooms there was a shrine consisting of a niche in which stood an inscribed and decorated stela. Similar shrines housing such a stela – an upright stone slab or pillar – were common to larger dwellings throughout Egypt and were dedicated to a particular deity or ancestor venerated by the residents. In the Amarna mansions, however, the decorations depicted no such gods or ancestors – only Akhenaten and his queen, accompanied by one or more of their daughters as they worshipped the Aten. The larger mansions even had their own chapels adorned with statues and votive images of the royal family. It was clear that Akhenaten not only dominated all official ceremony, but private prayer and meditation as well.

  It was the same in the nobles' tombs, which would normally be decorated with scenes from ancient texts, such as the Book of the Dead, in which various gods would be depicted in order to invoke their influence as guides and guardians in the afterlife. These elaborate burial chambers were built to the same basic plan as those at Thebes, but were decorated very differently. Unlike the Theban tombs, the wall reliefs all focused on the king and through him the Aten. Akhenaten, usually accompanied by Nefertiti and a number of daughters, was shown engaged in various ceremonial activities, such as proceeding in a chariot along the processional way to worship at the temple of the Aten.