Presumably this must have been deemed to have failed, as Akhenaten himself is then apparently held to account. We have seen in Chapter Five how the macabre burial, ultimately destined for Smenkhkare, was originally planned – and probably implemented – for Akhenaten. Add to this the fact that Smenkhkare then returned to Thebes to realign himself with the cult of Amun, and that his successors almost immediately abandoned Amarna, and we have all the signs of a nation in the throes of desperation. Everything they try is to no avail! When we look again at Amarna's last years, we see all the signs of a further natural disaster – an epidemic.
If the royal family is anything to go by, then the population was dropping like flies. Some three years before the end of Akhenaten's reign, there are many members of the king's household recorded and pictured in the Amarna tomb, palace and temple scenes. We have the queen, Nefertiti, the second wife, Kiya, the queen mother, Tiye, and her daughter Beketaten; together with the princesses: Meritaten, Meketaten, Ankhesenpaaten, Neferneferuaten-ta-sherit, Neferneferure and Sotepenre. In the year 12 they are all joyfully present at the Jubilee event, and in the year 14 they are still alive and well. But after the year 17, only one of them – Ankhesenpaaten – is ever heard of again (see Chapter Five). Even the two latest additions to the family, Ankhesenpaaten-ta-sherit and Meritaten-ta-sherit, vanish from the record after Amarna is abandoned. Apart from Akhenaten himself and Smenkhkare, both of whom appear to have died within a year of each other, many of the chief ministers – such as the chamberlain Tutu, the cupbearer Perennefer and the high priest Meryre – simply disappear at the end of Akhenaten's reign.
There does not seem to have been a palace coup or a purge by Smenkhkare, as we can be fairly sure that the most important official, Ay, would have been first on the list. Besides which, if someone wanted to be rid of the whole royal family, why leave Ankesenpaaten alive, and why should the next four kings all have married Akhenaten's relatives to legitimate their rule? We certainly know that Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Meketaten, and another princess (probably Neferneferure) were not purged in a coup as they were all interred in the royal tomb (see Chapter Five).
Of the common citizens of Amarna there survives no record, but if we take the royal family and the ruling elite as a statistical cross-section, then it would appear that something was killing off the population in droves. This is surely evidence of some type of epidemic. In fact, we have proof positive that a virulent plague was sweeping through the Egyptian vassal states. The king of Alashia writes to Akhenaten in one of the Amarna letters that Nergal – the god of disease and pestilence – was abroad in his land, reducing the production of copper ingots for the pharaoh. Completely independent accounts from Byblos and Sumura also record vast numbers dying of plague. Even the Hittites, who seemed to have been keeping their distance from Egypt, eventually succumbed.
From excavations at Hattusas (modern Boghazkoy) in Turkey, the Hittite capital, the archives of King Suppiluliumas I were discovered. Among the clay tablets inscribed with records of his reign was found a fascinating reference to the letter that Ankesenpaaten had sent to Suppiluliumas when Tutankhamun died (see Chapter Six). As we have seen, she asked the king to send her one of his sons so that she could marry him and make him pharaoh. When the prince was attacked and killed, it led to a revenge raid by the Hittites on Egyptian-occupied Amqa (in Lebanon). The archives record that after the attack, the Egyptian prisoners they brought back to the capital carried with them a plague that not only killed the king but afflicted the Hittites for years to come.
Such a plague may actually account for the abandonment of Amarna. Even though the ancients may not have known the true cause of disease, they knew well enough that contagious illnesses were passed from person to person. What type of epidemic this might have been is hard to tell, although it seems to have had a lengthy duration. In fact, it may have been a series of different viruses, perhaps started by the after-effects of the Thera eruption. With the number of dead carcasses littering the countryside, the abundance of rodents, and the mass of disease-carrying insects, who knows how many outbreaks of disease could have resulted. An ongoing series of epidemics in Thebes, and elsewhere, may even have accounted for Akhenaten's move to Amarna in the first place.
It is with disease in Egypt that we again find a familiar echo in the Exodus account. According to Exodus 7:29–30, the last plague that God brought down upon the Egyptians was the most terrifying of all:
And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of the Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.
Might this be a reference to such an epidemic? Although in the biblical narrative, the deaths of the firstborn occur before the Exodus from Egypt, we have already seen how the order of events may have been rearranged at a later date (see Chapter Ten). The specific reference to the firstborn could also be a confusion of two separate calamities to have affected Egypt.
From the moment Akhenaten comes to the throne – seemingly right after the 'plagues' caused by Thera – no pharaoh sires a male heir for well over half a century. Akhenaten, despite having at least six daughters, has no son that we know of. Smenkhkare also appears to have sired only a daughter, Meritaten-ta-sherit: he certainly left no male heir. Tutankhamun's queen, Ankhesenpaaten, only seems to have conceived daughters, one (perhaps) by her father – Ankhesenpaaten-ta-shertit – and two stillborn foetuses of baby girls. Aborted after five and eight months, they were found mummified in the Treasury of Tutankhamun's tomb. Ay never sired a male heir, and neither did Horemheb, despite the fact that they both lived to a ripe old age. Even the first nineteenth-dynasty king, Ramesses I, had no male issue. It is not until Seti I, around 1300 BC, that the chain is finally broken. This is a period of some sixty-odd years. For a people whose pharaoh was considered the personification of the chief god on earth, around whom the whole of society revolved, it must have seemed as if they were indeed a cursed nation. It certainly led to instability and ultimately what seems to have been a military dictatorship.
It is possible that a combination of these two afflictions inspired the story of the final plague in the Exodus account. As we have seen in the previous chapter, some Israelites would appear to have stayed in Egypt after the Thera event. Some, like Aper-El and his son, even achieved exalted office during Akhenaten's reign. Surely, if one of them rose to be the equivalent of a prime minister, there must have been many more. Staying in a foreign country, in which they were now respected, possibly feared, must have been infinitely preferable to wandering in the desert, or holding their own against hostile marauders in Canaan.
Once the anti-Atenist persecutions began under Horemheb, however, any Hebrews that had allied themselves with Akhenaten would almost certainly have suffered too. We know that by the beginning of Seti's reign there are Apiru slaves again being used in Egypt, having been absent from the surviving records for many decades (see Chapter Seven). Perhaps, during such oppression, many of the remaining Israelites managed to flee from Egypt and join up with their countrymen – possibly the golden-calf worshippers of Exodus 32. Although the Hebrews who remained in Egypt seem to have influenced the course of Atenism, Atenism may also have influenced them. To an extent, they may have gone native, and the Exodus story of the golden calf may reflect this. Even though Exodus tells us that calf-worshippers were put to the sword, we know from the archaeological evidence that in its early days in Canaan, the Hebrew religion was tainted with bull worship more than the Old Testament writers actually cared to admit.
Interestingly, if the calf-worshippers were recent arrivals among the wandering Israelites, it might explain the reference in Exodus 32: 35: 'And God plagued the people, because they made the calf.' Perhaps they had brought the epidemic with th
em. It would certainly be taken as additional evidence – if any was really required – that the Lord wanted no part of Egyptian religion, even if it was a monotheistic one. As God says when telling Moses of His plans to kill the firstborn in Exodus 12:12: 'Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgement.'
It is with the wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness that we might again interpret evidence of plague. In the previous chapter we saw how the forty-year wandering before the conquest of Jericho would seem to have been based on historical events. The period between the Thera eruption – the Exodus – and the burning of Jericho – the arrival in Canaan – was indeed around forty years. In which case we must ask ourselves why? Why should the Hebrews spend four decades waiting to return to their ancient homeland? Might it have been because a plague was pandemic throughout the entire region. We know that Egypt was affected, so also were the Egyptian territories along the Canaan coast as far north as Turkey. In fact the safest place to be was right in the middle of the Sinai Desert – precisely where we find the Israelites. Moreover, they would appear to have been there for approximately the duration of the epidemic – or series of epidemics. By the time Jericho is taken around 1315 BC, there is no further evidence of plagues in any of the countries mentioned. Once again, what was a catastrophe for everyone else, just so happens to have benefited the Israelites. By the time they arrived in Canaan, the population of the city states would have been greatly reduced and hard pressed to defend themselves.
With the Amarna years now no longer so mysterious – yet all the more astonishing – and many aspects of the Exodus story fitting, for perhaps the first time, into a genuine historical framework, we finally return to the mystery that began this unusual investigation: the strange case of Tomb 55.
We have already concluded, from the evidence examined in earlier chapters, that Smenkhkare was entombed in such a way that his burial was believed to have imprisoned some kind of malevolence – something that had inhabited his corporeal form. If Smenkhkare himself had been considered the source of that evil, it seems unlikely that Tutankhamun would have been interred in a coffin that bore his brother's image. We know that this presumed entity – for want of a better word – is either an androgynous or feminine being, because of both the specially adapted female effects and way in which the body was mummified in the attitude of a woman. We have speculated that such an entity might have been the Aten, for the new god was considered to be of both genders. However, we have also seen how both Ay and Tutankhamun – those responsible for the condition of Tomb 55 – continued to respect, if not actually practise Atenism themselves. There is therefore only one 'immortal being' that fits the bill – the goddess Sekhmet.
If we consider it from Ay's and Tutankhamun's point of view, it is hardly surprising that they took such unprecedented and – as far as we know – unique measures. From being at the height of its power and prosperity, just two decades earlier, Egypt had apparently been subjected to a hellish storm of volcanic ash, had its coast and rivers lashed by violent tidal waves, had its crops and livestock decimated, suffered sickening plagues of vermin and repeated epidemics, and its royal household was failing to produce a legitimate male heir. Amonhotep had attributed it to the wrath of Sekhmet and had tried to appease her. It hadn't worked! Akhenaten had attributed it to the Aten and had proclaimed it as chief and only god. That hadn't worked either! The plagues were continuing, and people were dropping like flies all over the empire. What were they to do?
Even though they may have considered Atenist philosophy sound, Ay and Tutankhamun had reinstated Amun-Re and the old gods, so presumably believed in their power. Tutankhamun's tomb certainly contains images of many gods. It therefore makes sense – indeed the only sense that Egyptian thought could make of it – that Sekhmet was responsible after all. She was the goddess of devastation. Just as the king of Alashia had written to Akhenaten about Nergal – his god of disease and pestilence – being abroad in his land, Sekhmet – the Egyptian equivalent – was abroad in Egypt. Amonhotep had been right about the cause, but he had been wrong about the remedy. He had tried to appease a goddess who, quite obviously, could not be appeased. As the goddess was immortal, and could not be destroyed, there was only one course of action left open: to contain her – to imprison her for eternity.
Why, though, should they think she had inhabited the body of Smenkhkare? Well, for a start, he was the king. From the very beginning of pharaonic Egypt, the entire nation had revolved around the king. He was the incarnation of the chief god and, as such, the well-being of all Egypt depended on him. All his subjects could only hope to gain divine favour in this life and participation in the afterlife vicariously, by attending to the pharaoh's needs. The king and the land were one. If the land was sick, rather than having been punished by the chief god – as clearly, from the Egyptian standpoint, it was – then at the end of the day there was only the king to blame. By inhabiting the king – just as the principal god would normally have done – Sekhmet had been able to afflict the land and bring about her planned devastation of Egypt.
This was almost certainly the manner in which the new regime, its priests and its ministers, were thinking. However, there may have been an additional, and more specific, reason why they might have considered Sekhmet to have possessed the body of Smenkhkare. He had been born when all the trouble began.
Forensic analysis of the mummy revealed that Smenkhkare had been around twenty years of age when he died. We know he died in the same year as Akhenaten – the seventeenth year of Akhenaten's reign. He must, therefore, have been born around three years before Akhenaten came to the throne. As Amonhotep had enough time to erect over seven hundred statues of Sekhmet before Akhenaten assumed power, the Thera eruption must have occurred a few years before. It seems, therefore, that Smenkhkare had been born very close to the time the volcano exploded. From Ay's and Tutankhamun's perspective, like some Egyptian anti-Christ, the evil goddess would have been hiding among them all the time.
With the mystery of Tomb 55 perhaps solved, we turn to one final piece of speculation: the mystery of Tutankhamun. Why did his tomb remain intact? We know that Horemheb tried to obliterate all evidence of Atenism, and all record of the kings who had sanctioned it. Every pharaoh between him and Amonhotep was erased from history – including Tutankhamun! We do not know what happened to the final resting place of Akhenaten, as it has never been found, but we do know that Ay's tomb was smashed to pieces and his mummy was torn to shreds. Despite all this, Horemheb not only left Tutankhamun's tomb alone – he even had it repaired. There it remained, just like Tomb 55, undisturbed for over three thousand years. We have even seen evidence suggesting that both tombs were deliberately hidden deep underground – as if to prevent anyone from ever finding them.
Such behaviour by Horemheb is understandable with regard to Tomb 55 – it was already desecrated – but why protect the tomb of Tutankhamun? Lying in splendour with all his finery, surrounded by family heirlooms and everything he would need in the afterlife – his name, his image, his mummy, fully intact – Tutankhamun has been entombed with every honour that Egypt can bestow. There may be only one reason why a pharaoh who wanted to wipe out all evidence of the Amarna kings would have left Tutankhamun's tomb alone: if it was somehow related to the bizarre interment in Tomb 55.
When Weigall, Ayrton and Davies first entered Tomb 55 on the morning of 19 January 1907, the condition in which they found it was more or less exactly as it had been left over three thousand years before. Although some items had been damaged by water, the entrance was intact and nothing had been removed. From the condition of Tomb 55, we have been able to determine the thinking behind the strange interment. However, the material items in the tombs – the inscriptions, the artefacts, the mummy – are only half the story. The other half we can only guess – namely, the rituals that accompanied the macabre burial, and the magical procedure by which the mummy was being imprisoned. Far more preparation must have been involved than evidenced by t
he tomb alone. The perpetrators were attempting to imprison a goddess. In Egyptian thinking, the only one who could banish a god – let alone imprison one – was another god: the pharaoh himself. To his subjects Tutankhamun was exactly what his name implies – 'The living image of Amun'. Tutankhamun's seal was on the door of Tomb 55, and it was his influence, as the incarnation of Amun-Re, which would ultimately be the power that would keep the goddess trapped.
Tutankhamun's tomb is only thirteen metres across the valley floor from Tomb 55 – and their entrances directly face each another. Remarkably, it seems that it was deliberately planned this way. The tomb found by Giovanni Belzoni in 1816 at the far end of the western Valley of the Kings, the one originally intended for Prince Tuthmosis and ultimately used by Ay, had been reconstructed for its new intended occupant – Tutankhamun. The traces of decorations on the walls clearly showed that it had been made ready for Tutankhamun some years before he died. Yet despite this, it was not used for his burial. Of all the places in the valley where Tutankhamun could have been buried, his final tomb is positioned right opposite the very tomb that had been desecrated in his name. Knowing what they had done to the occupant of Tomb 55, it is unthinkable that Tutankhamun would want to be interred as his eternal nextdoor neighbour, or that Ay would have allowed it. Unless, of course, it was essential.
As the living incarnation of the god Amun-Re, Tutankhamun was believed to have within him the life-force of the god Re. Re had been the father of Sekhmet and he had restrained her when she had tried to destroy mankind before. In Egyptian thinking, it would be his power that was needed to restrain her once again. Accordingly, it may have been essential for the body of Tutankhamun to be buried close to Tomb 55. So long as the Tutankhamun's tomb remained intact, the king – in his personification as Re – could continue to revisit the earth and so keep watch over the prisoner in Tomb 55. This may even be why he used Smenkhkare's coffin and Canopic coffinettes, even when he would surely have had his own. Perhaps he hoped that his brother's true spirit would reside alongside him, free from Sekhmet; the two of them remaining together as eternal guardians, standing sentinel over Sekhmet – the captive goddess of devastation.
Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings Page 27
