Moses and Akhenaten

by Ahmed Osman

  Throughout this period changes took place in the nature of Akhenaten’s belief. As we saw earlier, when he was shown in his Year 1 worshipping at the quarry of Gebel Silsila in Nubia, he called himself the ‘first prophet’ of ‘Re-Harakhti, Rejoicing-in-the Horizon, in his name the light (Shu) which is in the Aten’. Soon afterwards the name of the Aten was placed inside two cartouches so as to be represented as a ruling king. At this early stage the God was represented as a human shape, either with the head of a falcon surmounted with the sun disc or as a winged disc. These early representations were made in the conventional artistic style of the Egypt of the time.

  Between the king’s Year 4 and Year 5 a new style of art started to appear, part of it realistic, part distinguished by an exaggeration of expression. There was also a new representation of the God. A disc at the top of royal scenes extended its rays towards the king and queen, and the rays end in their hands, which sometimes hold the Ankh, the Egyptian symbol of life, to the noses of the king and queen, a privilege which only they enjoy. The disc and its rays are not to be seen, for example, in scenes showing officials in the doorways of their tombs, reciting the famous hymns to Aten found inscribed on Aye’s tomb. The king and his queen are the major figures in the Aten cult: it is their colossal statues that surround the open courts of the temples, which contained no images of the gods although the walls were probably covered with scenes depicting the worship of the Aten. Pharaoh was Aten’s channel of communication and only he had the power to interpret the divine will. In the longer hymn to Aten, thought to have been composed by the king himself, a long poetic passage credits Aten with the creation of all the phenomena of the universe and asserts that all creatures exist only by virtue of the sun’s rising and infusing them with life each morning.

  In Year 6 the Aten was given a new epithet, ‘Celebrator of Jubilees’, jubilees which coincided, significantly, with those of the king. Then, towards the end of Year 9 the name of the Aten received its new form to rid it of any therio-anthropomorphic and panetheistic ideas that may have clung to it. The falcon symbol that had been used to spell the word ‘Re-Harakhti’ was changed to abstract signs giving an equivalent ‘Re, Ruler of the Horizon’ while a phrase in the second cartouche was also altered, ridding it of the word for light, ‘Shu’, which was also a representation of the old Egyptian god of the void. This was replaced by other signs. The new form of the God’s name read: ‘Re, the living Ruler of the Horizon, in his name (aspect) of the light which is in the Aten’.

  No evidence of burial, or even of sarcophagi, have been found in any of the nobles’ tombs and their main interest remains in the vivid picture they give – in a manner previously unknown in Egypt – of life in the new city and of the intimate family life of Pharaoh himself. Pendlebury, who worked at the site in the 1930s, later had this to say, in his book Tell el-Amarna, published in 1935, of the tomb paintings and sketches: ‘Carelessly and hastily carved as many of them are, the new spirit of realism is strikingly evident. The incidental groups of spectators are so alive, the princesses turn to one another with their bouquets so naturally. Almost more important, however, are the religious texts from which we can read the hymns to the sun written by Akhenaten and giving the theology and philosophy of the new religion.’

  The ruling Pharaoh was regarded as being head of the priesthood, head of the army and head of the administration of the Two Lands of Egypt. By rejecting the gods of Egypt, Akhenaten ceased to be head of the priesthood and the temples of Egypt were no longer under his control. He also had no control over the running of the country while his father was still alive. But, from the time he moved to Amarna, Akhenaten relied completely on the army’s support for protection and, possibly, as a future safeguard against the confrontation that would be inevitable once his father died and he became sole ruler.

  Alan R. Schulman, the American Egyptologist, was able to demonstrate that although, because of his physical weakness, Akhenaten alone of the Tuthmosside House is not represented as an active participant in horsemanship, archery and seamanship – in which his forebears excelled – he seems to have been at pains to emphasize his military authority. In the vast majority of the representations, he is shown wearing either the Blue Crown or the short Nubian wig, both belonging to the king’s military head-dress, rather than the traditional ceremonial crowns of Lower and Upper Egypt. Akhenaten’s use of these two types of headgear on almost every possible public and private occasion may then have been intended to identify him constantly in the minds of his people as a military leader: ‘Scenes of soldiers and military activity abound in both the private and royal art of Amarna. If we may take the reliefs from the tombs of the nobles at face value, then the city was virtually an armed camp. Everywhere we see parades and processions of soldiers, infantry and chariotry with their massed standards. There are soldiers under arms standing guard in front of the palaces, the temples and in the watchtowers that bordered the city, scenes of troops, unarmed or equipped with staves, carrying out combat exercises in the presence of the king.’3

  The military garrison of Amarna had detachments of foreign auxiliaries in addition to Egyptian units. Schulman goes on to say: ‘Just as Amarna had its own military garrison which stood ready to enforce the will of the king, so the other cities of Egypt must also have had their garrisons and the army, loyal to the throne, carried out its will. That the army was so loyal to the throne and to the dynasty was almost assured by the person of its commander, the god’s-father Aye, who somehow was related to the royal family. Though he does not give them great prominence in his inscriptions as a private individual, Aye held posts among the highest in the infantry and the chariotry, posts also held by Yuya, the father of Queen Tiye and possibly also the father of Aye.’4 (The precise relationship of the four Amarna kings will be discussed later.)

  It was again the loyalty of the army, controlled by Aye, that kept Akhenaten in power in the uneasy years that followed his coming to the throne as sole ruler in his Year 12 upon the death of his father. By that time Akhenaten had developed his monotheistic ideas to a great extent. If the Aten was the only God, Akhenaten, as his sole son and prophet, could not allow other gods to be worshipped at the same time in his dominion. As a response to his rejection by the Amun priests as a legitimate ruler, he had already snubbed Amun and abolished his name from the walls and inscriptions of temples and tombs. Now he took his ideas to their logical conclusion by abolishing worship of any gods throughout Egypt except the Aten. During the Amarna rule of Akhenaten his subjects were totally committed by the king to the worship of a monotheistic God, although at this time only the Levites among the Hebrews were involved in his new religion.5 Akhenaten closed all the temples, except those of Aten, dispersed the priests and gave orders that the names of other deities should be expunged from monuments and temple inscriptions throughout the country. Units were despatched to excise the names of the ancient gods wherever they were found written or engraved, a course that can only have created mounting new opposition to his already rejected authority:

  ‘The persecution of first Amun and then the other gods, which must have been exceedingly hateful to the majority of the Egyptians, would certainly also be hateful to the individual members of the army. This persecution, which entailed the closing of the temples, the despatch of artisans who entered everywhere to hack out his name from inscriptions, the presumed banishment of the clergy, the excommunication of his very name, could not have been carried out without the army’s active support. Granting the fact that the theoretical fiction of the divine kingship was accepted by the mass of the Egyptian people, it is, nevertheless, hardly credible that they would just sit by and acquiesce silently to the persecution of Amun. Some strong backing had to support the royal dicta. Each time a squad of workmen entered a temple or tomb to destroy the name of Amun, it must have been supported by a squad of soldiers who came to see that the royal decree was carried out without opposition. Ultimately the harshness of the persecution must have had a certai
n reaction even upon the soldiers who, themselves, certainly had been raised in the old beliefs, and rather than risk a wholesale defection and perhaps even a civil war, the army, through the agency of Aye, probably put pressure upon Akhenaten, not only to cease the persecution, but to compromise with the old order by the elevation of Semenkhkare to the coregency.’6 In fact, when even this compromise failed, the clamour grew, as we shall see, for the king’s abdication.

  More information about the extent to which Akhenaten went in trying to eliminate the old forms of worship, as well as the consequent sense of complete loss felt by Egyptians, can be gathered from Tutankhamun’s Restoration Stela, which he erected in the Temple of Amun at Karnak and which was later usurped by Horemheb: ‘… The good ruler, performing benefactions for his father (Amun) and all the gods, for he has made what was ruined to endure as a monument for the ages of eternity … Now when his majesty appeared as king, the temples of the gods and goddesses from Elephantine [down] to marshes of the Delta [had … and] gone to pieces. Their shrines had become desolate, had become mounds overgrown with [weeds]. Their sanctuaries were as if they had never been. Their halls were footpaths. The land was topsy-turvy, and the gods turned their backs upon this land. If [the army was] sent to Djahi (Palestine-Syria) to extend the frontiers of Egypt, no success of theirs came at all. If one prayed to a god to seek counsel from him, he would never come [at all]. If one made supplication to a goddess similarly, she would never come at all.’7

  It is certain that it was the strength of opposition to Akhenaten’s religious reforms, and his own unwillingness to change his attitude, that forced him to appoint Semenkhkare as his coregent around Year 15 after giving him his eldest daughter, Merytaten, as his wife. The precise identity of Semenkhkare has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate. Suffice to say for the moment that it has been suggested that he might have been the son of Amenhotep III or of Akhenaten himself. They are shown together on some monuments and inscriptions have been found, including some on the pleasure pavilion at the south of Amarna, the Maruaten, in which the name of Nefertiti had been erased and the name of Merytaten inscribed in its place. One curious feature of the period is that, soon after his accession, Semenkhkare was given Nefertiti’s official name – Neferneferuaten, beloved of Waenre (Akhenaten).

  Initially, Semenkhkare and his queen lived with Akhenaten in the royal palace at Amarna. In face of the continuing hostility throughout the country, however, Semenkhkare left Amarna for Thebes where he reversed the trend of the religious revolution, at least in the capital, by establishing a temple to Amun, an action by his coregent and son-in-law that indicates the extent to which Akhenaten was isolated in his attempt to force his religious ideas upon his country. A hieratic document found in the Theban tomb of Pere, the Theban nobleman, indicates that the Amun temple existed in Year 3 of Semenkhkare and that the young king was in the old capital at the time.

  At around the time that Semenkhkare became coregent, Nefertiti also disappeared mysteriously from the palace. There is no evidence that she was buried in the royal tomb to suggest, as some scholars believe, that she must have died around that time. On the contrary, there is evidence that she lived for a period after that date in the North City of Amarna where Tutankhamun was also resident and where objects inscribed with the queen’s name have been found. This suggests that she may have disagreed with her husband over his religious policy on the grounds that it endangered the whole dynasty and wished him to agree to a compromise that would allow the old gods to be worshipped alongside the Aten. If this is the correct interpretation, her views proved to be right. In his Year 17 Akhenaten suddenly disappeared, followed shortly afterwards – perhaps only a few days afterwards – by the equally sudden death of Semenkhkare, both of them to be succeeded by the boy prince, Tutankhamun, after his marriage to Akhenaten’s third daughter, Ankhsenpa-aten. The parentage of Tutankhamun will be discussed in Chapter Fourteen. (Akhenaten’s second daughter had already died – around Year 12 of her father – and been buried in the royal tomb at Amarna. No trace of her remains have been found, but that may be because her mummy was transferred to Thebes after Amarna was abandoned.)

  There remains one further important question to be asked about Akhenaten: did his life as well as his reign come to an end when he fell from power?

  14

  THE TOMB OF AKHENATEN

  ALTHOUGH not a shred of evidence has been found to confirm the date of Akhenaten’s death, Egyptologists have assumed that it must have taken place at the end of his reign in his Year 17. There is evidence, however, indicating that – as in the Talmud account of the reign of Moses as a king in Nubia (Ethiopia) – he simply fell from power in the course of this year, but did not die. This evidence comes from archaeological, philological and historical sources.

  The Archaeological Evidence

  The Royal Tomb of Akhenaten was desecrated originally in the wave of anti-Amarna feeling that followed his disappearance from the scene and the subsequent brief reigns of Tutankhamun and Aye. Later, it was further plundered by local inhabitants before it was first discovered officially by the Italian archaeologist Alessandro Barsanti in December 1891 during an expedition carried out on behalf of the Egyptian Service des Antiquités.

  The Amarna city of Akhenaten was built halfway between Luxor and Cairo where the high barren plateau stretching 200 miles from the Red Sea recedes, leaving a crescent-shaped plain to the east of the Nile, about eight miles long and three broad. Three main valleys break into the rocks to the east of Amarna. The north and south valleys were used for the tombs of Amarna nobles and officials, the middle valley, Wadi Abu Hassan el-Bahri, for Akhenaten’s tomb. It was dug inside the rocks of a small side valley that branches out from the north side of the main valley.

  DESCRIPTION OF THE TOMB

  The entrance of the tomb is cut into the floor of the Royal Valley with the doorway facing roughly east.1 Then there is a smooth, inclined plane for the lowering of the sarcophagus with, on each side, a flight of steps descending to the entrance. This leads to a sloping corridor, neither decorated nor inscribed.

  At the end of the corridor is another flight of steps that leads to a platform giving abruptly on to a shaft some ten feet deep. In the wall opposite the shaft is the doorway of the royal burial chamber, some thirty-two feet square. The left third of the room is taken up by a dais and two columns that support the roof while the remaining two-thirds on the right has an emplacement, raised half an inch or so above the floor, for the sarcophagus. All the walls of the royal chamber had been smoothly plastered for the artists to do their work, but Akhenaten’s enemies, determined to destroy all traces of him, made sure that there is nothing left of whatever scenes or inscriptions the walls may once have borne.

  If we go back to the corridor at the top of the stairs we find an opening on the right-hand side, near the royal chamber, leading to three rooms, two of which were used for the burial of Akhenaten’s second daughter, Meketaten, who died some time after his Year 12. Mourning scenes for the princess decorate the walls. A short way along the corridor is another doorway leading to six unfinished rooms that could have been intended for the other members of the royal family. So, in fact, we first have the entrance, then the corridor off which are found the six unfinished rooms, then the Meketaten suite before the steps leading to the royal chamber area.

  EXCAVATING THE TOMB

  Barsanti’s main objective on his first visit at the end of 1891 and another eight months later was to clear the tomb, whose entrance was blocked by debris. Once that had been done it seems he gave most of his attention to the royal burial chamber. However, his second visit yielded some fragmentary ushabti (small funerary statues normally placed in a tomb before the owner’s death) of Akhenaten and one small stela, in good condition, that had apparently escaped the attention of previous tomb plunderers.

  More than a year passed before the arrival in January 1894 of a third expedition, led by Urbain Bouriant, director of the Mission
Archéologique Française. Bouriant’s team concentrated largely on making a plan and section of the tomb and recording the inscriptions and reliefs in all of the rooms apart from the badly damaged royal burial chamber. Then followed a long gap before the Egypt Exploration Society – the first British organization to be invited to carry out work on behalf of the Service des Antiquités – was asked to re-examine the tomb as well as excavating the area outside it. Pendlebury, the director of the expedition, which began work on 18 December 1931, wrote later: ‘Outside the tomb was a large dump, some seventy metres long and varying from five to ten metres broad. The depth was, in places, as much as four metres. The dump consisted of three layers. Above lay the debris thrown out of the tomb by Barsanti; below this came the deposit left by the original desecrators of the tomb, while at the bottom was a layer of chips from the cutting of the tomb itself.’

  It took more than three weeks to make a thorough examination of the dump. Three days after Christmas excavation was also begun in the shaft of the tomb. The result was that from both the dump and the shaft came many more fragments of the sarcophagi and some broken ushabti figures. The expedition also found part of Akhenaten’s alabaster canopic chest, a box with four compartments, used to hold the four canopic jars. These jars, made of pottery or stone with a head for a stopper, were used in the course of mummification to keep the viscera of the dead after they had been removed from the body, but no fragments of the jars themselves were found.

  After the departure of the Egypt Exploration Society team the site continued to be the focus of attention for local predators. Robbers broke into the tomb and made off with a large number of fragments of the plaster reliefs that adorned the walls of the Meketaten rooms. In May of that year, therefore, the Service des Antiquités organized a sondage (excavation) that produced another dozen ushabti fragments.