The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt

by Toby Wilkinson

  Amenhotep III went on to celebrate a second and a third jubilee, each accompanied by further monumental buildings and yet more rituals. Then, in the thirty-eighth year of his remarkable reign, in 1353, and quite unexpectedly, he died of unknown causes, still only in his late forties. The shock, to a population bombarded by royal propaganda and a court convinced of the king’s immortality, must have been profound. Yet nobody could have dreamed of the revolution that was about to sweep the country under Amenhotep’s heir.

  Egypt’s dazzling sun had set. When it rose again, it would shine with an unrelenting, scorching light.

  CHAPTER 14

  ROYAL REVOLUTION

  NEW DAWN

  IN THE ANNALS OF ANCIENT EGYPT, ONE FIGURE PROMPTS MORE COMMENT and speculation than any other. He attracts admiration and loathing in equal measure. From romantic novelists to opera composers, few have been able to resist his allure. In his relatively brief lifetime he changed Egypt utterly; yet his dramatic reforms were hurriedly reversed after his death. He took the institution of divine monarchy to new heights; yet he was never expected to rule. He is Akhenaten, the heretic king (1353–1336), the most controversial and enigmatic of pharaohs, the instigator of a royal revolution. His seventeen-year reign and the tumltuous decade that followed were perhaps the most exhilarating, uncertain, dynamic, and bizarre period in Egyptian history. At its heart was the king’s own radical vision, which, if it had survived, would have changed not just the history of ancient Egypt but, perhaps, the very future of humanity.

  For much of Amenhotep III’s glorious reign, the heir apparent was Prince Thutmose, the king’s eldest son, named, following royal tradition, after his grandfather and great-great-grandfather. Of the second son, Prince Amenhotep (as he was then named), little is known until Prince Thutmose’s untimely death, an event that propelled his younger brother into the position of crown prince. Thutmose left few monuments other than a stone sarcophagus lovingly carved for his pet cat. By contrast, his brother’s determination would transform Egypt in less than a generation.

  The new heir to the throne must have witnessed firsthand his father’s spectacular sed festivals, and they’d clearly had a profound effect on him. Their dazzling solar imagery, in particular, seems to have burned itself into the young man’s fertile imagination. If notions of radical theology had begun to form in Amenhotep’s mind, there is no evidence of them at the beginning of his reign. Instead, having succeeded as Amenhotep IV, he did what was expected of a pious son and completed the decoration of his father’s great entrance gateway at Ipetsut. He added his own reliefs, in suitably traditional style, showing him smiting the enemies of Egypt. In Nubia, he founded a new town, just as his father had, with a temple dedicated to Amun-Ra, king of the gods. From distant Cyprus, the king of Alashiya wrote to congratulate Amenhotep IV on his accession, sending him a jar of “sweet oil” as a coronation gift.1 Everything seemed set fair for another glorious reign in the familiar dynastic mold. Egypt’s imperial possessions paid suitable homage, too. A particularly obsequious letter arrived from the vassal ruler of Tyre, full of the usual sycophantic formulations:

  I fall at the feet of the king, my lord, seven and seven times. I am the dirt beneath the sandals of the king, my lord. My lord is the sun who comes forth over all lands day by day.2

  Such sentiments seem to have given Amenhotep IV ideas. Within a year of becoming king, he showed his true colors, with a construction program to rival his father’s. The sandstone quarries at Gebel el-Silsila went into overdrive, manned by record levels of conscript labor that the king raised through a nationwide call-up. Colossal edifices bursting at the seams with royal statuary were nothing new, of course, and Thebes had become well accustomed to monumental building during the last decade of Amenhotep III’s reign. But Amenhotep IV had something alternative in mind. His projects would be focused at a single site, the temple of Ipetsut—not inside the sacred enclosure but outside its eastern wall, on a vacant mudflat. The choice of location, beyond the domain of Amun-Ra and facing the sunrise, was quite deliberate. For Amenhotep’s eight new monuments at Ipetsut were to be dedicated not to its usual incumbent but to the Aten, the visible orb of the sun, whose imagery his father had adopted at the time of his first jubilee. Reflecting this theological shift, the grandest project was a temple named Gempaaten (Gem-pa-Aten, “the Aten is found”), and it was quite as ambitious as anything Thebes had witnessed in the previous reign. At its heart was a vast open court lined with a colonnade. Against the pillars stood twenty-foot-high statues of Amenhotep IV and his wife, Nefertiti, each carved from a single block of sandstone. Their distinctive crowns—the double crown or a twin-plumed headdress for the king, a flat-topped crown for his consort—identified them as Atum, Shu, and Tefnut, the original triad of creator gods according to the ancient myth of Iunu. Where Amenhotep III had stressed his sunlike role in maintaining the universe, his son wished to be associated with the very act of creation.

  This fundamentalist theology found startling expression, too, in the appearance of Amenhotep IV’s statuary. To emphasize his oneness with the creator, embodying both masculine and feminine attributes, and at the same time to underline his separateness from the rest of humanity, the king ordered his sculptors to instigate a radical change in the mode of representation. Every aspect of the king’s face and body was deliberately distorted: the head was unnaturally elongated with angular and attenuated features including slit eyes, a long nose, and a prominent chin; a long, sinewy neck and prominent collarbones dominated a narrow upper torso, which contrasted with a distended belly and broad hips; plump legs ended in spindly calves. The overall effect, especially when multiplied over and over again at a colossal scale in the harsh, raking light of the open court, was both frightening and surreal. In a further twist, the statues were emblazoned at strategic points (neck, upper and lower arms, waist) with plaques bearing a pair of royal names, but instead of identifying the king, as might have been expected, they proclaimed the newly invented titulary of the Aten, the monarch’s favorite god. Under Amenhotep III, the king had become the solar orb; under his son, the solar orb had become king. Amenhotep IV was declaring nothing less than a co-regency, with himself and the sun god as joint sovereigns. In the abundant reliefs that decorated the Gempaaten, the royal family was invariably shown in the presence of the Aten, depicted no longer as the traditional falcon-headed man but in abstract form as a solar orb with rays ending in human hands, caressing and bringing life to the royal family.

  The ultimate purpose of Amenhotep IV’s entire building program at Gempaaten, like his father’s constructions at Malkata, was to provide a grand architectural setting for the celebration of a royal jubilee. Amenhotep IV held his own sed festival in the third year of his reign, maintaining the frequency established by his father’s jubilees. In so doing, he was clearly signaling that his father’s reign had not really ended. The inscriptions emphasized that the sed festival was not so much the king’s as the Aten’s. It was a radical but entirely logical development of Amenhotep III’s theology: the old king had become the solar orb and, as such, would continue to reign for all eternity, endlessly repeating jubilees stage-managed for him by his son, Amenhotep IV. The sed festival at Ipetsut thus marked not a culmination but the beginning of a brave new world. Sun god and king would reign together, re-creating the world anew each day.

  Colossal statue of Amenhotep IV from Ipetsut (modern Karnak) WERNER FORMAN ARCHIVE

  The jubilee celebrations also pointed the way to a new future for Egyptian religious life as a whole. Gone were the traditional processions of the gods. In their place, the king and other members of the royal family were the focus of attention and reverence as they traveled each day in state from palace to temple and back again, cheering crowds and dignitaries lining the route. A year after the sed festival at Gempaaten, the king set the seal on his new theology by changing his own name, an act of the greatest symbolic power. While many a previous ruler had changed his throne name to signify a
new direction, it was highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a king to change the name he had been given at birth. Through the power of the jubilee, Amenhotep IV believed he had been reborn to new life as co-regent of the Aten. In place of Amenhotep, “Amun is content,” he would henceforth be known as Akhenaten, “effective for the Aten.” (Similarly, his wife, Nefertiti, added an epithet to her name, to become Neferneferuaten, “beauteous are the beauties of the Aten.”)

  A PLACE IN THE SUN

  SO PUBLIC A REJECTION OF THE AMUN CULT MUST HAVE SAT UNEASILY with the king’s continued patronage of Thebes, city of Amun par excellence. To be sure, the Gempaaten and the other Aten temples stood outside the sacred precinct of Ipetsut, but the center of Amun worship was still too close for comfort. Amun’s monuments on both banks of the Nile dominated the skyline and were a constant reminder of his hegemony over all other cults. If the Aten were to be truly magnified above all other deities, he would need his own domain, his own city, a place where the solar orb (and his son) could reign supreme. The search was on for a new royal capital.

  Akhenaten’s chosen location was nothing short of inspired. (Indeed, he claimed to have been led there by the Aten.) In Middle Egypt, roughly halfway between the great religious center of Thebes and the traditional administrative capital of Memphis, there was a spot where the towering limestone cliffs forming the east bank of the Nile receded to form a desert embayment, some seven miles long and three miles wide. It was secluded, easily defensible, and conveniently served by a broad expanse of fertile floodplain on the opposite bank. Most important of all, it was virgin territory, previously unoccupied and unclaimed by any other cult. Even the landscape seemed tailor-made for the king’s beliefs, the shape of the eastern cliffs forming the hieroglyph for “horizon,” the place where the sun rose each morning to bring new life to the world. It was indeed Akhet-Aten, the “horizon of the orb,” and the perfect setting for Akhenaten to realize his utopian vision.

  In the late spring of his fifth year on the throne, 1349, the king paid his first formal visit to the site (modern Amarna). Appearing in front of his assembled courtiers on an electrum-plated chariot, dazzling like the sun itself, he issued the decree establishing his new city. After making a spectacular open-air offering to the Aten in front of the cliffs, he declared that Akhetaten would belong to his god forever, as his monument “with an eternal and everlasting name.”3 Not even Nefertiti would be able to shake his determination to realize his dream:

  Nor shall the king’s great wife say to me, “Look, there is a good place for Akhetaten elsewhere,” nor shall I listen to her.4

  The king further decreed that his model city would contain a suite of principal buildings for the worship of the Aten and the glorification of the royal family. And Akhetaten, not Thebes, would be the king’s eternal resting place:

  If I die in any town of the north, the south, the west, or the east in these millions of years, let me be brought back so that I may be buried in Akhetaten.5

  The whole ceremony and the details of the king’s decree were recorded for posterity on three massive tableaux cut into the cliffs at the northern and southern limits of the site and adorned with statues of the king and queen.

  Exactly a year later, Akhenaten paid a second visit to inspect progress. After spending the night in a carpeted tent (called “Aten is content”), he once again rode out at sunrise in a golden chariot, made another great offering to his god, and swore an oath by the Aten and by the lives of his wife and daughters that everything in Akhetaten would belong to the Aten and no other, forever. This second decree, establishing the city limits more precisely, was duly carved into a further set of thirteen boundary markers on both banks of the Nile. Construction of the city itself stepped up a pace, too, helped by vast quantities of stone that were transported from a huge quarry cut into the northern cliffs. Stone “bricks” of a standard size (one cubit by half a cubit), small enough to be handled by a single workman, made for rapid building. Two years of feverish activity later and the city was ready to welcome the royal family to their permanent home.

  As Akhenaten had intended, “the horizon of the Aten” was carefully laid out to give prominence to the major public buildings. These were linked by the Royal Road, which ran parallel to the Nile and formed the capital’s ceremonial backbone. The king’s daily chariot ride from the royal residence to the seat of government and back again deliberately recalled the path of the Aten through the heavens, signaling the close connection between celestial and earthly co-regents. It also gave the city and its inhabitants a regular, ritual focus, replacing the religious festivals of old, which the king’s new theology had consigned to oblivion.

  The principal royal residence was located at the northernmost edge of Akhetaten, hemmed in between the cliffs and the riverbank, a site chosen as much for security as for aesthetic appeal. As well as the palace itself, set within a fortified enclosure, with extensive barracks for guards, there was a large administrative building and a group of impressive mansions for the king’s closest advisers.

  As the king traveled south each morning, his chariot accompanied by running platoons of soldiers and police—and, no doubt, flunkies trying hard to keep up—his journey took him first past a separate harem palace for the women of the royal family. Richly decorated with painted murals and gilded stonework, it was a haven of luxury and tranquility. In its central courtyard there were gorgeous formal gardens, kept watered from the river by a sophisticated irrigation system, while stalls for cattle and domesticated antelope provided the palace with the finest meats on a daily basis.

  Beyond this royal enclave began the city proper, and we may imagine the king’s cavalcade speeding up as it passed the homes of ordinary mortals. A northern suburb, one of two main residential quarters, spread eastward from the Royal Road. Akhenaten’s formal planning code evidently did not extend beyond the principal public buildings, for the houses of his subjects were arranged higgledy-piggledy. Large villas belonging to wealthy merchants were surrounded by the smaller houses of dependents, a maze of side streets and back alleys adding to the villagelike atmosphere. The neighborhoods were noisy and bustling, and constituted a more or less permanent building site as new dwellings were erected.

  Continuing southward along the Royal Road, the king’s chariot procession finally entered the central city, the religious and administrative heart of Akhetaten. The largest building of all was the House of the Aten, the god’s principal place of worship, with a street frontage of 750 feet and stretching back almost half a mile. Beyond its two massive entrance towers stood vast open courts, filled with mud brick altars. On festival days, these would be piled high with fruit, vegetables, meat, and poultry, offerings to be consumed by the Aten as he passed overhead. Extensive food production facilities and a dedicated slaughterhouse inside the temple kept the altars well stocked.

  Next to the temple was the “king’s house,” Akhenaten’s “office,” where the business of government was carried out. One of its most prominent features was a balcony for the royal family’s public appearances. A covered bridge led over the Royal Road to the Great Palace, the largest residential building in the entire city, with an area of nearly four acres. Principally a setting for grand state receptions and royal ceremonies, the Great Palace also included offices and quarters for members of the royal household. At its center was a massive open courtyard flanked by colossal statues of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, the better to impress visiting ambassadors. The sense of fear and wonder was further heightened by the floor decoration. The main route used by the king had a plastered pavement painted with images of foreigners. This allowed Akhenaten to trample his enemies underfoot as he went about his state business—“the unselfconscious trumpeting of official brutality.”6

  The final major building in the central city was the Mansion of the Aten, a smaller temple designed for the royal family’s daily worship. Aligned with the cleft in the hills that led to the royal tomb, it perhaps also took the place of a traditio
nal mortuary temple. In common with the House of the Aten, its architecture was dominated by open courts—to allow the worship of the visible sun—with a sequence of ramps, steps, and balustrades instead of closed rooms to divide up the sacred space. Akhenaten’s new religion had spawned a new architectural vocabulary.

  A further residential suburb, dominated by the houses of ordinary workers and beyond the area usually frequented by the king, marked the southern end of the main built-up area. But, on the outskirts of the city, 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. In his new “sun city,” Akhenaten was omnipresent as well as omnipotent.