The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt

by Toby Wilkinson

  THE ONE TRUE GOD

  IN ONE SENSE, AKHENATEN’S FUNDAMENTALIST THEOLOGY HAD BEEN foreshadowed by his father’s apotheosis. It was but a short and logical step from Amenhotep III’s celebration of solar power to his son’s exclusive exultation of sunlight itself. It is even possible that Akhenaten regarded the Aten as his real as well as his spiritual father—Amenhotep III in deified form. However, in many important respects, Akhenaten’s doctrine was entirely unprecedented and radically at odds with the previous seventeen centuries of ancient Egyptian religious tradition. While kings of the past had stressed their role in upholding maat (truth, justice, and created order), Akhenaten professed to live on maat like the gods themselves. Truth no longer had an existence independent of the king’s actions: it was, by definition, whatever he wanted it to be. Traditional rituals of royal renewal, notably the sed and Opet festivals, had emphasized the one-off rejuvenation of the king, until the next such occasion. Akhenaten’s sed festival at Ipetsut (when he was still Amenhotep IV) had had an entirely different agenda, signifying the permanent rejuvenation of the king and the entire cosmos. Through the co-regency of the Aten and the king, the world had been taken back to its pristine state immediately following the moment of creation. Akhenaten’s universe enjoyed (or suffered) daily re-creation, reflecting the daily rebirth of the sun itself, under the beneficent guidance of the divine triad, namely the Aten, the king, and his consort.

  If the dogma was rarefied, the implications were stark. A deity whose power was transmitted through its rays, through light itself, would have no use for an enclosed, hidden sanctuary—such as had been built for gods and goddesses since the dawn of civilization. Worship of the Aten demanded open-air temples, filled with tables piled high with offerings for the god’s direct consumption. Indeed, the entire city of Akhetaten was one great temple to the Aten, since the visible sun could be observed and worshipped overhead at any time of day. This is more than hinted at by the “royal name” given to the Aten at the time of “his” jubilee (1351). Although written inside the classic cartouche (oval name ring) used by kings, the “name” was, rather, a heavily abbreviated statement of the new creed:

  Live! Ra-Horus-of-the-two-horizons who rejoices on the horizon in his name of light, which is the Aten.

  Just as Akhenaten took the role of Light (the god Shu), so the king’s new city, Akhetaten, “the horizon of the Aten,” was the place where the Aten rejoiced—god, king, and holy city in perfect unison.

  Although, in theory, the Aten needed no temples and no priesthood (the king being the god’s sole interlocutor), in practice Akhenaten could not devote himself to worship—much as he may have wished to—every hour of every day. After all, he was head of state as well as prophet of a new religion. So, in a nod to previous practice, he appointed a high priest of the Aten shortly after taking up residence at Akhetaten. Meryra, “beloved of Ra,” seems to have come from nowhere, or at least took pains to ensure that his previous career and background remained hidden. Like most of Akhenaten’s inner circle, he probably owed everything to the king. That way, his loyalty was guaranteed. His formal installation as high priest took place at the king’s house in the central city. Akhenaten and Nefertiti, accompanied by their eldest daughter, Meritaten, appeared at the royal balcony, which had been decorated for the occasion with a richly embroidered cushion. Wearing a long white gown and a decorative sash, and attended by members of his household, Meryra entered the royal presence and knelt before the king while official scribes recorded every aspect of the proceedings. (Even under Akhenaten, Egypt had not lost its obsession with record keeping.) Behind the pen pushers were the baton wielders, ready to swing into action at the least sign of trouble. Police, like scribes, were an everyday feature of life at Akhetaten. With a formal declaration, the king confirmed Meryra’s appointment to universal acclamation. When the hubbub had subsided, Meryra made his own brief speech of acceptance: “Numerous are the rewards that the Aten knows to give, pleasing his heart.”7 It was a model of concision and piety. His friends then raised him up shoulder-high and bore him from the palace.

  The other high point of Meryra’s career, some years later, was his investiture with the “gold of honor,” the ultimate accolade for a loyal servant. Once the king had heaped gold collars around the high priest’s neck, everyone present had to listen, attentive and enraptured, while Akhenaten gave a long, verbose, stilted, and legalistic speech. With its ritualized setting and choreographed moves, Meryra’s installation as high priest brings us face-to-face with a style of royal audience that has changed little in three and a half thousand years. His subsequent investiture offers a similar reminder that the world of despots and their cringing lackeys follows an equally time-honored pattern.

  At about the same time as Meryra’s appointment to the high priesthood, the king began to promulgate a more elaborate statement of his faith. It was referred to, rather chillingly, as the Teaching. It used the vernacular language of the day rather than the classical forms of yore, and was probably composed by the king himself. The Great Hymn to the Aten, to give it its formal name, has been called “one of the most significant and splendid pieces of poetry to survive from the pre-Homeric world.”8 It is certainly a masterpiece, its rapturous tone and exultant imagery of the creator’s power exerting a profound influence on later religious authors, not least the Jewish psalmists. Its careful reproduction in the tombs of Akhenaten’s high officials, as a public gesture of loyalty to the regime, ensured its survival, and it merits quoting at length. Nothing better captures the unbridled joy (Akhenaten’s joy, at least) of the king’s new religion.

  You shine forth in beauty on the horizon of heaven,

  O living Aten, the creator of life!

  When you rise on the eastern horizon,

  You fill every land with your beauty.

  Beautiful, great, dazzling,

  High over every land,

  Your rays encompass the lands

  To the limit of all that you have made.…

  The earth is bright when you rise on the horizon,

  And shine as Aten of the daytime.

  You dispel the darkness

  When you send out your rays.

  The Two Lands are in festival …

  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.9

  The hymn’s emphasis on the richness and abundance of creation found visible expression in the gorgeous painted walls, ceilings, and floors of the royal palaces. But they were a far cry from the experience of ordinary people, even in Akhenaten’s new model city. Cheek by jowl with the grand palaces and temples, the poor citizens of Akhetaten lived short, hard lives. Their bones tell of poor diets, high stress, and physical hardship. Some did irreparable damage to their spines by carrying heavy burdens on a daily basis. Others squatted or knelt all day on mud floors, toiling over crucibles of molten metal or glass in the city’s workshops. Inadequately fed in childhood, and mocking the mountains of food laid out for the Aten, men and women alike were physically stunted and prone to debilitating conditions such as anemia. More than half the population died while still in their late teens, and only a few survived into their forties. Most were dead by thirty-five. Buried in shallow pits
dug directly into the sand, with only a pile of stones for a memorial, they were laid to rest with a few cheap pots and perhaps a couple of pieces of old jewelry. It was a world away from the official dogma of life, light, and beauty. Little wonder, perhaps, that Akhenaten’s lowlier subjects continued to put their trust in the traditional gods, even under the noses of the king’s thought police. In the safety of humble dwellings, much-loved deities such as Hathor, Bes, Taweret, and even Amun still had a place.

  Despite, or perhaps because of, this continued adherence to the old cults, Akhenaten’s doctrine turned ever more fundamentalist. In the early years of his reign, when the court was still based at Thebes, it was evidently acceptable for a royal butler to include prayers to Osiris and Anubis in his tomb. But after the move to Akhetaten, the Aten was swiftly elevated from supreme god to sole god. No others would be recognized or tolerated. The king’s vision would be imposed on the rest of society. Priests found themselves deposed or reassigned and their temples were closed, and all resources were redirected to the Aten cult. The high-water mark of Akhenaten’s puritanical fervor was signaled in the eleventh year of his reign, 1341, when the doctrine of the Aten was officially “cleansed,” to remove all references to gods other than Aten or Ra—even gods, such as Horus-of-the-two-horizons and Shu, who were themselves solar deities.

  This purification of the Aten cult was accompanied by the active proscription of other deities, especially the now hated Amun, whom the Aten had supplanted as supreme creator. To wipe their names from history, Akhenaten launched a systematic program of state-sponsored iconoclasm. Throughout the country, from the marshlands of the delta to the distant reaches of Nubia, 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 (reference cards that illustrated for illiterate workmen the phrases to be expunged from monuments), they shinnied up obelisks to hack out the figures and names of Amun-Ra. Personal names that included the element “Amun” or “Mut” were also targeted, even though they included Akhenaten’s own father (Amenhotep III) and grandmother (Mutemwia). The officially sanctioned desecration extended even to the plural form of the word “god.” Terrorized by the king’s cultural revolution, individuals scrambled to protect themselves, subjecting treasured personal possessions to self-censorship and changing their own names to escape the iconoclasts’ wrath. An army scribe called Ptah-mose hurriedly became Ra-mose; the priest Mery-neith became Mery-ra—and only felt safe readopting his original name after Akhenaten’s death. To much of the population, the orgy of vandalism must have felt like the ritual murder of their most cherished hopes and beliefs.

  Yet the king remained unshakeable, his Teaching crystal clear. Not only was the Aten the sole god, but the only path to salvation lay through Akhenaten (throne name Neferkheperura) and the members of his family:

  There is none other who knows you,

  Only your son, Neferkheperura, sole one of Ra.

  You have informed him of your plans and your might.

  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 dual king who lives on truth, the lord of the Two Lands,

  Neferkheperura, sole one of Ra,

  The son of Ra who lives on truth, the lord of diadems,

  Akhenaten, whose life is long;

  And the king’s great wife, whom he loves,

  The lady of the Two Lands,

  Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti, living and youthful forever and ever.10

  Never before had the institution of monarchy been elevated to such an absolute position.

  FIRST FAMILY

  THE CLOSING LINES OF THE GREAT HYMN TO THE ATEN (ABOVE) ILLUSTRATE one of the most striking elements of Akhenaten’s entire revolution—the unprecedented prominence given to his wife. In one sense, Nefertiti was merely following in the footsteps of her Eighteenth Dynasty forebears. From Tetisheri, Ahhotep, and Ahmose-Nefertari to Hatshepsut, royal women had grown accustomed to playing an important role in the affairs of state. Tiye had taken this one step further, engaging in her own correspondence with foreign rulers and appearing side by side with Amenhotep III as the female counterpart to his male divinity. But Nefertiti broke new ground from the outset. At Ipetsut, she had been granted her own temple, the Mansion of the Benben, where her husband (then still Amenhotep IV) was not even depicted. She was shown carrying out ritual actions previously restricted to the king, such as smiting a bound captive or inspecting prisoners. On the boundary stelae commissioned to mark the first anniversary of the royal couple’s visit to Akhetaten, Nefertiti is shown at the same scale as the king, which denoted her equal rank. Akhe-naten’s accompanying panegyric further underlines her exalted status:

  Great in the palace, fair of face, adorned with the twin plumes, lady of joy who receives praises; one rejoices at the hearing of her voice, the king’s great wife whom he loves, the lady of the Two Lands.11

  Every public gesture made by Akhenaten to signal his devotion to the Aten was mirrored by a gesture from Nefertiti. When he changed his name from Amenhotep, she added an epithet to hers. While Akhe-naten was the living incarnation of Shu, the son of the creator, Nefertiti was Tefnut, his consort. She adopted the goddess’s distinctive flat-topped headdress as her own, and made it the public symbol of her authority. In the tomb of Nefertiti’s high steward, the royal couple are shown side by side, their images almost entirely overlapping. In some eyes, at least, Nefertiti and Akhenaten were as one, joint rulers on earth with the Aten in heaven.

  The intimacy of their relationship was made a central tenet of Akhenaten’s new doctrine, publicized in statuary and reliefs throughout the city. In one scene, the couple hold hands during an official ceremony, in another Nefertiti sits on her husband’s lap as she ties a bead collar around his neck. A fragment of temple relief even shows Akhe-naten and Nefertiti getting into bed together. The couple’s daughters, too, were brought into the approved iconography. By the time they had been at Amarna for two years, Akhenaten and Nefertiti had six daughters. (Akhenaten also had at least one son, born of a minor wife, but the son was notably excluded from the official record, the female principle being all-important.) A famous stela shows the king and queen relaxing at home with their three eldest daughters. Akhenaten cradles and kisses Meritaten; Meketaten sits on her mother’s knee, gesturing toward her father; and little Ankhesenpaaten pulls at Nefertiti’s earring. It was unprecedented even to acknowledge, let alone publicize, such expressions of affection and emotion among members of the royal family.

  The reason for this radical departure from tradition was the royal family’s new role in Egyptian religion, for it had become a holy family, supplanting the traditional groupings of deities. The royal chariot drive into the central city had taken the place of the gods’ processions. Statues of Akhenaten and Nefertiti had replaced images of deities. Since the cult of Aten was an exclusive religion, revealed only to Akhenaten and his family, ordinary citizens wishing to obtain blessings from the solar orb had to worship its representatives on earth as intermediaries. In the tombs of favored officials, cut into the cliffs ringing Akhetaten, worship of the king sublimated individual personalities. The offering formula was no longer addressed to Osiris, god of the dead, but to the king, and occasionally to Nefertiti as well. The only eternal existence now on offer was to bask in the Aten’s rays during the day, to receive a share of offerings from the temple, and to return to one’s tomb at night, watched over by Akhenaten. It was a chilling prospect.

  Residents of Akhetaten even kept statues and images of the royal family in their household shrines. The size of one’s shrine—some were akin to miniature temples—was a public measure of one’s loyalty to the regime, every bit as important a status symbol as a well, granary, or garden. And for the humble citizens barred from the Aten’s formal temples, there was at least one public place of worship in the central c
ity … a chapel of the king’s statue.

  Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their daughters WERNER FORMAN ARCHIVE

  Not everyone shared this unbridled devotion to the king and all his works. Tantalizing references from the first set of boundary stelae suggest dissent may have erupted in the early years of the reign. Akhe-naten’s radical policies must have aroused deep unpopularity among certain sections of the population, and the fear of insurgency haunted his regime. Loyal officials warned potential dissidents of the king’s determination to root them out: “As soon as he rises, he exerts his power against the one who ignores his teachings.”12 Yet even within his new city, the king’s personal safety was clearly a major preoccupation, and Akhetaten crawled with security. As well as the police force, there were the soldiers and “heads of the army who stand in the presence of His Majesty.”13 An armed escort, bristling with spears, accompanied Akhenaten on his daily chariot ride into the city. An entire block behind the king’s house was devoted to barracks for paramilitary forces, and there were additional outposts throughout the city. A complex network of tracks crisscrossing the plain allowed systematic policing of the desert behind Akhetaten. Visible by night as well as day, these routes for military chariots facilitated round-the-clock security. The barren wastes of the Eastern Desert provided a ready hiding place for outlaws, and the police were all too aware of dissidents “who would join those of the desert hills.”14

  Roving police patrols monitored the royal residence from high on the plateau above, while the sheer cliffs behind the palace were virtually impossible to scale or descend easily. Like other despots throughout history, Akhenaten relied heavily on the loyalty of his security personnel, not least his chief of police. Mahu, in common with all the king’s top officials, owed everything to royal patronage and was at constant pains to demonstrate his devotion. He had the walls of his tomb inscribed with no fewer than four copies of the Hymn to the Aten, the official creed of Akhenaten’s new religion. Mahu’s public expressions of faithfulness in the presence of his monarch were models of sycophancy. However, in such an atmosphere of paranoia, even an archloyalist was not given unfettered control of royal security. The king also had his own elite bodyguard that included foreign soldiers, perhaps less likely to harbor a grudge against the pharaoh. Senior members of the administration, too, may have been drawn from foreign families. The vizier Aper-El, the king’s chief physician Pentu, and the royal chamberlain Tutu may all have been of non-Egyptian descent.