Our Oriental Heritage

by Will Durant

  They are of all men the most excessively attentive to the worship of the gods, and observe the following ceremonies. . . . They wear linen garments, constantly fresh-washed. . . . They are circumcised for the sake of cleanliness, thinking it better to be clean than handsome. They shave their whole body every third day, that neither lice nor any other impurity may be found upon them. . . . They wash themselves in cold water twice every day and twice every night.248

  What distinguished this religion above everything else was its emphasis on immortality. If Osiris, the Nile, and all vegetation, might rise again, so might man. The amazing preservation of the dead body in the dry soil of Egypt lent some encouragement to this belief, which was to dominate Egyptian faith for thousands of years, and to pass from it, by its own resurrection, into Christianity.249 The body, Egypt believed, was inhabited by a small replica of itself called the ka, and also by a soul that dwelt in the body like a bird flitting among trees. All of these—body, ka and soul—survived the appearance of death; they could escape mortality for a time in proportion as the flesh was preserved from decay; but if they came to Osiris clean of all sin they would be permitted to live forever in the “Happy Field of Food”—those heavenly gardens where there would always be abundance and security: judge the harassed penury that spoke in this consoling dream. These Elysian Fields, however, could be reached only through the services of a ferryman, an Egyptian prototype of Charon; and this old gentleman would receive into his boat only such men and women as had done no evil in their lives. Or Osiris would question the dead, weighing each candidate’s heart in the scale against a feather to test his truthfulness. Those who failed in this final examination would be condemned to lie forever in their tombs, hungering and thirsting, fed upon by hideous crocodiles, and never coming forth to see the sun.

  According to the priests there were clever ways of passing these tests; and they offered to reveal these ways for a consideration. One was to fit up the tomb with food, drink and servants to nourish and help the dead. Another was to fill the tomb with talismans pleasing to the gods: fish, vultures, snakes, above all, the scarab—a beetle which, because it reproduced itself apparently with fertilization, typified the resurrected soul; if these were properly blessed by a priest they would frighten away every assailant, and annihilate every evil. A still better way was to buy the Book of the Dead,* scrolls for which the priests had written prayers, formulas and charms calculated to appease, even to deceive, Osiris. When, after a hundred vicissitudes and perils, the dead soul at last reached Osiris, it was to address the great Judge in some such manner as this:

  O Thou who speedest Time’s advancing wing,

  Thou dweller in all mysteries of life,

  Thou guardian of every word I speak—

  Behold, Thou art ashamed of me, thy son;

  Thy heart is full of sorrow and of shame,

  For that my sins were grievous in the world,

  And proud my wickedness and my transgression.

  Oh, be at peace with me, oh, be at peace,

  And break the barriers that loom between us!

  Let all my sins be washed away and fall

  Forgotten to the right and left of thee!

  Yea, do away with all my wickedness,

  And put away the shame that fills thy heart,

  That Thou and I henceforth may be at peace.251

  Or the soul was to declare its innocence of all major sins, in a “Negative Confession” that represents for us one of the earliest and noblest expressions of the moral sense in man:

  Hail to Thee, Great God, Lord of Truth and Justice! I have come before Thee, my Master; I have been brought to see thy beauties. . . . I bring unto you Truth. . . . I have not committed iniquity against men. I have not oppressed the poor. . . . I have not laid labor upon any free man beyond that which he wrought for himself. . . . I have not defaulted, I have not committed that which is an abomination to the gods. I have not caused the slave to be ill-treated of his master. I have not starved any man, I have not made any to weep, I have not assassinated any man, . . . I have not committed treason against any. I have not in aught diminished the supplies of the temple; I have not spoiled the show-bread of the gods. . . . I have done no carnal act within the sacred enclosure of the temple. I have not blasphemed. . . . I have not falsified the balance. I have not taken away milk from the mouths of sucklings. I have . . . not taken with nets the birds of the gods . . . I am pure. I am pure. I am pure.252

  For the most part, however, Egyptian religion had little to say about morality; the priests were busier selling charms, mumbling incantations, and performing magic rites than inculcating ethical precepts. Even the Book of the Dead teaches the faithful that charms blessed by the clergy will overcome all the obstacles that the deceased soul may encounter on its way to salvation; and the emphasis is rather on reciting the prayers than on living the good life. Says one roll: “If this can be known by the deceased he shall come forth by day”—i.e., rise to eternal life. Amulets and incantations were designed and sold to cover a multitude of sins and secure the entrance of the Devil himself into Paradise. At every step the pious Egyptian had to mutter strange formulas to avert evil and attract the good. Hear, for example, an anxious mother trying to drive out “demons” from her child:

  Run out, thou who comest in darkness, who enterest in stealth. . . . Comest thou to kiss this child? I will not let thee kiss him. . . . Comest thou to take him away? I will not let thee take him away from me. I have made his protection against thee out of Efet-herb, which makes pain; out of onions, which harm thee; out of honey, which is sweet to the living and bitter to the dead; out of the evil parts of the Ebdu fish; out of the backbone of the perch.253

  The gods themselves used magic and charms against one another. The literature of Egypt is full of magicians—of wizards who dry up lakes with a word, or cause severed limbs to jump back into place, or raise the dead.254 The king had magicians to help or guide him; and he himself was believed to have a magical power to make the rain fall, or the river rise.255 Life was full of talismans, spells, divinations; every door had to have a god to frighten away evil spirits or fortuitous strokes of bad luck. Children born on the twenty-third of the month of Thoth would surely die soon; those born on the twentieth of Choiakh would go blind.256 “Each day and month,” says Herodotus, “is assigned to some particular god; and according to the day on which each person is born, they determine what will befall him, how he will die, and what kind of person he will be.”257 In the end the connection between morality and religion tended to be forgotten; the road to eternal bliss led not through a good life, but through magic, ritual, and generosity to the priests. Let a great Egyptologist express the matter:

  The dangers of the hereafter were now greatly multiplied, and for every critical situation the priest was able to furnish the dead with an effective charm which would infallibly cure him. Besides many charms which enabled the dead to reach the world of the hereafter, there were those which prevented him from losing his mouth, his head, his heart; others which enabled him to remember his name, to breathe, eat, drink, avoid eating his own foulness, to prevent his drinking-water from turning into flame, to turn darkness into light, to ward off all serpents and other hostile monsters, and many others. . . . Thus the earliest moral development which we can trace in the ancient East was suddenly arrested, or at least checked, by the detestable devices of a corrupt priesthood eager for gain.258

  Such was the state of religion in Egypt when Ikhnaton, poet and heretic, came to the throne, and inaugurated the religious revolution that destroyed the Empire of Egypt.

  IV. THE HERETIC KING

  The character of Ikhnaton—The new religion—A hymn to the sun—Monotheism—The new dogma—The new art—Reaction—Nofretete—Break-up of the Empire—Death of Ikhnaton

  In the year 1380 B.C. Amenhotep III, who had succeeded Thutmose III, died after a life of wordly luxury and display, and was followed by his son Amenhotep IV, destined to be known as Ikhnato
n. A profoundly revealing portrait-bust of him, discovered at Tell-el-Amarna, shows a profile of incredible delicacy, a face feminine in softness and poetic in its sensitivity. Large eyelids like a dreamer’s, a long, misshapen skull, a frame slender and weak: here was a Shelley called to be a king.

  He had hardly come to power when he began to revolt against the religion of Amon, and the practices of Amon’s priests. In the great temple at Karnak there was now a large harem, supposedly the concubines of Amon, but in reality serving to amuse the clergy.258a The young emperor, whose private life was a model of fidelity, did not approve of this sacred harlotry; the blood of the ram slaughtered in sacrifice to Amon stank in his nostrils; and the traffic of the priests in magic and charms, and their use of the oracle of Amon to support religious obscurantism and political corruption259 disgusted him to the point of violent protest. “More evil are the words of the priests,” he said, “than those which I heard until the year IV” (of his reign); “more evil are they than those which King Amenhotep III heard.”260 His youthful spirit rebelled against the sordidness into which the religion of his people had fallen; he abominated the indecent wealth and lavish ritual of the temples, and the growing hold of a mercenary hierarchy on the nation’s life. With a poet’s audacity he threw compromise to the winds, and announced bravely that all these gods and ceremonies were a vulgar idolatry, that there was but one god—Aton.

  Like Akbar in India thirty centuries later, Ikhnaton saw divinity above all in the sun, in the source of all earthly life and light. We cannot tell whether he had adopted his theory from Syria, and whether Aton was merely a form of Adonis. Of whatever origin, the new god filled the king’s soul with delight; he changed his own name from Amenhotep, which contained the name of Amon, to Ikhnaton, meaning “Aton is satisfied”; and helping himself with old hymns, and certain monotheistic poems published in the preceding reign,* he composed passionate songs to Aton, of which this, the longest and the best, is the fairest surviving remnant of Egyptian literature:

  Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of the sky,

  O living Aton, Beginning of life.

  When thou risest in the eastern horizon,

  Thou fillest every land with thy beauty.

  Thou art beautiful, great, glittering, high above every land,

  Thy rays, they encompass the land, even all that thou hast made.

  Thou art Re, and thou carriest them all away captive;

  Thou bindest them by thy love.

  Though thou art far away, thy rays are upon earth;

  Though thou art on high, thy footprints are the day.

  When thou settest in the western horizon of the sky,

  The earth is in darkness like the dead;

  They sleep in their chambers,

  Their heads are wrapped up,

  Their nostrils are stopped,

  And none seeth the other,

  All their things are stolen

  Which are under their heads,

  And they know it not.

  Every lion cometh forth from his den,

  All serpents they sting. . . .

  The world is in silence,

  He that made them resteth in his horizon.

  Bright is the earth when thou risest in the horizon.

  When thou shinest as Aton by day

  Thou drivest away the darkness.

  When thou sendest forth thy rays,

  The Two Lands are in daily festivity,

  Awake and standing upon their feet

  When thou hast raised them up.

  Their limbs bathed, they take their clothing,

  Their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning.

  In all the world they do their work.

  All cattle rest upon their pasturage,

  The trees and the plants flourish,

  The birds flutter in their marshes,

  Their wings uplifted in adoration to thee.

  All the sheep dance upon their feet,

  All winged things fly,

  They live when thou hast shone upon them.

  The barks sail upstream and downstream.

  Every highway is open because thou dawnest.

  The fish in the river leap up before thee.

  Thy rays are in the midst of the great green sea.

  Creator of the germ in woman,

  Maker of seed in man,

  Giving life to the son in the body of his mother,

  Soothing him that he may not weep,

  Nurse even in the womb,

  Giver of breath to animate every one that he maketh!

  When he cometh forth from the body . . . on the day of his birth,

  Thou openest his mouth in speech,

  Thou suppliest his necessities.

  When the fledgling in the egg chirps in the egg,

  Thou givest him breath therein to preserve him alive.

  When thou hast brought him together

  To the point of bursting the egg,

  He cometh forth from the egg,

  To chirp with all his might.

  He goeth about upon his two feet

  When he hath come forth therefrom.

  How manifold are thy works!

  They are hidden from before us,

  O sole god, whose powers no other possesseth.

  Thou didst create the earth according to thy heart

  While thou wast alone:

  Men, all cattle large and small,

  All that are upon the earth,

  That go about upon their feet;

  All that are on high,

  That fly with their wings.

  The foreign countries, Syria and Kush,

  The land of Egypt;

  Thou settest every man into his place,

  Thou suppliest their necessities. . . .

  Thou makest the Nile in the nether world,

  Thou bringest it as thou desirest,

  To preserve alive the people. . . .

  How excellent are thy designs,

  O Lord of eternity!

  There is a Nile in the sky for the strangers

  And for the cattle of every country that go upon their feet. . . .

  Thy rays nourish every garden;

  When thou risest they live,

  They grow by thee.

  Thou makest the seasons

  In order to create all thy work:

  Winter to bring them coolness,

  And heat that they may taste thee.

  Thou didst make the distant sky to rise therein,

  In order to behold all that thou hast made,

  Thou alone, shining in the form as living Aton,

  Dawning, glittering, going afar and returning.

  Thou makest millions of forms

  Through thyself alone;

  Cities, towns and tribes,

  Highways and rivers.

  All eyes see thee before them,

  For thou art Aton of the day over the earth. . .

  Thou art in my heart,

  There is no other that knoweth thee

  Save thy son Ikhnaton.

  Thou hast made him wise

  In thy designs and in thy might.

  The world is in thy hand,

  Even as thou hast made them.

  When thou hast risen they live,

  When thou settest they die;

  For thou art length of life of thyself,

  Men live through thee,

  While their eyes are upon thy beauty

  Until thou settest.

  All labor is put away

  When thou settest in the west. . . .

  Thou didst establish the world,

  And raised them up for thy son. . . .

  Ikhnaton, whose life is long;

  And for the chief royal wife, his beloved,

  Mistress of the Two Lands,

  Nefer-nefru-aton, Nofretete,

  Living and flourishing for ever and ever.263

  This is not only one of the great poems of history, it is the first outstandi
ng expression of monotheism—seven hundred years before Isaiah.* Perhaps, as Breasted265 suggests, this conception of one sole god was a reflex of the unification of the Mediterranean world under Egypt by Thutmose III. Ikhnaton conceives his god as belonging to all nations equally, and even names other countries before his own as in Aton’s care; this was an astounding advance upon the old tribal deities. Note the vitalistic conception: Aton is to be found not in battles and victories but in flowers and trees, in all forms of life and growth; Aton is the joy that causes the young sheep to “dance upon their legs,” and the birds to “flutter in their marshes.” Nor is the god a person limited to human form; the real divinity is the creative and nourishing heat of the sun; the flaming glory of the rising or setting orb is but an emblem of that ultimate power. Nevertheless, because of its omnipresent, fertilizing beneficence, the sun becomes to Ikhnaton also the “Lord of love,” the tender nurse that “creates the man-child in woman,” and “fills the Two Lands of Egypt with love.” So at last Aton grows by symbolism into a solicitous father, compassionate and tender; not, like Yahveh, a Lord of Hosts, but a god of gentleness and peace.266

  It is one of the tragedies of history that Ikhnaton, having achieved his elevating vision of universal unity, was not satisfied to let the noble quality of his new religion slowly win the hearts of men. He was unable to think of his truth in relative terms; the thought came to him that other forms of belief and worship were indecent and intolerable. Suddenly he gave orders that the names of all gods but Aton should be erased and chiseled from every public inscription in Egypt; he mutilated his father’s name from a hundred monuments to cut from it the word Amon; he declared all creeds but his own illegal, and commanded that all the old temples should be closed. He abandoned Thebes as unclean, and built for himself a beautiful new capital at Akhetaton—“City of the Horizon of Aton.”

  Rapidly Thebes decayed as the offices and emoluments of government were taken from it, and Akhetaton became a rich metropolis, busy with fresh building and a Renaissance of arts liberated from the priestly bondage of tradition. The joyous spirit expressed in the new religion passed over into its art. At Tell-el-Amarna, a modern village on the site of Akhetaton, Sir William Flinders Petrie unearthed a beautiful pavement, adorned with birds, fishes and other animals painted with the most delicate grace.267 Ikhnaton forbade the artists to make images of Aton, on the lofty ground that the true god has no form;268 for the rest he left art free, merely asking his favorite artists, Bek, Auta and Nutmose, to describe things as they saw them, and to forget the conventions of the priests. They took him at his word, and represented him as a youth of gentle, almost timid, face, and strangely dolichocephalic head. Taking their lead from his vitalistic conception of deity, they painted every form of plant and animal life with loving detail, and with a perfection hardly surpassed in any other place or time.269 For a while art, which in every generation knows the pangs of hunger and obscurity, flourished in abundance and happiness.