These ideas of monotheism were unique to the Egyptians. No other Middle Eastern, or, for that matter, civilization anywhere in the world at that time, had conceived of monotheism – belief in one God, to the exclusion of all others.
Through the generations, the supreme God took many forms and was known by different names, but at each changing perception came a deeper and more sophisticated interpretation of the moral and ethical standards required by the Creator. Around the Supreme God were a paraphernalia of other gods, vying for attention, meeting local and class needs, and attending to different aspects of the life-cycle. The names of these gods invariably had a descriptive meaning, but there is some evidence that some of these descriptive names hid a ‘taboo’ name that was unique, and that ‘taboo’ names carried an element of danger if referred to lightly.20 The Sun God Re’s secret name is revealed only once, to his daughter Isis. There are also examples of secret texts, only to be recited by an authorized priest in the hidden chamber of an Egyptian temple of worship.
Hide it, hide it, do not let anyone read it.21
This extreme reverence for God’s name is reflected in Judaism and other religions to this day and is emphasized in the Hebrew Third Commandment (‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain’). In the time of the Jewish Temples only the High Priest was allowed to intone God’s name, and then only on one occasion in the year, in the innermost sanctuary of the Temple – ‘The Holy of Holies’.
The Old Testament says of this sacred place, in the Temple in Jerusalem built by Solomon:
Then spake Solomon, ‘The Lord said that He would dwell in the thick darkness. I have surely built thee an house to dwell in, a settled place for thee to abide in forever.’
I Kings 8:12–13
The corresponding example from Egypt is markedly similar. The innermost chamber in the Egyptian temple of worship is structured so that it is in pitch darkness, and only the faintest light can enter the antechamber.22 No-one, except the chief priest, was allowed to enter the sanctuary of the Egyptian temples. For example, at the Temple of Edfu:
No man may ascend to it except he who is ‘the great priest’ and who is to perform the divine ritual.23
Another characteristic that appears to have been adopted into later Hebrew prayer ritual relates to the reciting of a separate explanation of a prayer text after it had been read. This practice was evident at ritual services held at Thebes and Edfu,24 and appears similar to the practice in Canaan where a priestly assistant translated, and sometimes interpreted, the sacred Hebrew texts into colloquial Hebrew or Aramaic, in the form of what are called ‘Targums’.*16
THE NEW KINGDOM AND RELIGION
After the Hyksos tribes – conquerors from the north-east – were ousted from the country, Egyptian rule was re-established in 1520 BCE. Relative normality ensued until, at around 1350 BCE, something quite extraordinary happened in Egyptian society. There was a ‘hiccup’ in the religious continuity, when the entire pantheon of gods was swept away by one of the Amenhotep Pharaohs. After this brief episode, a modified traditional multi-deity worship is reinstated in the time of Tutankhamun (c.1320 BCE) (and continued its influence right through to 300 BCE and, in an adapted form, beyond the conquest of Egypt by the Romans).
However, by the twelfth century BCE, the priests of Karnak had become so powerful that they effectively controlled a third of the country; some 80,000 people were in their direct employ and their wealth was enormous.
Not surprisingly, the Pharaohs became more concerned with relieving the priests of their gold and treasures than in defending the country. The whole ethos that had motivated an enlarged Egyptian Empire and the building of architectural wonders was lost. Before this period, the enforcement of order on the foreigners outside Egypt was a duty to the gods to impose order over chaos – just as the gods had done in the creation stories. The building of monumental structures was a gift to the gods, expressing Pharaoh’s loyalty, as were material and financial payments to the temples and the priests. Now things were changed. The priests had appropriated so much power, possessions and land that the process itself became a real threat to the Pharaoh’s authority.
In addition to this debilitating factor, by the tenth and ninth centuries BCE, the sense of national identity and national gods had begun to wane and local deities were gaining power. The ritual and practice of Egyptian religion and social life had become so wrapped up in magic and mythology, and the bodily wearing of protective amulets and charms so onerous, that its followers were both mentally and physically weighed down. No less than 275 main categories of amulets, some to be worn permanently, others for emergency situations, have been identified.25 The air was thick with ‘hi ti ti bi ti’ – the equivalent of the Kabbalistic magic spell that has come down to us today as ‘abra-ca-dabra’.
It became virtually impossible to perform any routine task without some ritualistic incantation or magic formula, which helped to contribute to the progressive intellectual and military decline of the Empire. The debilitating degeneration brought about by moral, spiritual and religious corruptio, was not long in becoming fatal. When the corporal body becomes so preoccupied with its own internal illnesses, outside bacteria and viruses soon start to sense an easy target.
Egypt lost its grip on its vassal states to the north, eventually withdrawing from Canaan, its immediate neighbour. Invaders from Nubia to the south and Persia to the east conquered parts of Egypt around 700 BCE and 525 BCE respectively, and in 332 BCE Alexander the Great completed the downfall of the Pharaonic period.
It is, however, the hiccup in religious and social life that occurred between 1349 and 1332 BCE that will now become the focus of our attention – the most intriguing period of religious life in Egypt.
Often referred to as the ‘heretic’ period, it was far from that. Only ‘heretic’ in the sense of overturning the traditional religion, it was during this brief period that monotheism was at its purest form in Egypt.
CHAPTER SIX
THE AMENHOTEP FAMILY CONTINUUM
The philosophical build-up to the period of ‘purest monotheism’ in Egypt began with the founder of the Egyptian family that finally drove out the Hyksos, in 1538 BCE. This was the family that, more than any other, developed and brought to fruition the fundamentals of monotheism.
Pharaoh Ahmose was the ‘strong arm’ that expelled the Hyksos and reestablished Egyptian rule in the land. When his successor, Amenhotep I, died in c.1496 BCE, he in turn was followed by a succession of three Pharaohs with the names of Tutmoses, and a Queen – Hatshepsut. Tutmoses III had come to the throne as a child, and his power-hungry aunt, Hatshepsut, effectively seized control of the upper and lower Kingdoms of Egypt, ruling from Thebes for about fifteen years. When, in 1455 BCE, the young ‘Pharaoh-in-waiting’ assumed the throne, his pent-up energies found release in military activity. He embarked on a series of conquests across Canaan and on northward into Mesopotamia and Anatolia (modern Turkey) that laid the foundations for Egypt’s future domination of these regions for the next century.
The first beneficiary of Tutmoses III’s exploits was his successor, Amenhotep II, a man of immense physical stature, who continued the military campaigns and extended Egypt’s empire further southwards than any previous ruler.
In attempting to visualize the actions and understand the motivations of the Amenhotep pharaohs, I have tried to follow their possible thought processes. Thinking, for the ancient Egyptians, did not take place in the head but in the heart. The kind of scene and conversation, based on what is known about the participating characters, might have gone something like this:
A gentle breeze rustles through the huddle of mottled-white tents like a giant fluttering egret. Across the sparse desert nightscape, variegated speckled lights of camp-fires flicker and illuminate tents glowing from within the oil lamps.
At the centre of the encampment stands a large white pennanted tent. Inside, a powerfully built man, four cubits tall, perfumed unguent glistening on
his bronzed physique, reclines on a couch. Between his gold-sandalled feet a small boy, almost a miniature replica in features and dress, gazes up at his grandfather in wonderment. The older man wears the pleated Nemes headcloth – the sign of royalty – clasped by a central Uraeus, with Lappets*17 draped over his chest and back towards his bare torso and short, ornately clasped kilt.
‘Today my little one, we have ventured South, further than any of my fathers, to beyond the first cataract of our beloved Mother Nile. Tomorrow I will take you to a hidden place near to the Isle of Yeb, and we will explore the land to the West.’
‘Mark my words well, son of my son. Our Empire has grown as never before, not because the lesser gods have fought with us, but because Aten has been at our side. For it is to Him only that I pray. I have long pondered, if there is but one Great God, as we believe, and the others are subservient to Him and often interfere with His will, what need is there of them in any form?’
‘Oh, my mighty Pharaoh, if this is so why do you not destroy the other gods?’
‘A great question indeed, my child of destiny. But the time is not now. The priests are too strong. The people are not ready. Osiris and Re and Seth, Isis and Nephthys, and Horus, Hathor, Shu and Tefnut, Geb and Nut…are in their thinking hearts and moving tongues.’
The Egyptian Pharaoh Tutmoses IV and the ‘Pharaoh-to-be’ that are talking here are members of this close-knit interrelated family of the Eighteenth Dynasty (see Plate 8). The evolutionary moral development of this clan is fundamental to the links that will be made between Egypt and our real world.
Tutmoses IV’s successor, Amenhotep III, came to the throne in 1387 BCE and ruled for thirty-eight years. From his actions during this period it can reasonably be assumed that we had more of a thinker than a warrior on the throne. The advances that are made are more on the spiritual front rather than the battle field and construction rather than destruction is more important to the new Pharaoh.
From the beginning of the New Kingdom, through the Eighteenth Dynasty, which lasted from 1539 to 1296 BCE, we see a shift in the standing of the Pharaoh from being God – or Horus incarnate – to that of Pharaoh being a human son of God. Thus by the time of Tutmoses III (1476–1422 BCE), a father–son relationship between God and Pharaoh has already begun to evolve,1 and Tutmoses undertakes his campaigns ‘at the command of the divine father – Amon-Re’.
This key change is emphasized in a flowering of literature and science, and in the architecture of buildings. In the Fourth Dynasty, huge monuments, exemplified by the Great Pyramid at Giza, were built in honour of the Pharaoh and to house his mortal remains. But by the Eighteenth Dynasty these are replaced by huge temples of worship in honour of the divine father, whilst the royal tombs were more modest.
For Ramses III (c.1190 BCE ) his principal temple, at Medinet Habu, in the Valley of the Kings opposite Luxor, is built in honour of the god Khonsu: ‘…of fine sandstone, red quartzite and black granite. I overlaid its doorposts and doors with gold, with inlay figures of electrum*18 like the horizon of heaven.’2
Coupled with the increasing power of the priesthood of Karnak comes moves to make the gods more approachable to ordinary people. Priests develop the role of mediating on the people’s behalf. Individuals are encouraged to make supplication at the temple, as can be seen from inscriptions on statues erected in the reign of Amenhotep III at the Temple of Thebes, and on Pylon X at the Temple of Karnak. The exploits of his father, Amenhotep II, in conquering most of Nubia (Ethiopia) to the south, also led to the construction of temples in honour of Amenhotep III’s name in that region.
The scene is set for the coming of the most revolutionary Pharaoh of all – Amenhotep IV. He inherits the Amenhotep and Tutmoses family traits of skilled strategic battle thinking and palace guile, along with the mantle of intellectual radicalism exhibited by his great-grandfather, cultivated by his grandfather and emboldened by his father.
Just when we arrive at the period when Amenhotep IV takes the throne, in 1349 BCE, a number of ‘emerging enlightenments’ reach their culmination.
It is a golden period of literature, art, and design. New materials, in the form of sparkling glass, shining bronze and brightly coloured glazed earthenware, open up wider creative horizons for craftsmen. Developments in dyes allow the ‘cat-walk’ of fashion to strut in new, highly-coloured directions, encouraging sensual designs in female dress accoutred with gold and faience jewellery.
Canaan was still firmly under Egyptian domination, as was the northern ‘empire’, although marauding tribes were always trying to carve out land for themselves at the weaker spots. Vassal rulers or their emissaries came in a continuous stream, bringing tributes to Pharaoh; it was these tributes flowing into the burgeoning coffers of Egypt that helped make it the richest country in the Middle East, and probably in the world.
On the military front, Egypt had ‘upgraded’ its forces with the latest advance in technological warfare – the horse-drawn chariot – supplemented by the composite bow, spear and heavy bronze sword. The watchful eye of a well-disciplined army, fiercely loyal to its rulers, had little to do in maintaining social order. Members of the families of the military commanders frequently married into the pharaonic families, cementing an ‘axis’ of power that underpinned the ordered life of the country.
So well-structured was the chain of command, which led on down through the army, civil service and regional governors to individual administrators that whoever stepped into the golden sandals of pharaoh automatically inherited a dictatorial authority that was almost unchallengeable. This ‘mechanism of successive power’ helps to explain why Amenhotep IV was so easily able to implement his innovative ideas on religion and philosophy. Pharaoh, as ‘father and mother of mankind alone, without peer’,3 had the bowed sanction of his priests as well as the bronze fist of his army to support his diktat.
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION
As well as the marked changes in cultural, artistic and philosophical thinking, there is an ongoing revolution in religious thought. In practical terms this can be seen in the altered relationship of Pharaoh with God. From Pharaoh being a god, and then ‘son of the Father’, he now becomes useful to God: still divinely inspired, however, and with a special contractual relationship.
Heliopolis (near modern Cairo) – the centre of theological thought – was largely instrumental in re-inventing the old ideas of pharaoh as a god, and replacing them with the idea of a Supreme God who did not dwell on earth. The priests carried the new messages to the people and set about rewriting the traditional texts to reflect the change.
The changing concept of ‘fate’, which now begins to carry the force of predestination, is important in this philosophical journey towards an enlightened religion. This concept of fate was painfully slow in its development, taking some 2,000 years. Early on, c.2500 BCE, in the instructions of Ptah-hotep, an Old Kingdom sage, we see the idea of ordained events beginning:
He cannot escape from him who pre-determined him.4
The forces of fate were seen in the Seven Hathors.5
By the early Eighteenth Dynasty, we find the rebel Ahmose El-Kab, being spoken of in these terms:
His fate made his death draw near.6
Then, almost with explosive force, the concept of determination becomes clarified in the Amarna period (1346–1332 BCE). Aten (sometimes referred to as Aton), the God of the reforming Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, is referred to as:
The Fate that gives life.7
In other words, now there is a chance to escape from predestination, through God’s beneficence. We have to go 150 years beyond the Amarna period, as the new ideas become solidified, to the time of Ramses III to get a clearer view of what was understood by the term ‘fate’ during the Amarna period. Here, in the Leyden Hymns to Amon we find Amon saying:
He gives more than that which is fated to him whom he loves.8
Or, on an inscription in the Temple of Ramses III at Karnak, we find Amon telling the king:
> Thy enemy is smitten in his time…9
It now becomes clear that ‘fate’ is seen as a predetermined ‘lifespan’ but, significantly, the love of God cultivated by prayer and righteousness can, if not avert death, prolong life and enhance its quality. Here then is the template for a revised religious philosophy.
Some of the earlier Egyptian ideas on ‘fate’ nevertheless still found their way into the Old Testament, as we see in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Probably written around the third century BCE, it advises on social behaviour and ethics, based on the assumption that all human existence is preordained, and that man must accept that there will be suffering and injustice in life. Whilst these ideas are recognizable and accepted in Buddhist belief, and may have found their way there from Egypt, they were anathema to some post-Second Temple rabbinic thinkers who tried to suppress the book.
However, because of Ecclesiastes’ attribution to ‘Kohelet’ – the son of King David, i.e., King Solomon, it has remained as part of the holy scriptures, and is read in synagogues during the Feast of Tabernacles.
All these philosophical-religious evolutions, which had been bubbling away for hundreds of years, culminated in the Amarna period, and created the preconditions necessary for the emergence of a ‘New Religion’.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ABRAHAM – FATHER OF THREE RELIGIONS, FOUNDER OF NONE
The stage is now set for the entrance of a youthful character whose encounter with Pharaoh will echo down through the ages. However, before I introduce him, I must look at a previous meeting between a famous Hebrew and another, earlier, Pharaoh belonging to the Amenhotep line, because it is this that establishes the thread of continuity that runs between the ancient Hebrew tribes and the Egyptian pharaohs. He is also the first of the three major players in the Hebrew–Egyptian encounter that had access to considerable amounts of wealth. This was where I hoped to find a clue to the whereabouts of the treasures of the Copper Scroll.
The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran Page 9