by Ahmed Osman
Akhenaten was born in an era of peace and prosperity for Egypt. A combination of diplomacy, judicious marriages and equally judicious use of gold had secured a balance of power, at least temporarily, between Egypt and the neighbouring Hurrian State of Mitanni, the Hittites, the Assyrians and Babylonians; Palestine and Syria, conquered by Tuthmosis III in the middle of the fifteenth century BC, posed no threat; the southern frontier had been secured up to and beyond the Nile’s Fourth Cataract. Luxuries from the Levant and the Aegean world poured into the country on a greater scale than ever before, more land was brought under cultivation, art flourished, prosperous State officials and priests enjoyed the pleasures of new town houses and country villas with large estates. How the common people fared is less clear, but they must have benefited from the general prosperity and the State projects that offered alternative employment during the long summer droughts.
Throughout the country, new temples were founded, old ones restored. One of the biggest temporal projects was Amenhotep III’s splendid palace, the Malkata, in western Thebes, opposite modern Luxor, with an imposing mortuary temple beside it for the god Amun-Re. Thebes was also the seat of the State god, Amun-Re. While ancient cults of other gods continued to flourish locally, the cult of Amun-Re had received, and continued to receive, such favourable royal treatment – generous endowment for the great temple of Karnak at Thebes, munificent gifts of land and gold – that it had become virtually an arm of the State executive. Yet there was already a hint in the air of the enormous religious upheaval that lay ahead.
During the reign of Amenhotep II, the king’s grandfather, and Tuthmosis IV, his father, a gradual but growing fusion had taken place between the cult of Amun, the patron god of the Eighteenth Dynasty, and the cult of Re, the sun-god, whose foremost centre of worship was far to the north at On (Heliopolis), north of modern Cairo and close to the important administrative and military capital of Memphis. Re was looked upon as the lord of the universe, the giver of all life, and the king ruled according to Re’s divine plan by virtue of being his son. On an increasing scale during this period hymns and prayers to Re as the giver of life began to appear on a variety of monuments, including stelae and tomb doors. As a rule the name of the sun-god was given in the form common in Heliopolis, Re-Harakhti (Horus of the Horizon).
At a royal as well as a religious level a change took place during this period that must have seemed as strange to those aware of it as some of the wilder claims of today’s ardent feminists. The name of Queen Tiye, unlike that of earlier queens, is placed regularly in a cartouche, a distinction previously limited to the ruling monarch, and is also included in royal titularies. Furthermore, she is represented as being of equivalent stature to the king.
As with Moses, we know very little of Akhenaten’s early years beyond the fact that he had an extremely close relationship with his mother, Queen Tiye, who seems to have been his only confidante at this stage of his life. There is no evidence that he spent his early days at Memphis, where his father had his main residence at the time and where the heirs apparent were normally trained and educated with the sons of the nobles. His appearance at Thebes does not seem to have occurred until Year 20 of his father, Amenhotep III, when the evidence of the wine-jar seal has been interpreted as ‘the true king’s son, Amenhotep’, indicates that he had a palace there. William C. Hayes, the American Egyptologist, comments on this inscription: ‘The King’s son, Amenhotep, referred to here was in all probability the future king Amenhotep IV before his elevation to the coregency, which is thought to have taken place in or about Year 28 of Amenhotep III.’2
It is from his behaviour and the kind of knowledge he seemed to have acquired at the time of his ultimate appearance at Thebes that we have to guess at where Akhenaten most probably passed the greater part of his childhood. His appearance does not suggest that he had any physical training, contrary to the custom among Eighteenth Dynasty kings, and he is never shown hunting lions or other wild animals. Nor is he depicted smiting an enemy or leading his army in combat. On the other hand he does not seem to have had the respect for Egyptian deities or customs evinced by other kings.
As many elements of Akhenaten’s new religion had their origin in the solar worship of Heliopolis, this points to his having had some training and education at this city, especially as Anen, the brother of Queen Tiye, was a high priest of Re, probably at Heliopolis. Yet his developed views about the Aten when he was still a young man suggest that he must have been involved in his early years in a monotheistic cult of the Aten at Zarw, his mother’s city, which – if his life in early childhood, like that of Moses, had been under threat – would have been the safest place to conceal him.
A significant pointer to the existence of such a cult there even before the birth of Akhenaten is the fact that the vessel used by Amenhotep III when he sailed on the pleasure lake was named Aten Gleams. We also have evidence that the Aten temples which Akhenaten built at both Karnak and Luxor at the beginning of his coregency were not the first Aten temples in Egypt, and, again significantly, the very first shrine appears to have been in the city of Zarw. Another of the titles of Neby, the mayor of Zarw during the time of Tuthmosis IV, was imyr hnt, and, as the word hnt has been interpreted as meaning ‘lake’ or ‘lake area’, Gun Björkman, the Swedish Egyptologist, has taken this title to indicate Neby’s control over the lake area of Zarw: ‘This seems to agree very well with what can be concluded from the monuments of Neby. Considering the nature of Zarw and its neighbourhood, it also seems suitable that Neby should have the designation discussed.’ Björkman also gave a footnote reference on the same page. ‘Professor Yoyotte has drawn my attention to a photograph in the Archives P. Lacau (Photo A III, 63, F6) of a talalat, i.e. a small block from the time of Akhenaten (these are the stones that Akhenaten used in the building of his Theban temples), showing a procession of bowing officials. The accompanying inscriptions describe Neby as “The Overseer of the Foremost Water in the hnt of the Temple of Aten”.’3
As this scene and inscription indicate a Temple of Aten already in existence at the time Akhenaten was constructing his first Aten temple at Karnak, it must have existed in the Zarw lake area of the Eastern Delta – what the Bible calls ‘the land of Goshen’ – before his rule began. In addition, we have the text on a wine-jar, placed in the tomb of Tutankhamun at the time of his death, that reads: ‘Year 5. Sweet wine of the House-of-Aten [from] Zarw. Chief vintner Penamun.’4
Therefore, even before Akhenaten built his first temple for his new God and right up to at least the time of Year 5 of Tutankhamun, Zarw had a temple to the Aten. If Akhenaten was born there, for which there are strong supporting indications … if his absence from Thebes and Memphis during his early years can be explained by the fact that, during this period of his life, he was living at Zarw, the city of his mother, whose Asiatic relatives had settled in the vicinity … and if the first temple for the Aten in Egypt was at Zarw, then the inescapable conclusion has to be that he must have received his first inspirations regarding his new God and his new religion while he was at Zarw. This would explain the fact that his new religious ideas – including the Israelite idea of a God without an image – were already to a large extent developed when he came to the throne at Thebes as coregent. It is also worth noting that the name of the chief vintner, Penamun, resembles an Egyptianized form of Benjamin, and the vintner could have been a descendant of that tribe.
The section that follows immediately matches, in greater detail, the outline of the story of Moses given in Chapter Six and is repeated here to save the reader from having to refer back to it.
As her son reached his mid-teens, Tiye took the precaution of ensuring his right to the throne by marrying him to his half-sister, Neferneferuaten Nefertiti, daughter of Amenhotep III and his sister, Sitamun, and therefore the rightful heiress, whom the young prince succeeded in converting to his new religion. It has been suggested that because of her name, which can be translated as ‘the beautiful one who i
s come’, Nefertiti may have been the Mitannian princess Tadukhipa. Such a marriage would have been contrary to royal practice in Egypt at the time, however, since the new king established his right to the throne by marrying the royal heiress. Furthermore, the fact that Horemheb, the last ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty, is generally believed to have established his right to the throne by marrying Nefertiti’s sister, Mutnezmat, indicates that Nefertiti herself must at this earlier stage have been the heiress daughter of Amenhotep III.
As a further step towards ensuring that her son’s right to the throne should be unassailable, Tiye subsequently persuaded Amenhotep III, whose health began to weaken as the years went by, to appoint him as his coregent at Thebes, but, in order to gain the acceptance of the priesthood, the stress in making the appointment was placed during the first Theban years upon the role of Nefertiti, the heiress.
On his accession to the throne as coregent, Akhenaten took the names Nefer-khepru-re Waenre Amenhotep – that is, Amenhotep IV – and from his very first year provoked the priests by his aggressive attitude. He had barely assumed his new position when he used some of the wealth amassed by his father to build at Thebes a large new temple to the Aten – a God for the world, not just for Egyptians – within the precincts of the existing Amun-Re temples at Karnak. This was followed by a second temple at Luxor. He snubbed the traditional priests by not inviting them to any of the festivities in the early part of his coregency and, in his fourth year, when he celebrated his sed festival or jubilee – usually, but not necessarily, a rejuvenation celebration that marked Year 30 of a monarch’s reign – he banned all deities but his own God from the occasion. Twelve months later he made a further break with tradition by changing his name to Akhenaten in honour of his new deity.
To the resentful Egyptian establishment the Aten was seen as a challenger who would replace the powerful State god Amun and not come under his domination. In the tense climate that prevailed, Tiye arranged a compromise by persuading her son to leave Thebes and establish a new capital in Middle Egypt, on the east bank of the Nile, some two hundred miles to the north of Thebes.
13
HORIZON OF THE ATEN
THE climate of hostility that surrounded Akhenaten all his life – and one may wonder what could have been the causes were they not ethnic and religious – had surfaced as early as two years after his appointment as coregent. The Memphite inscription of his father’s Year 30, as we saw in an earlier chapter, had sought to defend his action in ‘placing the male offspring [the heir] upon the throne’, suggesting that there had been opposition – undoubtedly from the Amun priesthood and the nobility – to his action in securing the inheritance for his son.
Further evidence of such opposition is found in the proclamation of Akhenaten on the boundary stelae, fixed before the start of the building of his new city of Amarna in his Year 4. Here he refers to what appears to be open opposition he had faced prior to that date: ‘For, as Father Hor-Aten liveth, … priests [?] more evil are they than those things which I heard unto Year 4, [more evil are they] than [those things] which I have heard in year … more evil are they than those things which King … [heard], more evil are they than those things which Menkheperure (Tuthmosis IV) heard.’1
Akhenaten is referring to hostile comments he heard about himself prior to Year 4. Not only that: two kings who preceded him had been subject to similar verbal criticism. The missing name here can only be that of his father, Amenhotep III, whose Memphite inscription, referred to above, points to opposition over the steps he took to ensure Akhenaten’s succession. But why should Tuthmosis IV have encountered similar hostility from the Establishment? We have no evidence on this point. I have argued in Stranger in the Valley of the Kings, however, that it was Tuthmosis IV who appointed Joseph (Yuya) as one of his ministers and the Old Testament indicates that, at the time, he was dissatisfied with his usual advisers, for which the Book of Genesis blames their failure to interpret Pharaoh’s dream about the seven good years that would be followed by seven lean years: ‘And it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled; and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof; and Pharaoh told them his dream; but there was none that could interpret them unto Pharaoh’ (Genesis, 41:8).
It would appear a reasonable deduction that priestly opposition to the king’s behaviour went back to the time of Tuthmosis IV’s appointment as his vizier of Joseph, one of the hated shepherds. Although the young Akhenaten would have known of the hostile comments directed at his father, he could have heard about criticisms of his grandfather, Tuthmosis IV, only through having been told about them, possibly by Yuya, his maternal grandfather, still alive when Akhenaten was born.
The criticisms levelled at Akhenaten himself included, according to other inscriptions on the boundary stelae at Amarna, the land the king had chosen for the building of a house for the Aten at Karnak: ‘Behold Pharaoh … found that it belonged not to a god, it belonged not to a goddess, it belonged not to a prince, it belonged not to a princess … [There is no right for] any man to act as owner of it.’2 The implication is that, as he made in Karnak and Luxor temples for his God, isolating the priests from running or taking part in any of the ceremonies of worship, they must have sought to remind him that the temples of Karnak and Luxor belonged to Amun and other traditional gods of Egypt and that he had no right to introduce there another God who would exclude their authority.
The building of his new city lasted from Akhenaten’s Year 4 to Year 8, but he and his family and officials began to live there from Year 6. A fine city it was. At this point the cliffs of the high desert recede from the river, leaving a great semi-circle about eight miles long and three miles broad. The clean yellow sand slopes gently down to the river.
The modern name of the site of Akhenaten’s city is Tell el-Amarna. In his book Tell el-Amarna, published in 1894, Petrie wrote: ‘The name … seems to be a European concoction. The northern village is known as Et Till – perhaps a form of Et Tell, the common name for a heap of ruins. The Beni Amran have given their name to the neighbourhood … But no such name as Tell el-Amarna is used by the natives and I retain it only as a convention …’
It was here that Akhenaten built his new capital, Akhetaten, The Horizon (or resting place) of the Aten, where he and his followers could be free to worship their monotheistic God. Huge boundary stelae, marking the limits of the city and recording the story of its foundation, were carved in the surrounding cliffs. The first of them date from about the fourth year of the coregency when Akhenaten had decided upon the site. A later set date from the sixth year and define both the city on the east bank and a large area of agricultural land on the bank opposite, apparently with a view to making the new capital self-supporting if it ever came under siege. The stela proclamation runs:
As my father the Aten lives, I shall make Akhetaten for the Aten my father in this place. I shall not make him Akhetaten south of it, north of it, west of it or east of it. And Akhetaten extends from the southern stela as far as the northern stela, measured between stela and stela on the eastern mountain, likewise from the south-west stela to the north-west stela on the western mountain of Akhetaten. And the area between these four stelae is Akhetaten itself; it belongs to Aten my father; mountains, deserts, meadows, islands, high ground and low ground, land, water, villages, men, beasts and all things which the Aten my father shall bring into existence eternally forever. I shall not forget this oath which I have made to the Aten my father eternally forever.
A reiteration of his vows, made to his new capital, was added in his eighth year, which is thought the most likely time that the king, Queen Nefertiti and their six daughters – Merytaten, Meketaten, Ankhesenpa-aten, Neferneferuaten the younger, Neferneferure and Setepenre, all born before Year 9 of the king’s reign – took up residence.
Akhetaten was a capital city possessed of both dignity and architectural harmony. Its main streets ran parallel to the Nile with the most important of th
em, known even today as Sikket es-Sultan, the King’s Way, connecting all the city’s most prominent buildings, including the King’s House where Pharaoh and his family lived their private family life. Its plan was similar to that of a high official’s villa, but on a grander scale and surrounded by a spacious garden. To the south of the house was the king’s private Temple to the Aten. The Great Temple of the Aten, a huge building constructed on an east-west axis, lay less than a quarter of a mile to the north along the King’s Way. It was entered through a pylon from the highway and a second entrance gave access to a hypostyle hall called The House of Rejoicing of the Aten. Six rectangular courts, known as Gem-Aten, lay along a processional way and were filled with tables for offerings to the Aten. At the eastern end of the enclosure there was a sanctuary equipped with a great altar and more offering tables. Abreast the northern wall of the enclosure lay the pavilion where a great reception for foreign princes bearing tribute was held in Year 12, thought probably to have been the high point of Akhenaten’s reign. The house of the high priest Panehesy lay outside the enclosure’s south-east corner.
It was not just the form of worship that was new in Akhetaten. Queen Nefertiti, like her mother-in-law Queen Tiye, enjoyed a prominence that had not existed in the past. On one of his new city’s boundary stelae her husband had her described flatteringly as: ‘Fair of Face, Joyous with the Double Plume, Mistress of Happiness, Endowed with Favour, at hearing whose voice one rejoices, Lady of Grace, Great of Love, whose disposition cheers the Lord of the Two Lands.’ The king gave tombs, gouged out of the face of surrounding cliffs, to those nobles who had rallied to him. In the reliefs which the nobles had carved for themselves in these tombs – showing Akhenaten with his queen and family dispensing honours and largesse, worshipping in the temple, driving in his chariot, dining and drinking – Nefertiti is depicted as having equal stature with the king and her names are enclosed in a cartouche.