by Ahmed Osman
The hieratic sign for the figure ten is an upside-down ‘V’ and for ‘twenty’ two upside-down ‘Vs’ one above the other. The hieratic docket, as can be seen from the facsimile published by Gunn, shows a complete ‘’ with the remains of another ‘’ above it, which convinced Seele, correctly, that the date should be read as ‘Year 21’. But Fairman disregards that, and Gunn’s statement that he read the sign as ‘Year 11’ only because Akhenaten’s reign was thought to have lasted only seventeen years in all, and goes on: ‘In editing the inscriptions for City of Akhenaten, III, Jaroslav Ĉerný, the Polish Egyptologist, and I had hoped to include some detailed and critical study of Amarna hieratic. In preparation for this, in 1937–39 Ĉerný studied all the Amarna dockets he could find at the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum and University College, London, in addition to several hundreds that I handed over to him. It is important to note that it was Ĉerný’s invariable method never to use or refer to any previous publication when copying and his work on the dockets ceased before he could attempt identification. His notebooks were handed over to me and I worked through them methodically, identifying all that in part or whole had previously been published. In the course of this work I discovered that the docket published by Gunn was in the British Museum (BM55640) and that Ĉerný had unhesitatingly transcribed the date as (eleven) without a single query or note.
‘Ĉerný was unaware of the identification of this docket until after the publication of Seele’s article when I informed him of the facts and asked him to re-examine BM55640. Ĉerný not only did so, but called in Edwards and James (of the British Museum) and they all three declared that the reading was “Year 11”. Ĉerný reported to me at the time that the docket had faded seriously, but that the hieratic sign bore no resemblance to the normal form of (twenty) and was certainly in his opinion (ten): he thought that perhaps either a piece of ink had flaked off, or that a piece of ink had fallen on the end of the sign, but the condition of the docket did not permit him to decide which. I have since examined the docket myself, and I have nothing to add to Ĉerný’s statement. In short, there is no evidence of a regnal Year 21.’9
So, although in referring to Ĉerný’s statement, Fairman admits that ‘the docket had faded seriously’ between 1937–9, when Ĉerný made his copy, and 1955 when, after Seele’s article, he re-examined the docket, Fairman does not even publish a new facsimile to enable us to compare it with the earlier one made by Gunn in 1923. As if trying to avoid committing himself, he calls many other witnesses, in a way asking us to trust a group of wise men rather than giving us the evidence so that we can decide for ourselves. We have not even been told whether Fairman and his witnesses accept Gunn’s facsimile, which was the basis for Seele’s comments.
Even some of those who have changed their minds, such as Redford, and come round to accepting ‘Year 11’ as the correct reading, have proved not to be really convinced by Fairman’s argument: ‘… those who have only Gunn’s facsimile before them will be forced to admit that the prima-facie probability lies with the reading “21”. If the present writer returns to the reading “regnal Year 11”, it is solely because of an awareness of the increasing weight of the argumentum e silentio: if Akhenaten did attain a twenty-first year it is inconceivable that Years 18, 19 and 20 should be entirely absent from the Amarna dockets, especially in view of the large number of dockets dated to Year 17 and before.’10
But is this true? Were there no other records for these years? According to Fairman himself, Bennett, a member of the Egyptian Exploration Society team that worked at Amarna during the years 1930–31, was able to read the date ‘Year 18’ on one of the ostraca he was responsible for copying. However, Fairman took the view: ‘Bennett’s ostracon of Year 18 … may be dismissed as being untrustworthy, and without value.’11 Then Fairman declares, on the following page of the same book, that ‘the ostracon was not kept, but according to a rough facsimile this reading is certainly wrong’. This is even more serious, for Fairman is not telling us that the disputed ostracon was lost: he is saying that it was ‘not kept’, that it was thrown away. One would have expected that, as this ostracon gives an anomalous reading, it would have been guarded carefully for further examination. Instead, we now have only Fairman’s judgement to rely on for whether Bennett’s reading was right or wrong. No wonder Seele was convinced of a deliberate attempt by some scholars to discard any evidence that did not agree with their preconceived ideas.
However, there is still other evidence to indicate that Year 17 was not the end of the Akhenaten story. Derry has made the point: ‘Akhenaten is known … to have reigned for at least seventeen years, a period which has been extended to the nineteenth year by Pendlebury’s recent discovery at el-Amarna of a monument bearing that date and with the further possibility that this may be lengthened to the twentieth year. Mr Pendlebury has very courteously permitted us to make use of these hitherto unpublished facts.’12 Pendlebury died a few years later without publishing the source of his information and, as with Bennett’s ostracon, Pendlebury’s monument cannot be found anywhere.
In the course of his article on the correct date of Gunn’s facsimile of the disputed hieratic docket as being ‘Year 21’, Seele gave a list of four scholars who believed that Akhenaten’s reign lasted for eighteen years and one, Derry, who favoured nineteen. However, as long as nobody is able to discredit Gunn’s original facsimile, Year 21 has to remain a certainty. As we said before, this does not mean, though, that Akhenaten actually reigned for twenty-one years.
If my hypothesis is correct, he abandoned Amarna and fled to Sinai. However, as long as Tutankhaten continued to reside at Amarna and as long as the Aten was regarded as the God of the throne, who owned the land of Egypt, Akhenaten, his son, was still looked upon as the legitimate Pharaoh. Therefore his followers kept up the practice of using a date relating to him as if he were still in power. It was only when Tutankhamun left Amarna, which soon became an abandoned city, for Thebes and Memphis in his Year 4 – Year 21 of Akhenaten – that this practice came to an end.
Those Egyptologists who had all the evidence indicating that Akhenaten ruled until only his Year 17 were confused to find further evidence of later dates for him, and had even to dispose of the evidence rather than be embarrassed by a contradiction they were unable to explain. It is true that Akhenaten ruled only until his Year 17, but it is also true that he was still regarded as the legitimate ruler until the change of the supreme god in Year 4 of Tutankhamun, Year 21 of Akhenaten. After that he had no legal status and, as we shall see, had to try to prove that he was the heir of his father, Amenhotep III, when he returned later to try to reclaim his throne.
SEMENKHKARE’S NAME AND EPITHETS
It is now generally accepted that Semenkhkare was appointed as coregent by Akhenaten in his Year 15. Yet we do not have any firm proof that Semenkhkare started numbering his own regnal years from that date as we do not have a Year 1 or Year 2 that can be said with certainty to have belonged to him. It seems that the years after his appointment continued to be dated according to Akhenaten’s old system as Year 16 and Year 17. Nevertheless we have one case of a Year 3, found on a graffito at the tomb of Pere, a Theban nobleman: ‘Year 3, third month of Inundation, day 10. The King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands, Ankh-khepru-re beloved of [Nefer-khepru-re?], the son of Re Neferneferuaten beloved of Waen[re?].’13
This graffito is simply dated to Year 3 of Semenkhkare: no date of Akhenaten can be found on it. This is strong evidence that Semenkhkare was a sole ruler at the time the graffito was made. Yet, as we saw before, Tutankhamun’s reign started during Year 17, the last year in which Akhenaten held authority. When, therefore, did Semenkhkare rule? The only acceptable explanation, as we saw before, is that he must have ruled for only a very short time, died and was followed in the same year by Tutankhamun. In this case, according to those who claim that the end of Akhenaten’s rule coincided with his death in his Year 17, he would already have been dead when the gr
affito from Year 3 of Semenkhkare was made. Yet the epithets of Semenkhkare that indicate Akhenaten’s affection towards him, which the young king had always used in his inscriptions and refer to the living Akhenaten, are also to be found in the Theban graffito, a fact that can be interpreted as meaning that, although his rule had ended, Akhenaten was still alive at that time. Redford confirms this understanding of the situation: ‘ “Beloved of Nefer-Kheprure” and “beloved of Wa-enre”, note that the praenomen of Semenkhkare, Ankh-Kheprure, i.e. “Kheprure (Akhenaten) lives”, may indicate that at the time it was formulated Akhenaten was still alive.’14
THE FALLEN ONE OF AMARNA
No record has reached us about Akhenaten after the end of his rule. Tutankhamun left Amarna for Thebes and Memphis in his Year 4 and, at the same time, changed his own name and that of his queen, substituting ‘amun’ for ‘aten’. A compromise was also reached by means of which all the ancient temples were reopened and worship of the old gods of Egypt restored, but worship of the Aten was not banned: the Aten was now regarded as just one god among many. No damage was done to Akhenaten’s name, objects or memory until the end of the reign of King Aye, the last of the Amarna kings, who followed Tutankhamun. However, with the accession of Horemheb and the Ramesside kings who succeeded him, all standing monuments of Amarna were pulled down and worship of the Aten was forbidden. Horemheb and his followers also ensured that all memory of Akhenaten was wiped out of Egypt’s official records, even to having his name and those of the three Amarna kings who succeeded him erased from the official king lists. Nevertheless, private texts referring to events that had taken place during Akhenaten’s reign, while not mentioning him by name, used synonyms. A papyrus in the Berlin Museum, dating most probably from the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty, contains remains of a letter that gives the date of someone’s death during the period of Akhenaten’s rule in the following form: ‘… he died in Year 9 of the rebel.’15 As well as avoiding mention of his name, this text shows us that he was regarded as an outlaw by the Ramessides, which would justify all the vengeful actions they were taking against his memory.
In a legal text from the tomb of Mos, which we discussed earlier, in referring to events that had taken place during Akhenaten’s reign, some of the witnesses used another expression – Pa-kherw-n Akhetaten.16 This phrase was translated early in this century by Gardiner as ‘the enemy of Akhetaten (Amarna)’, a translation which the majority of scholars have since taken for granted to be correct. This is not the case if one breaks the phrase down into its constituents: Pa is the Egyptian definite article; kherw means literally ‘fallen’, and the n represents the preposition ‘of’. Although enemies of Egypt were described as having fallen, the word itself, which is derived from the verb ‘to fall’, means ‘the fallen’ and could not mean ‘enemy’. Even the little figure of a fallen person that comes after the word as a determinative confirms the ‘fallen’ sense. Furthermore, we could understand if Akhenaten was called the enemy of Amun or Thebes, but how would it be possible even for his opponents to call him ‘the enemy of Akhetaten (Amarna)’, the new capital city which he himself established? In an introduction to a book published twenty years ago, Harry S. Smith, Professor of Egyptology at University College London, translated this phrase correctly as ‘the fallen one of Akhetaten’.17
When we look at both of the labels applied to Akhenaten, it is clear that they are not merely pejorative, but describe him as he was seen by the following generation, a rebel who fell from power. The meaning is here clear, the implication being that, as in the Talmud story of Moses becoming King of Ethiopia (see Chapter Two), he had to abdicate in favour of the queen’s son, who can only be Tutankhamun, son of Nefertiti.
16
CORRIDORS OF POWER
A VARIETY of historical evidence also points to the fact that Akhenaten survived his fall from power.
Manetho’s King List
Although the memory of Akhenaten and his three successors was suppressed completely and the official king lists excluded them, placing Horemheb’s name immediately after that of Amenhotep III, in Manetho’s king list of the Eighteenth Dynasty, as it has reached us through other authors, the four kings are mentioned. It seems that, despite the official hostility at the time, folklore tales, transmitted from generation to generation, kept alive the memory of the Amarna kings until, some time before the third century BC, the story of Egypt’s history at this time was put down in writing. Of course, much confusion and distortion has affected the story in the process, and surviving Amarna monuments, such as its rock tombs and the quarry inscriptions, must have also been read and interpreted by the priests and scribes and helped in the rewriting of the story. In Manetho’s king list we find four names inserted between Amenhotep III and Horemheb:
Achencheres
Rathosis
Achencheres
Achencheres
The German philologist Wolfgang Helck was able to show1 that Achencheres was a confused derivation of Akhenaten’s name, while Rathosis is believed to be a confused form of Tutankhamun’s nomen. Why would Egyptian memory give to three of these four Amarna kings one name, that of Akhenaten? The only possible conclusion is that this was the result of two contradictory pieces of evidence: a) four different kings ruled between Amenhotep III and Horemheb, b) Akhenaten lived during the reign of the four Amarna kings and this whole period was regarded in their memory as being his own rule.
The Power Struggle
At least two events early in Akhenaten’s coregency with his father indicated strong opposition to his rule. The graffito of Amenhotep III’s Year 30 from the pyramid temple of Meidum, which would be Year 3 of Akhenaten, pointed to a rejection by some powerful factions of the king’s decision to cause ‘the male to sit upon the seat of his father’. Again, the border stela inscription of Amarna shows that, before deciding to leave Thebes and build his new city, Akhenaten had encountered some strong opposition and been the subject of verbal criticism. Certainly, he would not have left the dynasty’s capital without having been forced to do so.
A final confrontation between the throne and the priesthood was postponed simply because, after he departed from Thebes, he had nothing at all to do with the running of the country, which was left to his father, Amenhotep III. Another important factor was the complete reliance of Akhenaten on the armed forces for support. If we may take the reliefs from the tombs of the nobles at face value, then the city was virtually an armed camp. Everywhere we see processions and parades of soldiers, infantry and chariotry with their massed standards. Palaces, temples and the city borders seem to have been constantly guarded.
Akhenaten’s man in the army, as we saw earlier, was Aye, his maternal uncle, the husband of Tiy, his and Nefertiti’s nurse. As a result of this relationship, he could be regarded, according to ancient traditions, as a father figure. Aye was certainly the power behind Akhenaten’s throne from the time of the death of Amenhotep III. Aye’s origins, like those of Yuya, his father, were military. His extremely high ranks in both arms of the service, the infantry and the chariotry, show that he was in control of the army, without whose loyalty and support Akhenaten could have been overthrown in his first year as sole regent. After the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty, which was founded after the defeat and expulsion of the Hyksos invaders from the Eastern Delta, Egyptian Pharaohs had followed them into western Asia, forming the first empire of the ancient world that extended from the borders of Asia Minor and northern Iraq in the north up to a few miles north of Khartoum in the south. Egypt now had for the first time a regular army of full-time professional fighters, organized in local divisions. The victorious fighters shared war spoils as well as being rewarded by the king with gold, slaves and land. The army officers grew into a new aristocracy that, thanks to Akhenaten’s policy, became deeply involved in politics towards the end of the dynasty, as a result of which the two last kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Aye and Horemheb, as well as the two first kings of the Nineteenth, Ramses I and Se
ti I, came from the army and had no relationship with either the original Tuthmosside house or the priesthood.
On the other hand, as the victorious kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty came from Thebes which in the sixteenth century BC had consisted of a few scattered small towns, it had by now grown into a vast cosmopolitan city, the capital of the empire. Abundant spoils of war came to Thebes and its gods, especially to Amun, the chief Theban deity, who now achieved great authority, particularly when he was associated with Re, the old Heliopolitan god, as Amun-Re, king of the gods. Many new temples were built and that at Karnak, main centre of Amun, grew into a gigantic construction, the largest temple ever built, with large areas of agricultural land and thousands of slaves allocated to it. The priests, and those of Amun in particular, became increasingly powerful from the time of Tuthmosis III. This king was not the son of the queen, although he was the king’s son. So, in order to have him accepted as his heir, his father arranged a ceremony in Karnak where the image of Amun, carried by the god’s priests, chose young Tuthmosis to be the son of Amun, a kind of adoption by the god which ensured his right to the throne. Tuthmosis III turned out to be the mightiest of all Egyptian Pharaohs, ruling for fifty-four years and fighting many wars in Asia to consolidate the empire.
In return for their co-operation in establishing his right to the throne, Tuthmosis III showed his gratitude to Amun’s priests by giving them more power and wealth. As the king was the head of both the army and the temple, Egyptian Pharaohs exercised a balancing policy between the military and priestly powers. Although it is true that Pharaoh was regarded as a son of the god and, as such, had to be obeyed without question, he himself was also expected to abide by the country’s old beliefs and traditions. Not only did Akhenaten reject this concept of kingship: he was no longer the son of any Egyptian god. The Aten was never worshipped as a god in Egypt before the Amarna religious revolution, which has to be regarded as having its origins in the time Yuya became associated with the royal family during the reign of Tuthmosis IV. Thus Akhenaten came to be regarded as a rebel, an outlaw, and without the support of Aye and his army he would have been disposed of as soon as his father, and protector, died.