In an article he published in the British journal Vista in Astronomy entitled ‘The evolution of the Zodiac in the context of ancient oriental history’, Gurshtein further wrote:In one of my first publications on the Zodiac, I made a suggestion that the emergence of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) as a true Sun believer could be influenced by astronomical motivations . . . In regnal year eight, this heretical pharaoh moved his capital into the middle part of Egypt near the modern site of Tell-el-Amarna . . . Historians do not know Akhenaten’s motivations, but it may probably be clarified if we remember that Akhenaten took the crown before the end of the Great (Sothic) Cycle of the Egyptian calendar which, according to Censorinus’ information, had happened in 1321 BC-a moment that was potentially within the king’s life . . . Let me suggest that the pharaoh Akhenaten knew - as it was his duty to know - the circumstances connecting the establishing of the civil Egyptian calendar . . . his rule began only a short time before the first returning of the New Year’s Day to its initial point. Such an event was triumphantly celebrated one and a half millennia later by the Roman Emperor, and of course, it had to be of the utmost significance during Akhenaten’s time.43
Conflict
When Akhenaten was crowned pharaoh in c. 1353 BC the Birth of Ra-Horakhti, i.e. the New Year’s Day, or 1 Thoth, now approached the summer solstice. We have seen how seven centuries earlier the Birth of Ra-Horakhti had marked the winter solstice, which may have prompted Menthuhotep II to move the capital to Thebes in the south and, more importantly, to found a new religious centre at Karnak. Now in Akhenaten’s time, after seven centuries, the Birth of Ra-Horakhti was edging slowly back towards the summer solstice in the extreme north - and thus symbolically back towards Heliopolis. Could this return to the origins have influenced the young Akhenaten in his desire, as we shall see, to move the religious centre back to Heliopolis? As noted by the Spanish archaeoastronomer Juan Belmonte, the feast of the Birth of Ra-Horakhti was celebrated at the winter solstice at Karnak and Thebes, and, what was more, ‘at this precise moment when the actual birth of Ra at winter solstice occurred in I Akhet 1, the feast was frozen at this date for the rest of Egyptian history’.44 If Belmonte is right in his clever speculation - as I strongly suspect he is - this meant that the priests of Amun-Ra at Karnak were setting themselves in direct conflict with Maat, the cosmic law, which demanded a return of the Birth of Ra-Horakhti to the summer solstice and, by extension, a return of the religious authority to the priests of Heliopolis in the north. Understandably, the priests of the south were in no mood to relinquish their lucrative position of power and wealth to the priests of the north. But to their dismay and horror, the young Akhenaten seemed to support such a transfer, arguing that he was duty-bound to adhere to Maat. The conditions for a religious war were thus in the brewing.
In actual fact the slow process of handing back the religious reins to the priests of Heliopolis had begun much earlier. Indeed, as early as 1420 BC there were signs that such a move was being seriously contemplated by the reigning pharaoh when Amenhotep II, the great-grandfather of Akhenaten, favoured the priests of the north by building a splendid temple near the Great Sphinx of Giza which he dedicated to their god, Ra-Horakhti of Heliopolis. On a stela (a commemorative stone plaque) found near the Great Sphinx is an inscription describing Amenhotep II as ‘Divine Ruler of Heliopolis’ and ‘Offspring [i.e. the son] of Horakhti’, a clear indication of this king’s devotion and favours towards the ancient sun-god of Heliopolis.45 Amenhotep II’s son, Tothmoses IV, went even further. As a young prince he claimed that Ra-Horakhti had appeared to him in the form of the Great Sphinx and had promised him the throne of Egypt. As Egyptologist Donald Redford put it, ‘the king had, by his own admission, been helped to the throne through the agency of the sun god Ra-Horakhti, who had appeared to him as a prince in a dream.’46 In gratitude to Ra-Horakhti, Tothmoses IV ordered that the Great Sphinx be cleared of the encroaching sand and restored to its former glory.47 This new-found allegiance to Ra-Horakhti and his priesthood at Heliopolis intensified with Tothmoses IV’s son, the great Amenhotep III. All this time, the priests of Karnak brooded in silence. Open conflict was to erupt, however, with the advent of Amenhotep III’s dreamy son, Akhenaten.
The Break with Karnak
Akhenaten is known to history for having banned all worship of the gods in Egypt except for Aten, his apparently new sun-god, symbolised by a disc of the sun with golden rays shooting downwards. In other words: one religion, one sun-god, one symbol. Not surprisingly, he is thus often thought of as the precursor of monotheism, and there are even those who claim that he was none other than the real historical patriarch Moses.48 But whatever Akhenaten was or was not, there is one thing about this mystical king that comes across most strongly in his passionate decrees and proclamations: his absolute and total commitment to the cosmic order, Maat. Over and over the ancient texts emphasise that Akhenaten was ankh em maat, ‘living in Maat’. As the British Egyptologist Cyril Aldred was to write, ‘The king was the personification of Maat, a word which we translate as “truth” or “justice”, but has an extended meaning of the proper cosmic order at the time of its establishment by the Creator . . . There is in Akhenaten’s teaching a constant emphasis upon Maat . . . as is not found before or afterwards.’49
When Amenhotep IV (the future Akhenaten) first came to the throne in 1353 BC, probably at the age of 16, he was co-regent with his ageing father, Amenhotep III. It is much debated how long this co-regency lasted, but it was probably just a few years. At any rate, Amenhotep IV was quick to introduce his great religious reform by building a temple at Karnak dedicated to Aten, presumably to the annoyance and discontent of the powerful priests of Amun-Ra. But here is the catch. For as Manchester University Egyptologist Rosalie David pointed out,Akhenaten probably first envisaged the cult as a development closely associated with the older solar worship; this is indicated in his early inscription in the sandstone quarry at Gebel-el-Silseleh, where he describes himself as the ‘First Prophet of Re-horakhti, Rejoicing-in-his-Horizon, in his name of Sunlight which is in Aten’.50
British Museum Egyptologist George Hard goes even further. According to him, ‘Aten is really the god Ra absorbed under the iconography of the sun disc.’51 In this he is backed by the German Egyptologist Hermann Schlogl, who stated that in the early years of Akhenaten’s reign, ‘the sun god Ra-Horakhti . . . was identical with Aten’ and that ‘Aten’s didactic name meant “the living One, Re-Horakhti who rejoices in the Horizon”.’52
Centuries after the temple of Karnak was founded, and certainly by the time Akhenaten ascended the throne, the priests of Karnak had acquired immense material wealth through taxation and donations, and also from a share in the spoils of war. Evidence shows that they owned vast tracts of land and practically controlled the whole commercial life of Upper Egypt. The priests of Karnak flaunted their sun-god Amun as the most supreme god of Egypt, absorbing the powers and even the names of the older solar gods of Heliopolis, Ra and Horakhti. The symbols, iconography and nomenclature of Amun began to be seen everywhere in preference to those of the older Heliopolitan solar deities, inevitably causing a schism between north and south, as much later in history a deep schism was caused between east and west by the different symbols, iconography and nomenclature of Islam and Christianity, even though they venerated the same unique supreme god.
With such power and wealth the priests began also to pose a political threat to the pharaoh, for as the old saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is clear from the many statements attributed to Akhenaten that tension between him and the priests of Karnak ran very high, and that the young king feared for his throne and even his life. Was it this excess of power of the priests of Karnak that prompted Akhenaten to look back to the epoch when the sun religion was in the hands of the more pure and loyal priests of Heliopolis? Or was he mainly prompted by the cosmic order that indicated that the great return of the solar phoenix was imminent and that he, Akhenaten, would oversee thi
s event? Or was it both his fear of the Karnak priests and the dictates of the cosmic order? At any rate, it was during his fourth or fifth year of reign that Amenhotep IV changed his name to Ahkenaten, which means ‘Glory of the Aten’. This must have made the priests of Amun-Ra fume, for they surely regarded the name change from Amun-Hotep to Akhen-Aten as a slap in the face. The crunch came when Akhenaten then announced that the cult of Amun-Ra was banned and that the great temple of Karnak would be officially closed. Along with this unthinkable decision came another, even more devastating blow to the priests of Thebes: Akhenaten declared that he intended to move himself and the whole court to a new city dedicated to the Aten called Akhet-Aten (‘Horizon of the Sun Disc’) which he intended to have built further north.
Sometime in the early spring of the year 1348 BC,53 the king and some members of his court visited the site of the future city of Akhet-Aten a few kilometres to the west of the modern town of Tell El Amarna. Riding in a chariot made of electrum and looking as radiant as the sun disc itself, Akhenaten proclaimed that it was ‘his father’ the Aten who had selected this site for the building of his new and eternal solar city. Apparently the Aten had shown himself to the king at Tell El Amarna and had told him that the place ‘shall belong to me as a Horizon of the Sun Disc for ever and ever’.54
What cosmic vision influenced Akhenaten to choose this location for his dream city of Akhet-Aten?
Could it have been something to do with the position of the sun there that was somehow vital to the idea of an eternal solar city? And if so, what could that something have been?
What did Akhenaten see at Tell el Amarna that totally convinced him that this was the true earthly domain of the sun-god?
CHAPTER SIX
Lord of Jubilees
The benu bird (phoenix) was called ‘Lord of Jubilees’ . . .
R.Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
Aten: ‘Lord of Jubilees’1 . . .
Francis Llewellyn Griffith, ‘The Jubilee of Akhenaten’
In Year 6 the Aten was given a new epithet: ‘Celebrator of Jubilees’.
Ahmed Osman, Akhenaten and Moses
I will make a ‘House of Rejoicing’ for the Aten, my father, in the island of ‘Aten Distinguished in Jubilees’ in Akhet-Aten in this place.
Proclamation by Akhenaten at the foundation ceremony of the city of
Akhet-Aten
Aten living and great who is in jubilee residing in the temple of Aten at
Akhetaten
Amarna inscription, in R. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and
Goddess of Ancient Egypt
A Desolate Place
In November 2002 I made my first visit to Tell El Amarna, a lonely place on the east bank of the Nile in middle Egypt. I was, however, not alone but with some 40 rowdy Italians brought to Egypt by my good friend Adriano Forgione, the editor of Hera magazine in Rome. Each year Adriano organises a special tour to Egypt for his readers and often asks me to escort them around. If I am free then I accept willingly, for I very much enjoy these events, which give me the opportunity to meet a sample of my readers face to face and, as often happens as well, make new friends along the way.2 We had left the Meridian Hotel at Giza with two coaches at sunrise and had taken the new asphalt Fayum road. It was a delightfully warm and bright autumn day and everyone was filled with a sense of adventure. Tell El Amarna had been on my agenda for quite some time, but somehow I had not found the time or opportunity to go there.
Upon reaching the outskirts of the Fayum oasis, our driver turned south-east towards the Nile. We then skirted the river for a few hours and finally reached the busy market town of Al Minya. After a little rest and some refreshments, we drove out of Al Minya to eventually arrive at the small hamlet of Malawi, where we crossed the Nile on a rickety old ferry boat. At this point we left the lush Nile Valley behind and drove into the desert to reach a vast crescent-shaped plain backed by low rocky hills. We were at the fabled site of Tell El Amarna.
But where was the legendary city of the sun?
Sadly, Akhet-Aten has all but disappeared, gone with the wind, to use the popular phrase. Long gone are the sumptuous palaces and splendid sanctuaries that once graced this place. And long gone is the fabulous Great Temple of the Aten. All that remains are the outline of foundations and two broken columns of the so-called Small Temple of the Aten. According to Barry Kemp, leader of the 1977-8 El-Amarna Survey of the Egypt Exploration Society, ‘Amarna was never a lost city in the sense that it became invisible, although there may well have been a long period when it was not noticed through lack of interest.’3 Well, it was quite invisible now. Akhet-Aten, much like my native city of Alexandria, must be seen not with the eyes but with the imagination.
The ruins of Tell el Amarna were first noticed in modern times by the Frenchman Edmé Jomard, a senior member of the 1798-9 Napoleonic expedition, who, on his way back to Cairo down the Nile, was surprised to come across the scant remains of what appeared to be a huge town not shown on any of his maps. ‘Most of the constructions are unfortunately demolished, and one can see little more than the foundations’, Jomard was to lament. Unwittingly he had stumbled on the lost city of Akhet-Aten, or rather what was left of it after it had been deliberately razed to the ground, stone by stone, by the infuriated priests of Amun-Ra in c. 1335 BC. Jomard produced a freehand sketch of the city which served as a rough survey until 1824, when a full archaeological survey was conducted by Sir John Gardner Wilkinson. After him came the Prussian archaeologist Richard Lepsius in the 1840s. It was Sir William Flinders Petrie, however, who started systematic archaeological digs in 1891. From 1917 onwards several detailed surveys were made of Akhet-Aten, the last being by Barry Kemp and Mohamad Abdel Aziz Awad in 1977-8, published in 1993 by the Egypt Exploration Society of London (EES).4 From all these surveys and especially the latest by Kemp and Awad, a realistic picture can be made of what the city of Akhet-Aten looked like. Today there is a scale model of the city, made by the British architects Ingham Associates of London, displayed at the EES.5
As far as ancient cities go, Akhet-Aten was a sprawling metropolis, 12 kilometres long and two kilometres wide. When new, it must have looked like a gleaming jewel along the east bank of the Nile. Its true boundaries extended on both sides of the Nile and included the green fields on the west bank. It is estimated that the city’s population grew to about 30,000 within a few years, a huge number for the epoch, which would have made Akhet-Aten a metropolis when compared to primitive cultures elsewhere in the second millennium BC, when people still lived in small settlements and numbers rarely exceeded a thousand souls.
As customary in Egypt, work at Akhet-Aten began with the tombs for the royal family and other nobles. These were cut into the eastern hills behind the city centre. The royal area was called ‘Aten Distinguished of Jubilees’ and consisted of vast temples with open courts, lavishly designed palaces and villas with gardens and private quays on the Nile, and a variety of auxiliary buildings such as military barracks, workshops, government compounds, record offices, stables and storehouses. There was a splendid avenue that served as a ceremonial route for the king and that ran parallel to the river between the Great Palace and the Great Temple of Aten. The latter was known as gem-pa-aten, ‘House of the Aten’.6 This huge temple had an elongated rectangular plan, with its entrance in the west side leading into a closed forecourt known as the ‘House of Rejoicing’ and then on through a series of six interlocking courts. At the rear of the temple was a slaughterhouse for sacrificial animals, and further still, at the far end of the complex, was the Sanctuary of the Aten, which consisted of a series of open-air courts containing hundreds of offering tables. The whole Great Temple complex measured a staggering 760 metres long and 290 metres wide, and was completely enclosed by a high boundary wall. The King’s House, or palace, was immediately south of the Great Temple, and there was a small bridge leading from there to the royal gardens fronting the Nile. South of the King’s House wa
s the so-called Small Temple of the Aten, which probably served as a private chapel for the king. The city had two main ports, one for the Great Temple and the other for the royal palace. There was also a large docking wharf with a series of small quays that serviced the various storehouses and the residential areas of the city.
On the surface, all was perfect in Akhet-Aten. Unfortunately, however, it was built in haste - jerry-built according to Donald Redford - in order to satisfy the king’s eagerness to quickly move his court out of Karnak. Had it survived, it is unlikely that any building would have remained intact for very long without constant repair and redecoration. As for the location, the king could not have chosen a worse place. This was an inhospitable desert bowl made even more uncomfortable by the eastern hills at the back that would have radiated the sun’s heat with ruthless intensity. Summer at Akhet-Aten must have been a scorching nightmare. Unprotected by the lush vegetation of the Nile Valley, the winds would have constantly showered dust from the arid and dry eastern desert. Even today it is a desolate region inhabited only by a few fellahin families living in squalor. So why did the king choose this ill-disposed location to build the eternal domain of the sun-god?
According to Egyptologist Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten decided to move his capital from Thebes to Tell el Amarna some time in the fifth year of his reign because he was apparently ordered to do so by the solar god Ra-Horakhti.7 There is a hint of this in the so-called Earlier Proclamation that Akhenaten made for the city which, ‘begins with a sonorous recital of the names and titles of Ra-horakhti-Aten followed by those of the king’ and in which the king decreed: ‘May the Father live, divine and royal, Ra-horakhti, rejoicing in the Horizon in his aspect of the Light which is in the Aten (sun disc), who lives forever and ever . . .’8
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