Nefertiti

by Joyce Tyldesley

  It is unlikely that a preoccupation with fertility and childbirth was confined to the lower classes, although the walls of the houses of the Amarna élite have not survived to tell their tale.

  The-upper classes, worshipping before their private shrines and in their garden chapels, were presented not with Bes or Taweret, but with images of Nefertiti and her children, who served as their living, and indeed highly fertile, symbol of the state god’s creative powers. Akhenaten consistently stressed his wife’s fertility, and the daughters who follow their mother in an ever increasing line play a symbolic as well as a literal role in all family portraits. It is almost certainly no coincidence that Nefertiti rose to public prominence following the birth of her first child.

  Egyptian religion was never centred on a sacred text of divine revelation conveyed via a human prophet which could be equated with the Torah, the Bible or the Koran. However, Akhenaten’s vision of the Aten as the creator of all life was celebrated in a series of hymns. The Great Hymn to the Aten, preserved on the wall of Ay’s Amarna tomb and presumed to have been written by the king himself, was not in itself a great innovation, many of its sentiments having been expressed in earlier hymns to the sun god. However, the Great Hymn is unusual in the fact that it ignores the traditional gods of Egypt and makes reference only to the Aten. This monotheistic element, combined with the idea that there should be one supreme god for all races, has encouraged many observers to draw a direct comparison with Psalm 104, written some 500 years later in a different land and a different language. Weigall, for example, felt that

  In the face of this remarkable similarity one can hardly doubt that there is a direct connection between the two compositions… in consideration of Akhenaton’s [sic] peculiar ability and originality there seems considerable likelihood that he is the author in the first instance of this gem of the Psalter.17

  It would, however, be wrong to see Atenism as the forerunner or inspiration of modern Christianity, or Judaism, on the basis of this text; the hymn is merely a reflection of the thinking which underlies many Near Eastern religions, and indeed a hymn dedicated to Amen and dated to the reign of Amenhotep 11 had already expressed many similar sentiments:

  You are the sole one who made all there is. The unique one who made what exists… it is he who gives breath to him within the egg, and sustains the son of the worm…18

  However, the Great Hymn to the Aten, originally written to be recited by the king and adapted by Ay for inclusion in his tomb, is worth quoting in full as, apart from its intrinsic beauty, it permits us a glimpse into the mind and beliefs of its composer. It is notable that Nefertiti, the composer’s wife and most probably Ay’s daughter, is barely mentioned. Here it is Akhenaten alone who is destined to enjoy an afterlife:

  Glorious, you rise on the horizon of heaven, O living Aten, creator of life. When you have arisen on the eastern horizon you fill every land with your beauty. You are gorgeous, great and radiant, high over every land. Your rays embrace all the lands that you have made. You are Re and so you reach their boundaries, limiting them for your beloved son. Though you are far away, your rays are upon the earth. Though you are seen, your movement is not.

  When you set on the western horizon the land is dark, like death. Night is spent asleep as in a bedroom with a covered head, one eye does not see the other. If the possessions under their heads were stolen, no one would notice it. Every lion comes out from its den, and every serpent bites. Darkness descends and the earth is hushed, because their maker rests on the horizon.

  The earth is illuminated when you rise on the horizon and shine as the Aten in the daytime. You banish the darkness when you cast your rays. The Two Lands celebrate, lively and aroused now that you have awakened them; with bodies cleansed and clothed they raise their arms to adore your rising. Now the whole land begins to work. All the cattle graze on their fodder, trees and plants grow. Birds fly up from their nests, their wings stretched in praise of your spirit. All the flocks gambol on their feet and everything that flies and perches lives because you have arisen for them. Ships sail to the north and to the south, while roads open at your rising. The fish in the river leap before you, for your rays are in the middle of the sea.

  You make the seed grow in women and create people from sperm. You feed the son who lies in his mother’s womb and comfort him to stop his tears. You are the nurse within the womb, who gives breath to all that he has made. On the day he is born you open his mouth to supply his needs. When the chick in the egg chirps within his shell you give him breath to live, and when his time is ready to break out from the shell he comes out of the egg to proclaim his birth, walking on his legs. How many are the things you do, although hidden from view, O unique god, without compare. You created the world as you desired, alone – all people, all cattle, all flocks, everything which walks with its feet on the earth and everything which flies with its wings in the air. The northern lands of Asia, the southern lands of Africa and the land of Egypt – you have set every person in their place and you have supplied their needs. Everyone has his food and his allotted lifetime. Tongues differ in their speech, and also characters and skins, for you have differentiated mankind.

  You created the Nile in the Netherworld. You bring him forth at your will to feed the people, since you made them for yourself, lord of all, who toils for them. Lord of all lands, the Aten who shines for them in the daytime, great in dignity. You make all distant lands live, for you have made a heavenly Nile come down for them, to make waves on the mountains like the sea, to irrigate the fields of their towns. O Lord of eternity, how excellent are your designs – a Nile from heaven for people of foreign lands, and all the creatures which walk upon their feet and a Nile for Egypt coming from the Netherworld. Your rays suckle every field; when you shine they live and grow for you. You made the seasons to foster all that you made: winter to cool them and summer that they may feel you.

  You made a distant sky in which you might shine and to see everything you have made. You are alone, shining as the Living Aten, risen, dazzling, far and yet near you have made millions of manifestations of yourself. Towns, villages, fields, roads and waterways – every eye sees you upon them, for you are the Aten of the daytime…

  You are my beloved. There is none other that knows you except for your son Neferkheperure Waenre, whom you have made wise in your plans and your might. The creatures of the earth exist in your hand as you have made them; when you rise they live, when you set they die. You yourself are the duration of life, it is by you that men live. Eyes may behold your beauty until you set, but when you set in the west all work ceases. When you rise… You raise them up for the son who came forth from your body, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, living in Truth, the Lord of the Two Lands Neferkheperure Waenre, son of Re, living in Truth, Lord of the glorious appearings, Akhenaten the long-lived. And as for the King’s Great Wife whom he loves, the Mistress of the Two Lands, Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti, may she live and flourish for ever and ever.19

  It is a characteristic of Atenism that it eliminates the old gods and the old traditions – many of them highly comforting to their believers – without ever finding a satisfactory replacement. The vivid scenes of the present which play a prominent role in Amarna art are a reflection of the fact that the Aten was purely a daytime god. His disciples have little reason to look forward, and indeed Akhenaten’s hymn promises a grim future for the faithful. The myth of Osiris, god of the dead, and the promise of a golden afterlife in the Field of Reeds have vanished, a victim to the purges instigated in Year 5. The Aten takes responsibility for the deceased, and after death his devotees can look forward to a bleak existence haunting the altar of the sun temple by day, sleeping the sleep of the dead at night – an unwelcome reversion to Old Kingdom beliefs which allowed only the king to inherit eternal life.

  Some traces of the old funerary ritual were permitted to remain, stripped of their original meaning. As we have seen at the Theban Gempaaten, Akhenaten was not averse to representing hi
mself as an Osiriform figure. Mummification followed by interment in a rock-cut tomb remained the acceptable means of disposing of Egypt’s élite, and canopic jars, scarabs and shabtis all remained a standard part of the funeral equipment, suitably adapted for Aten worship. A wooden shabti belonging to the Royal Ornament Py, for example, incorporated an acceptably edited text from the Book of the Dead:

  Breathe the sweet breeze of the north wind which comes forth from the sky upon the hand of the living Aten. Your body is protected, your heart is glad. No harm shall happen to your body because you are sand. Your flesh will not decay. You will follow the Aten from the time when he appears in the morning until he sets in life…20

  Is it correct to interpret the Amarna period as a true religious revolution, or was Akhenaten merely restructuring religious thought as a calculated means of serving his own ends and promoting his own divinity? Could it even have been an economic rather than a religious revolution, with Akhenaten deliberately diverting resources away from the priesthood of Amen in order to finance his new city? These unanswerable questions have vexed historians for many decades. At the turn of this century, when the extent of Akhenaten’s reforms first became clear, many egyptologists were themselves Biblical scholars whose studies of egyptology were inspired by the need to explain the many mysteries of the holy book. To these scholars monotheism was obviously superior to polytheism. They tended to interpret Akhenaten’s devotion to Atenism as an early and wholly admirable attempt to reach out to the one true God of Judaism or Christianity inspired by the religions of the Near East, which had in all probability been introduced into the Egyptian royal family via Tiy or Nefertiti, who were themselves believed to be of foreign extraction:

  Akhenaten believed that his god was the Father of all mankind, and that the Syrian and the Nubian were as much under his protection as the Egyptian. This is a greater advance in ethics than may at once be apparent; for the Aten thus becomes the first deity who was not tribal or not national ever conceived by mortal mind. This is the Christian’s understanding of God, though not the Hebrew conception of Jehovah. This is the spirit which sends the missionary to the utmost parts of the earth…21

  Over the past hundred years we have gained a more complete understanding of both the nature of Akhenaten’s new cult and the political climate of his reign, while at the same time losing the missionary zeal which affected so many early egyptologists. While the effects of Akhenaten’s reforms should never be understated, the term ‘revolution’ now seems inappropriate; many of Akhenaten’s ‘innovations’ were logical if extreme developments stemming from the religious climate of his father’s reign; and there appears to have been little if any blood shed in defence of the old gods. Some modern historians have continued to view the introduction of Atenism as simple religious conversion, a great intellectual step forward fuelled by genuine religious conviction:

  At no other time did anything approach the utter simplification of one creator as introduced by Akhenaten and Nefertiti, in place of the massive complexities that had gone before and followed after. Their thought was an intellectual breakthrough; a peak of clarity which rose above the lowlands of superstition that had existed until then.22

  Others have taken a less charitable view, sensing the strong political and personal motivation behind Akhenaten’s religious reforms. Donald B. Redford, biographer of Akhenaten, provides what is probably the most perceptive summary of his subject’s character and beliefs:

  For all that can be said in his favour, Akhenaten in spirit remains to the end totalitarian. The right of an individual freely to choose was wholly foreign to him. He was the champion of a universal, celestial power who demanded universal submission, claimed universal truth, and from whom no further revelation could be expected. I cannot conceive a more tiresome regime under which to be fated to live.23

  As we have seen, Akhenaten’s Atenism has frequently been interpreted as the world’s first monotheistic religion with Akhenaten himself being the inspiration for Moses, and the Aten the forerunner of the Jewish-Christian-Islamic god. The Aten was never, however, intended to be a god in this mould. He remained remote and aloof, he created and observed but did not intervene in events and certainly did not require his devotees to adhere to any moral code. Egyptian morality was always separated from religion and, as an aspect of good social behaviour, was taught by scribes rather than priests. The religion of the ancient Egyptians was the equivalent of our modern science. It did not aim to teach men how to behave, but sought to provide explanations for the seemingly inexplicable. In fact it is highly debatable whether the new religion can be classed as true monotheism, the belief in a single supreme deity, rather than what Norman de Garis Davies, himself a Unitarian minister, has classed as ‘little more than a beautifully expressed and humanized henotheism’, henotheism being the belief in a single god without the assertion that s/he is the sole god.24 Although the Aten was without question the most prominent deity, he was consistently linked with Re and the semi-divine Akhenaten. Several of the old gods remained in circulation for many years, and some were even included in the Aten’s original name and titulary: ‘May the good god live who takes pleasure in Truth, Lord of all that the Aten encompasses, Lord of heaven, Lord of earth, Aten, the living, the great, who illuminates the two lands, may the father live: Re-Harakhty appearing on the horizon in his name of Shu who is Aten, who is given life for ever and ever, Aten, the Living, the Great, who is in jubilee, who dwells in the temple of Aten in Akhetaten.’

  Maat, the divine daughter of Re and personification of the concept of truth, maat or order already discussed, was originally acceptable to Akhenaten, although eventually she too was displaced as Nefertiti started to assume the role of companion to the god-king. Akhenaten constantly stressed his devotion to truth and even adopted the epithet ‘who lives on maat’. As the reign progressed, however, the abstract nature of the god gained increasing emphasis until, during Year 9, the Aten was given

  Fig. 3.6 The new names of the Aten

  a revised titulary, his name purified by the exclusion of the names of Horus and of Shu. The reference to Re, shorn of its association with Horus, was allowed to remain: ‘Long live Re, ruler of the two horizons, he who rejoices in the horizon is his name as Re the father who returns as Aten.’

  This name was written in two cartouches suggesting that the Aten, who invariably wore the uraeus of kingship, was to be regarded as a king, and by implication that Akhenaten and the Aten could either be seen as co-regents, or even as one and the same person. Indeed, it would appear that Akhenaten’s Theban jubilee was to be considered to belong as much to the Aten as to the king. Now all reference to ‘gods’ in the plural was banned, and the spelling of some words – including ‘Mut’, the name of Amen’s wife which also translates as ‘mother’ – was changed to avoid the inclusion of a proscribed god’s name.

  4

  Images of Amarna

  Giving adoration to the Lord of the Two Lands, and kissing the earth for the sole one of Re, by the Overseer of Works in the red mountain, the assistant pupil whom His Majesty himself taught, the Chief of Sculptors in the many great monuments of the king in the house of the Aten, in the Horizon of Aten, Bak, son of the Chief of Sculptors Men, born of the lady of the house, Ruy of Heliopolis.1

  For over a thousand years the ‘rules’ of artistic representation had decreed that all upper-class Egyptians should be physically perfect with no obvious flaws or deformities. Men should either be eternally young with firm, slender bodies and tanned skins or, towards the end of their successful lives, mature statesmen with drooping breasts and pronounced rolls of fat around the waist. Women should be beautiful, slender and pale with no concession paid to the ravages of time, although very occasionally during the New Kingdom an older woman such as Queen Tiy might be presented as a wise elder, the wrinkled female equivalent of the plump successful man. It was particularly important that the pharaoh should be depicted as a flawless male with a handsome face and a firm, athlet
ic body as this was the image which his people expected to see. There had been variations on this theme – monarchs of the Old Kingdom had been shown to be remote, god-like creatures, while the pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom had appeared more caring and compassionate – but these were subtle differences in expression, and the underlying principle had remained constant for centuries.

  So strong was this belief in the correct presentation of the king that the female pharaoh Hatchepsut had, for all her official portraits, assumed the body and clothing of a man. The royal artists never allowed less than perfect physical specimens to deflect them from their goal, and simply overlooked such undesirable features as buck teeth, a deformed foot, or, in the most extreme case, a female body. By producing essentially the same portrait of successive monarchs they sought to inspire confidence in the eye of the beholder by confirming the continuing presence of a traditional king on the throne. This in turn served as confirmation of the presence of maat in its widest context. A true likeness to any individual king may have been regarded as an added benefit but it was certainly not a necessity as the pharaoh was not to be seen as an individual, but as merely the latest in a long line of identical rulers. A name, carved or painted on to the portrait, would confirm the identity of the individual.