The Tell El Amarna Period Part 1

The Tell El Amarna Period.

by Carl Niebuhr.

THE ANCIENT EAST

Under this t.i.tle is being issued a series of short, popular, but thoroughly scientific studies, by the leading scholars of Germany, setting forth the recent discoveries and investigations in Babylonian, a.s.syrian and Egyptian History, Religion, and Archaeology, especially as they bear upon the traditional views of early Eastern History. The German originals have been appearing during the last eighteen months. The English translations made by Miss Jane Hutchison have been submitted in each case to the Authors, and embody their latest views. Short, helpful bibliographies are added. Each study consists of some 64 to 80 pages, crown 8vo, and costs *1s.* sewed, or *1s. 6d.* cloth.

The following are issued:

THE REALMS OF THE EGYPTIAN DEAD.

By Professor ALFRED WIEDEMANN.

THE TELL EL AMARNA PERIOD. By Dr. C. NIEBUHR.

THE BABYLONIAN AND THE HEBREW GENESIS.

By Professor H. ZIMMERN.

THE BABYLONIAN CONCEPTION OF HEAVEN AND h.e.l.l.

By Dr. ALFRED JEREMIAS.

POPULAR LITERATURE IN ANCIENT EGYPT.

By Professor ALFRED WIEDEMANN.

I. THE TABLETS, AND HOW THEY WERE FOUND.

As early as 1820 it was known in Europe that in Middle Egypt, on the east bank of the Nile, in the district between Minieh and Siut, there lay the remains of a great city of Ancient Egypt. The Prussian exploration expedition of 1842-45 gave special attention to this site, where indeed were found, about sixty miles south of Minieh, extensive ruins, beginning at the village of Haggi Kandil and covering the floor of a rock-bound valley named after the fellahin village, El Amarna. At that time the ground-plan of the city was still easy to distinguish; the regular lines of the streets could be traced, and enough could be seen of the great design of the princ.i.p.al temple to excite the admiration of the discoverers. This example of the laying out of an ancient Egyptian town still remains almost unique, for of old, as now, private buildings were constructed of flimsy material. That the Tell el Amarna remains have escaped rapid destruction is due entirely to the sudden and violent downfall of the original splendour of the city and the complete desolation which succeeded. The importance of the place was revealed on examination of the surrounding cliffs. Here were found, sculptured and inscribed in a new and peculiar style, the rock-cut tombs of the most distinguished inhabitants of Akhet-haten, the royal city built for himself about 1380 B.C. by Amenophis IV., and destroyed soon after his early death.

In the beginning of 1888 some fellahn digging for marl not far from the ruins came upon a number of crumbling wooden chests, filled with clay tablets closely covered on both sides with writing. The dusky fellows must have been not a little delighted at finding themselves owners of hundreds of these marketable antiquities, for which a European purchaser would doubtless give plenty of good gold coins. To multiply their gains they broke up the largest tablets into three or four separate pieces, often to the grievous hindrance of the future decipherer. But very soon the matter was fruited abroad; the Government at once intervened, almost all the find was in due time secured, and a stop was put to any further dispersal of separate tablets and of fragments. The political situation in Egypt is pretty accurately indicated by the fact that about eighty of the best preserved of the Tell el Amarna tablets at once found their way to the British Museum. Some sixty were left in the museum at Boulak, and about one hundred and eighty were secured for the Berlin Museum, many of them tiny fragments, but mostly containing important records. Few have remained in private hands.

Some alabaster slabs came to light at Tell el Amarna bearing the hieroglyphic names of King Amenophis IV. and his father, Amenophis III.

These had evidently served as lids to the chests. Some tablets also were inscribed with notes in hieratic, written in red ink. But in spite of these exceptions, it was at once recognised that all the doc.u.ments were written in Babylonian cuneiform. The reading of the introductory lines on various tablets served to show that the find consisted of part of the Egyptian state archives in the times of the two kings Amenophis III. and IV. Thus the first of the many startling discoveries that were to follow in such rapid succession was made in the recognition that about 1400 B.C.

the Semitic speech of Babylon served as the language of diplomacy in the East.

Apart from a few tablets dealing with mythological subjects and written in Babylonian, and two which contain inventories, all the tablets were letters. Most of them were from Egyptian officials in Syria and Canaan, and usually they were addressed to the king. Among them were found many long letters from Asiatic kings to the Egyptian monarch, and also a few communications from the Foreign Office of "Pharaoh" himself. We must note, however, that this t.i.tle of Egyptian kings, so commonly used in the Old Testament, is apparently never once employed in the Tell el Amarna doc.u.ments. It is interesting to observe how difficulties of the script and of a language not entirely familiar to most of the scribes were overcome.

Even the learned scribes of the royal "House of the Sun" in Egypt had obviously their own troubles in the matter, and made use of the Babylonian mythological texts already mentioned as a means of improving their fluency. Of this we have evidence in the thin red lines by which, on these tablets alone, the words have been separated from each other. The governors and officials must not be cla.s.sified as educated or uneducated on the evidence of their letters; all alike employed professional scribes, of whom one might be skilful and the next a bungler whose communications must be guessed at rather than read. Occasionally a Babylonian word is followed by the corresponding Canaanite word, also in cuneiform, but marked as a translation. Like the Egyptian kings, so the Asiatic sovereigns had each his staff of scribes. One of the petty chiefs, Tarkhundarash of Arsapi, was evidently so unhappy as to have none in his Court who could read or write a letter in Babylonian, for letters to him were written in his own tongue. The scribe of the Hitt.i.te king produced only a species of dog Latin, while the scribe of the king of Alashia trots out his whole vocabulary unhampered by grammar. On the other hand, the letters of the king of Mitani are drawn up in the characters known as a.s.syrian; and it is probable that the a.s.syrian system of cuneiform may have originated in Mitani. If so, for the Mitani scribe there could be no question of any special difficulty in using the acknowledged language of diplomacy in the Ancient East.

It is evident that the Babylonian royal scribes at length showed some consideration for their unfortunate Egyptian correspondents by writing as a rule in phonograms which could be easily spelt out, since strange ideograms might have brought the reader to a standstill. The sources of the letters may be distinguished also by the colour and consistency of the material of the tablets, which are of all shades of clay, from pale yellow to red or dark brown. Side by side, too, with hard and legible pieces, lie broken and crumbling fragments which have suffered sadly during the few years that have elapsed since they were again exposed to the air.

II. THE EGYPTIAN COURT AND ADMINISTRATION.

The two Pharaohs of the Tell el Amarna Period belong to the XVIIIth Dynasty, which about 1560 B.C. had freed the land from the yoke of certain Asiatic invaders known as the Shasu. The new dynasty soon began to encroach upon Asia. King Thutmosis III. (1503 to 1449 B.C.) after many chequered campaigns conquered Syria as far as the Gulf of Iskanderun. On the African side he extended the bounds of his kingdom to the confluence of the Nile and the Atbara, so that the greater part of Nubia owned his sway. The terror of his name did not die with him, but for long did good service to his successors, the first of whom, Amenophis II., seems moreover himself to have maintained energetically the fame of Egyptian arms. To this influence our clay tablets bear witness by twice making emphatic reference to the days of the powerful "Manakhbiria"-the prenomen of King Thutmosis III. With the accession of Amenophis III. the warlike spirit ceased to prevail at the Court of Thebes. Nothing more was to be gained by Egypt in Western Asia, and the tastes of the new king lay in other directions than war. The two celebrated Colossi of Memnon (statues of himself), many great buildings, the important part played by his favourite wife Teye, the well-filled harem, the cultivation of "wisdom"

(which practically, no doubt, was tantamount to what we should call "preciosity"); last, but not least, the solemn adoration of his own divine image-all these facts combine to indicate the altered condition of things which came about under Amenophis III. He reigned thirty-six years, long enough to allow the movement introduced by him to run its course. His son, Amenophis IV., was, however, just as little inclined as his father to walk in the steps of his warlike ancestors. Hampered apparently by bodily defects, this Son of the Sun tried his strength in a field often far more dangerous than the battlefield. He began a reform of the Egyptian religion, apparently in the direction of a kind of monotheism in which the chief worship was reserved for the disk of the sun, the symbol under which the G.o.d Ra was adored at Heliopolis in the Delta.

Nothing being known of the life of this king as heir-apparent, probably we shall never understand what led him to take this new departure. From his conduct during the early years of his reign it may be concluded that he intended to proceed gradually, but was roused to more aggressive measures by the resistance of the powerful priests of Amon in Thebes. These men acted, of course, for their own interests in promptly resisting even mild attempts at reform. Perhaps also the king's aim had been from the outset to weaken the influence of the Theban hierarchy by new doctrines and to strengthen the royal power by steady secularisation. Open strife between the adherents of Amon and those of the Sun's Disk, the "Aten," broke out in the second or third year of Amenophis IV., that is, about 1380 B.C. The immediate removal of the Court from Thebes to Tell el Amarna points to a failure of the royal efforts, for the command to build the new city had not long been issued, and the place was still altogether unfinished. The official world promptly broke with the old religion. The king altered his throne-name, "Amen-hetep," to "Akhen-Aten," "The glory of the Sun's Disk"; his young daughters received names compounded with "Aten," whilst the courtiers found it advisable to strike out "Amen," if this chanced to form part of their own names, and to subst.i.tute for it "Ra," as having more or less the same significance as "Aten." "The doctrine," as the new dogmas were called in inscriptions at Tell el Amarna, was regarded as so entirely a matter of home politics in Egypt, that the officials of Syria and Palestine-all foreigners-do not seem to have received any formal information regarding it. Most of them continue to refer to Amon in perfect innocence, and only a few who were better informed began rather later to take the change into account. Thus Yitia of Ashkelon, Pu-Adda of Wurza, and a certain Addudaian correct the name of the Egyptian commissioner "Amanappa" into "Rianappa." Abimilki of Tyre apparently even tried to give himself out as one initiated into "the doctrine," and to represent his city as a servant of Aten. If this were the case he must have received a severe rebuff, for after his one attempt he falls back into the old style. Neither the royal nor the national pride of Egypt would suffer any such familiarities.

The new capital received the significant name of "Akhet-Aten" ("Horizon of the Sun") and was solemnly consecrated long before it was half finished.

The widow of Amenophis III., the queen-mother Teye, came occasionally to visit the new capital, and was received with all honour; evidently she had paid timely respect to her son's opinions. How far the Aten dogma represented real progress in religious thought can be gathered only from the contents of a few hymns remaining on the walls of some of the tombs.

In these the expression of devout feeling seems to have become richer and more spontaneous, and the monotheistic tendency is evident. This characteristic, however, may often be observed by a sympathetic reader in the hymns to Amon, and even to less important deities: the deity adopted as a special object of worship by any individual is always favourably represented by him. The Aten dogma, being based on natural phenomena and not on mythology, was, of course, heretical.

Those of his officials who had accepted "the doctrine" were regarded by Akhenaten as deserving men, and on this ground alone, Ai, called Haya in the Amarna letters, received golden honours to the full. This Haya, who was ent.i.tled "beloved royal scribe," was probably a secretary of state, and was once sent as a special amba.s.sador to Babylonia. Dudu occupied another important post; Amanappa, who has already been mentioned, seems from a letter written by him to Rib-Addi of Gebal, to have been a commander-in-chief. Hani, Salma, Paura, Pahamnata, Hatib Maya, Shuta, Hamashni, and Zitana all appear as the bearers of royal commissions in Syrian territory. An official named Shakhshi receives instruction as to the conducting of a royal caravan. But to the Asiatic va.s.sals the most important office of all was the governorship of Lower Egypt, the country called "Yarimuta," an office filled at this time by Yanhamu. The letters afford abundant evidence that any va.s.sal who had incurred Yanhamu's enmity must walk warily. The minister of the king of Alashia, though his equal in rank, sent gifts to this dangerous man, who had hara.s.sed merchants of Alashia by demanding from them illegal dues. Rib-Addi of Gebal lost land and throne, in spite of the countenance of Amanappa, because such was Yanhamu's pleasure; and of Milki-El of Gath he made a severe example, to which we shall refer later.

On the whole, the Asiatic provinces enjoyed self-government under the supremacy of Egypt, and the disadvantages of this condition of things are revealed in numerous letters. These end almost invariably with a request to the king to come in person to the aid of his distressed va.s.sals, or at least to send troops. Sometimes this was done, but usually such expeditions seem to have been undertaken with inadequate forces and seldom resulted in permanent peace. The native princes, chiefs, and village headmen were perpetually struggling with each other. They made alliances among themselves, or they entered into secret treaties with neighbouring states and afterwards brazenly denied them. This wretched state of affairs may be traced to two princ.i.p.al causes-the tribute question and the immigration of Bedawn tribes.

The king was not to be trifled with when tribute was overdue. The most valid excuses-loss of territory, war, failure of the harvest-were received with a suspicion doubtless justified in general but which must have caused much hardship in individual cases. The ordinary tribute was fixed, as well as the regular subsidy for royal troops and the force which had to be raised in emergencies. But the gifts-such as female slaves-which must needs be sent not only to the courtiers but even to the king himself, added enormously to the burden, so much so that to the poorer chiefs a summons from Egypt to appear in person meant little less than ruin.

Resistance to it was so surely to be counted on that such a summons was often kept in the background more as a threat than anything else. Now and then petty chiefs in Palestine and Syria withheld their bushels of corn, their three oxen or their twenty sheep; or perhaps they were so sparing of bakshsh that the tribute itself was swallowed up and vanished entirely from the accounts. It was scarcely possible to take costly measures to punish such delinquents, so the business was turned over to some kind neighbour of the recalcitrant chief, and a little war was soon fairly ablaze. But when direct commands of royal amba.s.sadors were treated as of doubtful authenticity, it was hardly likely that the authority placed in the hands of an equal would meet with much respect. Both leaders received reinforcements; a third intervened at a moment favourable to himself; many and often very remote quarrels broke out, and when at length the royal commissioners hurried upon the scene it was hard for them to say whether or not the original sentence had been executed. Certainly most of the property of the original offenders had been largely lost or destroyed, but the plunder had crumbled away in pa.s.sing through countless hands, and the royal official might seek it from Dan to Beersheba, or farther, but in vain. Out of the first difficulty a dozen others had arisen, till the suzerain seized upon his dues by force, yet without leaving peace behind him. The tablets are full of references to these complicated struggles, which it is not always possible to follow in detail.

Additional confusion was caused by the immigration of Bedawn tribes. In the north the nomadic Sutu, in the south the Habiri pressed forward and encroached upon Egyptian territory. It is evident that this further pressure was calculated to bring matters to a crisis, for, like the tribute, it affected pre-eminently the va.s.sal chiefs and tribes. We find the Habiri especially in the very act of ruining some of these petty princes, others of whom preferred to make treaties with their unwelcome guests, though this indeed was apparently in secret only. But the Sutu reached the domains of more powerful va.s.sals, and by two of these, Aziru and Namjauza, were openly taken into pay. Obviously such alliances with land-seeking plunderers could only prolong and embitter the strife. In Palestine, no doubt, peace as regards Egypt would soon have been restored had not the Habiri proceeded to seize certain strongholds, which they used as centres for further expeditions, thus involving the settled inhabitants in wider quarrels. What with the help of the Bedawin, and the universal unrest any ambitious va.s.sal of Egypt must at length have seen a tempting prospect of establishing an independent kingdom, if only he could deceive the Egyptian Government long enough as to his intentions, and delay or thwart any measures that might be taken against him.

Certainly the government of Pharaoh did not lack for watchfulness and was well, if not too well, served in the matter of information. But in the face of perpetual complaints and counter-complaints, entreaties for help and what were for the most part incredible a.s.surances of everlasting fidelity, there was no course for the king and his councillors to take but either to order a military expedition on a large scale, or to turn a sceptical ear to all alike and confine their attention simply to the tribute. Pride and weakness combined led them to take the dangerous middle course and send inadequate bodies of men singly into the disturbed districts. A certain amount of success attended the policy; the king's Nubian "Pidati" were dreaded from of old, and his mercenaries, the Shirtani, were looked upon as invincible. When it was a mere question of hundreds in the field against hundreds, the appearance of a company, or of a few troops, restored peace for a time, but serious and aggravated hostilities between ma.s.ses of rebels could not always be checked by such small numbers, and it was a severe blow to the prestige of the Shirtani when they were defeated at Gebal by the Sutu.

The knowledge that Egypt was far away, and that the Son of the Sun was highly exalted, led the chiefs and officials in Syria and Canaan to deeds of open defiance of their suzerain. Amba.s.sadors from foreign states were robbed in pa.s.sing on their journey to Egypt, caravans were plundered, and gifts sent to Pharaoh were intercepted. All this notwithstanding, still the stream of rhetorical devotion flowed on in the letters.

III. LETTERS FROM ASIATIC KINGS.

Akhenaten had taken with him to the new capital part of the archives of his father. With few exceptions, it is not from the letters of va.s.sals that we learn this, for these, as a rule, are addressed simply "To the King." The foreign sovereigns, however, almost always addressed the Pharaoh by his prenomen. Thus neither "Amenhetep" nor "Akhenaten" appears in the Tell el Amarna letters, but always "Nimmuria" (_i.e._, Neb-maat-Ra) for Amenophis III. and "Napkhuria" (_i.e._, Nefer-khepru-Ra) for Akhenaten. Dating there was none in correspondence of that time and hence these addresses are of great chronological importance.

Four communications to "Nimmuria" from the Babylonian ruler Kadashman-Bel (at first incorrectly read Kallima-Sin) are among the most important in this respect. The writer calls his land Karduniash, a name for Babylonia used by the a.s.syrians after the native employment of it had long ceased.

Kadashman-Bel himself belonged to the house of the Ka.s.site chiefs, who, about two hundred and fifty years previously, had invaded and conquered Babylonia, but who afterwards fully adopted Babylonian manners and customs. It is at once apparent that Nimmuria and Kadashman-Bel approach each other as equals. The Egyptian, however, was supposed to possess one very precious thing in superfluity, namely, gold; for at that time the gold mines of Nubia were in good working. The Babylonian letters, therefore, seldom failed to contain a hint that the king desired some of the precious metal, sometimes as a return gift for rich presents he had given the Egyptian, sometimes as temple-offerings, or as a dowry.

Matrimonial alliances were the princ.i.p.al means by which a ruler kept on good terms with neighbouring princes, and Oriental polygamy allowed a great deal to be done in that line. It is noticeable that the claim made by the Egyptian king to divine honours soon began to cause little difficulties in diplomatic intercourse. Not that "the Son of the Sun"

claimed adoration from his royal compeers: that was expected from his subjects only. But he showed the greatest reluctance to give away a daughter to any foreign king. Moreover, the fact must not be overlooked that it was precisely in the XVIIIth Dynasty that brothers and sisters of the royal house so frequently intermarried, a custom afterwards affected by the Ptolemies and implying simply that the royal race of the Pharaohs being emphatically divine was therefore essentially exalted above the world in general. According to this flattering fiction there could be no equal union for a king of Egypt except with his own sister. No such marriage seems to have been made by Nimmuria, but, as if in amends for that, he worshipped, as above stated, his own divine image. We need not wonder, then, that he regarded his children as divine manifestations and hesitated to bestow them in marriage.

Kadashman-Bel seems to have thoroughly appreciated this little weakness, and no doubt the mortal G.o.ds on the Nile were a subject for mockery at the Courts of Western Asia, even in those days. Thus, a remark of Nimmuria's to the effect that no princess had ever been given away from Egypt is answered with delightful dryness:

"Why so? A king art thou, and canst do according to thy will. If thou give her, who shall say anything against it? I wrote before, 'Send, at least, a beautiful woman.' Who is there to say that she is not a king's daughter? If thou wilt not do this, thou hast no regard for our brotherhood and friendship."

Kadashman-Bel threatened that he in his turn would hesitate to give his daughter in marriage, and would make similar evasive excuses. At last, however, the negotiations came to the desired conclusion, and for a time gifts flowed more freely on both sides.

Valuable, though in many respects puzzling, is a large tablet containing a letter of Nimmuria to Kadashman-Bel. Possibly it may have been kept as a copy, and in that case it must belong to the early part of the correspondence. More probably however, the letter is an original which came back "undelivered" to Egypt, the addressee having died in the meantime. Kadashman-Bel had complained that his sister, who had been given by his father in marriage to the Egyptian, had subsequently never once been seen by any Babylonian amba.s.sadors. Certainly a woman in royal garb had been pointed out, but not one of them had recognised her as their own princess. "Who knows that it was not some beggar's daughter, a Gagaian, or a maiden of Hanirabbat or Ugarit whom my messengers saw?" Then Nimmuria took up the tale, and complained that Kadashman-Bel sent only amba.s.sadors who had never frequented his father's Court, and were moreover of adverse bias. "Send a _kamiru_" (evidently a eunuch is meant) "who knows thy sister." Further misunderstandings come under discussion, from which it is evident that the general situation between the two princes was very much strained.

King Tushratta of Mitani was a phenomenon in his way. In Egyptian inscriptions his kingdom is called Naharina-_i.e._, "Mesopotamia." One of his tablets bears the following official memorandum, written in red ink and in hieratic: