The Treasury of Ancient Egypt Part 10

(Wm. Blackwood & Sons, 1910.)]

In January 1907 the excavations in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, which are being conducted each year by Mr Davis, brought to light the entrance of a tomb which, by its style, appeared to be that of a royal personage of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The Valley lies behind the cliffs which form the western boundary of Thebes, and is approached by a long winding road running between the rocks and rugged hills of the Lybian desert. Here the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth to the XXth Dynasties were buried in large sepulchres cut into the sides of the hills; and the present excavations have for their object the removal of the _debris_ which has collected at the foot of these hills, in order that the tombs hidden beneath may be revealed. About sixty tombs are now open, some of which were already known to Greek and Roman travellers; and there are probably not more than two or three still to be discovered.

When this new tomb-entrance was uncovered I was at once notified, and proceeded with all despatch to the Valley. It was not long before we were able to enter the tomb. A rough stairway led down into the hillside, bringing us to the mouth of a pa.s.sage which was entirely blocked by a wall of built stones. On removing this wall we found ourselves in a small pa.s.sage, descending at a sharp incline to a chamber which could be seen a few yards farther on. Instead of this pa.s.sage being free from _debris_, however, as we had expected on finding the entrance-wall intact, it was partly filled with fallen stones which seemed to be the ruins of an earlier entrance-wall. On top of this heap of stones lay one of the sides of a large funeral shrine, almost entirely blocking the pa.s.sage. This shrine, as we later saw, was in the form of a great box-like sarcophagus, made of cedar-wood covered with gold, and it had been intended as an outer covering for the coffin of the deceased person. It was, however, not put together: three sides of it were leaning against the walls of the burial-chamber, and the fourth was here in the pa.s.sage. Either it was never built up, or else it was in process of being taken out of the tomb again when the work was abandoned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PL. XVIII. The entrance of the tomb of Queen Tiy, with Egyptian policeman standing beside it. On the left is the later tomb of Rameses X.]

[_Photo by R. Paul._

To pa.s.s this portion of the shrine which lay in the pa.s.sage without doing it damage was no easy matter. We could not venture to move it, as the wood was rotten; and indeed, for over a year it remained in its original position. We therefore made a bridge of planks within a few inches of the low roof, and on this we wriggled ourselves across into the unenc.u.mbered pa.s.sage beyond. In the funeral-chamber, besides the other portions of the shrine, we found at one corner a splendid coffin, in the usual form of a rec.u.mbent figure, inlaid in a dazzling manner with rare stones and coloured gla.s.s. The coffin had originally lain upon a wooden bier, in the form of a lion-legged couch; but this had collapsed and the mummy had fallen to the ground, the lid of the coffin being partly thrown off by the fall, thus exposing the head and feet of the body, from which the bandages had decayed and fallen off. In the powerful glare of the electric light which we carried, the bare skull, with a golden vulture upon it, could be seen protruding from the remains of the linen bandages and from the sheets of flexible gold-foil in which, as we afterwards found, the whole body was wrapped. The inscription on the coffin, the letters of which were made of rare stones, gave the t.i.tles of Akhnaton, "the beautiful child of the Sun"; but turning to the shrine we found other inscriptions stating that King Akhnaton had made it for his mother, Queen Tiy, and thus no immediate reply could be given to those at the mouth of the tomb who called to us to know which of the Pharaoh's of Egypt had been found.

In a recess in the wall above the body there stood four alabaster "canopy" jars, each with a lid exquisitely sculptured in the form of a human head. In another corner there was a box containing many little toilet vases and utensils of porcelain. A few alabaster vases and other objects were lying in various parts of the chamber, arranged in some sort of rough order.

Nothing, of course, could yet be touched, and for several days, during the lengthy process of photographing and recording the contents of the tomb _in situ_, no further information could be obtained as to the ident.i.ty of the owner of the tomb. The shrine was certainly made for Queen Tiy, and so too were the toilet utensils, judging by an inscription upon one of them which gave the names of Tiy and her husband, King Amenhotep III., the parents of Akhnaton. It was, therefore, not a surprise when a pa.s.sing doctor declared the much broken bones to be those of a woman--that is to say, those of Queen Tiy. For reasons which will presently become apparent, it had been difficult to believe that Akhnaton could have been buried in this Valley, and one was very ready to suppose that the coffin bearing his name had but been given by him to his mother.

The important discovery was now announced, and considerable interest and excitement. At the end of the winter the various archaeologists departed to their several countries, and it fell to me to despatch the antiquities to the Cairo Museum, and to send the bones, soaked in wax to prevent their breakage, to Dr Elliot Smith, to be examined by that eminent authority. It may be imagined that my surprise was considerable when I received a letter from him reading--"Are you sure that the bones you sent me are those which were found in the tomb? Instead of the bones of an old woman, you have sent me those of a young man. Surely there is some mistake."

There was, however, no mistake. Dr Elliot Smith later informed me that the bones were those of a young man of about twenty-eight years of age, and at first this description did not seem to tally with that of Akhnaton, who was always thought to have been a man of middle age. But there is now no possibility of doubt that the coffin and mummy were those of this extraordinary Pharaoh, although the tomb and funeral furniture belonged to Queen Tiy. Dr Elliot Smith's decision was, of course, somewhat disconcerting to those who had written of the mortal remains of the great Queen; but it is difficult to speak of Tiy without also referring to her famous son Akhnaton, and in these articles he had received full mention.

About the year B.C. 1500 the throne of Egypt fell to the young brother of Queen Hatshepsut, Thutmosis III., and under his vigorous rule the country rose to a height of power never again equalled. Amenhotep II.

succeeded to an empire which extended from the Sudan to the Euphrates and to the Greek Islands; and when he died he left these great possessions almost intact to his son, Thutmosis IV., the grandfather of Akhnaton. It is important to notice the chronology of this period. The mummy of Thutmosis IV. has been shown by Dr Elliot Smith to be that of a man of not more than twenty-six years of age; but we know that his son Amenhotep III. was old enough to hunt lions at about the time of his father's death, and that he was already married to Queen Tiy a year later. Thus one must suppose that Thutmosis IV. was a father at the age of thirteen or fourteen, and that Amenhotep III. was married to Tiy at about the same age. The wife of Thutmosis IV. was probably a Syrian princess, and it must have been during her regency that Amenhotep III.

married Tiy, who was not of royal blood. Amenhotep and Tiy introduced into Egypt the luxuries of Asia; and during their brilliant reign the Nile Valley was more open to Syrian influence than it had ever been before. The language of Babylon was perhaps the Court tongue, and the correspondence was written in cuneiform instead of in the hieratic script of Egypt. Amenhotep III., as has been said, was probably partly Asiatic; and there is, perhaps, some reason to suppose that Yuaa, the father of Queen Tiy, was also a Syrian. One has, therefore, to picture the Egyptian Court at this time as being saturated with foreign ideas, which clashed with those of the orthodox Egyptians.

Queen Tiy bore several children to the King; but it was not until they had reigned over twenty years that a son and heir was born, whom they named Amenhotep, that being changed later to Akhnaton. It is probable that he first saw the light in the royal palace at Thebes, which was situated on the edge of the desert at the foot of the western hills. It was an extensive and roomy structure, lightly built and gaily decorated.

The ceiling and pavements of its halls were fantastically painted with scenes of animal life: wild cattle ran through reedy swamps beneath one's feet, and many-coloured fish swam in the water; while overhead flights of pigeons, white against a blue sky, pa.s.sed across the hall, and the wild duck hastened towards the open cas.e.m.e.nts. Through curtained doorways one might obtain glimpses of a garden planted with flowers foreign to Egypt; and on the east of the palace the King had made a great pleasure-lake for the Queen, surrounded by the trees of Asia.

Here, floating in her golden barge, which was named _Aton-gleams_, the Queen might look westwards over the tree-tops to the splendid Theban hills towering above the palace, and eastwards to the green valley of the Nile and the three great limestone hills beyond. Amenhotep III. has been rightly called the "Magnificent," and one may well believe that his son Akhnaton was born to the sound of music and to the clink of golden wine-cups. Fragments of countless thousands of wine-jars and blue fayence drinking-vessels have been found in the ruins of the palace; and contemporary objects and paintings show us some of the exquisitely wrought bowls of gold and silver which must have graced the royal tables, and the charming toilet utensils which were to be found in the sleeping apartments.

While the luxurious Court rejoiced at the birth of this Egypto-Asiatic prince, one feels that the ancient priesthood of Amon-Ra must have stood aloof, and must have looked askance at the baby who was destined one day to be their master. This priesthood was perhaps the proudest and most conservative community which conservative Egypt ever produced. It demanded implicit obedience to its stiff and ancient conventions, and it refused to recognise the growing tendency towards religious speculation.

One of the great G.o.ds of Syria was Aton, the G.o.d of the sun; and his recognition at the Theban Court was a source of constant irritation to the ministers of Amon-Ra.

Probably they would have taken stronger measures to resist this foreign G.o.d had it not been for the fact that Atum of Heliopolis, an ancient G.o.d of Egypt, was on the one hand closely akin to Ra, the a.s.sociated deity with Amon, and on the other hand to Aton of Syria. Thus Aton might be regarded merely as another name for Ra or Amon-Ra; but the danger to the old _regime_ lay in the fact that with the worship of Aton there went a certain amount of freethought. The sun and its warm rays were the heritage of all mankind; and the speculative mind of the Asiatic, always in advance of the less imaginative Egyptian, had not failed to collect to the Aton-worship a number of semi-philosophical teachings far broader than the strict doctrines of Amon-Ra could tolerate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PL. XIX. Toilet-spoons of carved wood, discovered in tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty. That on the right has a movable lid.

--CAIRO MUSEUM.]

[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._

There is much reason to suppose that Queen Tiy was the prime factor in the new movement. It may, perhaps, be worth noting that her father was a priest of the Egyptian G.o.d Min, who corresponded to the North Syrian Aton in his capacity as a G.o.d of vegetation; and she may have imbibed something of the broader doctrines from him. It is the barge upon _her_ pleasure-lake which is called _Aton-gleams_, and it is _her_ private artist who is responsible for one of the first examples of the new style of art which begins to appear at this period. Egyptian art was bound down by conventions jealously guarded by the priesthood, and the slight tendency to break away from these, which now becomes apparent, is another sign of the broadening of thought under the reign of Amenhotep III. and Tiy.

King Amenhotep III. does not seem to have been a man of strong character, and in the changes which took place at this time he does not appear to have taken so very large a part. He always showed the most profound respect for, and devotion to, his Queen; and one is inclined to regard him as a tool in her hands. According to some accounts he reigned only thirty years, but there are contemporary monuments dated in his thirty-sixth year, and it seems probable that for the last few years he was reigning only in name, and that in reality his ministers, under the regency of Queen Tiy, governed the land. Amenhotep III. was perhaps during his last years insane or stricken with some paralytic disease, for we read of an Asiatic monarch sending a miracle-working image to Egypt, apparently for the purpose of attempting to cure him. It must have been during these six years of absolute power, while Akhnaton was a boy, that the Queen pushed forward her reforms and encouraged the breaking down of the old traditions, especially those relating to the worship of Amon-Ra.

Amenhotep III. died in about the forty-ninth year of his age, after a total reign of thirty-six years; and Akhnaton, who still bore the name of Amenhotep, ascended the throne. One must picture him now as an enthusiastic boy, filled with the new thought of the age, and burning to a.s.sert the broad doctrines which he had learned from his mother and her friends, in defiance of the priests of Amon-Ra. He was already married to a Syrian named Nefert.i.ti, and certainly before he was fifteen years of age he was the father of two daughters.

The new Pharaoh's first move, under the guidance of Tiy, was to proclaim Aton the only true G.o.d, and to name himself high priest of that deity.

He then began to build a temple dedicated to Aton at Karnak; but it must have been distasteful to observe how overshadowed and dwarfed was this new temple by the mighty buildings in honour of the older G.o.ds which stood there. Moreover, there must have been very serious opposition to the new religion in Thebes, where Amon had ruled for so many centuries unchallenged. In whatever direction he looked he was confronted with some evidence of the worship of Amon-Ra: he might proclaim Aton to be the only G.o.d, but Amon and a hundred other deities stared down at him from every temple wall. He and his advisers, therefore, decided to abandon Thebes altogether and to found a new capital elsewhere.

Akhnaton selected a site for the new city on the west bank of the river, at a point now named El Amarna, about 160 miles above Cairo. Here the hills recede from the river, forming a bay about three miles deep and five long; and in this bay the young Pharaoh decided to build his capital, which was named "Horizon of Aton." With feverish speed the new buildings were erected. A palace even more beautiful than that of his parents at Thebes was prepared for him; a splendid temple dedicated to Aton was set up amidst a garden of rare trees and brilliant flowers; villas for his n.o.bles were erected, and streets were laid out. Queen Tiy, who seems to have continued to live at Thebes, often came down to El Amarna to visit her son; but it seems to have been at his own wish rather than at her advice that he now took the important step which set the seal of his religion upon his life.

Around the bay of El Amarna, on the cliffs which shut it off so securely, the King caused landmarks to be made at intervals, and on these he inscribed an oath which some have interpreted to mean that he would never again leave his new city. He would remain, like the Pope in the Vatican, for the rest of his days within the limits of this bay; and, rather than be distracted by the cares of state and the worries of empire, he would shut himself up with his G.o.d and would devote his life to his religion. He was but a youth still, and, to his inexperienced mind, this oath seemed nothing; nor in his brief life does it seem that he broke it, though at times he must have longed to visit his domains.

The religion which this boy, who now called himself Akhnaton, "The Glory of Aton," taught was by no means the simple worship of the sun. It was, without question, the most enlightened religion which the world at that time had ever known. The young priest-king called upon mankind to worship the unknown power which is behind the sun, that power of which the brilliant sun was the visible symbol, and which might be discerned in the fertilising warmth of the sun's rays. Aton was originally the actual sun's disk; but Akhnaton called his G.o.d "Heat which is in Aton,"

and thus drew the eyes of his followers towards a Force far more intangible and distant than the dazzling orb to which they bowed down.

Akhnaton's G.o.d was the force which created the sun, the something which penetrated to this earth in the sun's heat and caused the vegetation to grow.

Amon-Ra and the G.o.ds of Egypt were for the most part but deified mortals, endued with monstrous, though limited, power, and still having around them traditions of exaggerated human deeds. Others had their origin in natural phenomena--the wind, the Nile, the sky, and so on. All were terrific, revengeful, and able to be moved by human emotions. But Akhnaton's G.o.d was the intangible and yet ever-present Father of mankind, made manifest in sunshine. The youthful High Priest called upon his followers to search for their G.o.d not in the confusion of battle or behind the smoke of human sacrifices, but amidst the flowers and trees, amidst the wild duck and the fishes. He preached an enlightened nature-study; he was perhaps the first apostle of the Simple Life. He strove to break down conventional religion, and ceaselessly urged his people to worship in Truth, simply, without an excess of ceremonial.

While the elder G.o.ds had been manifest in natural convulsions and in the more awful incidents of life, Akhnaton's kindly G.o.d could be seen in the chick which broke out of its egg, in the wind which filled the sails of the ships, in the fish which leapt from the water. Aton was the joy which caused the young sheep "to dance upon their feet," and the birds to "flutter in their marshes." He was the G.o.d of the simple pleasures of life, and Truth was the watchword of his followers.

It may be understood how the boy longed for truth in all things when one remembers the thousand exaggerated conventions of Egyptian life at this time. Court etiquette had developed to a degree which rendered life to the Pharaoh an endless round of unnatural poses of mind and body. In the preaching of his doctrine of truth and simplicity, Akhnaton did not fail to call upon his subjects to regard their Pharaoh not as a G.o.d but as a man. It was usual for the Pharaoh to keep aloof from his people: Akhnaton was to be found in their midst. The Court demanded that their lord should drive in solitary state through the city: Akhnaton sat in his chariot with his wife and children, and allowed the artist to represent him joking with his little daughter, who has mischievously poked the horses with a stick. In representing the Pharaoh, the artist was expected to draw him in some conventional att.i.tude of dignity: Akhnaton insisted upon being shown in all manner of natural att.i.tudes--now leaning languidly upon a staff, now nursing his children, now caressing his wife.

As has been said, one of the first artists to break away from the ancient conventions was in the service of Queen Tiy, and was probably under her influence. But in the radical change in the art which took place, Akhnaton is definitely stated to have been the leader, and the new school acknowledge that they were taught by the King. The new art is extraordinary, and it must be owned that its merit lies rather in its originality than in its beauty. An attempt is made to do away with the prescribed att.i.tudes and the strict proportions, and to portray any one individual with his natural defects. Some of the sculptured heads, however, which have come down to us, and notably the four "canopic"

heads found in this tomb, are of wonderful beauty, and have no trace of traditional mannerisms, though they are highly idealised. The King's desire for light-heartedness led him to encourage the use of bright colours and gay decorations in the palace. Some of the ceiling and pavement paintings are of great beauty, while the walls and pillars inlaid with coloured stones must have given a brilliancy to the halls unequalled in Egypt at any previous time.

The group of n.o.bles who formed the King's Court had all sacrificed much in coming to the new capital. Their estates around Thebes had been left, their houses abandoned, and the tombs which were in process of being made for them in the Theban hills had been rendered useless. The King, therefore, showered favours upon them, and at his expense built their houses and constructed sepulchres for them. It is on the walls of these tombs that one obtains the main portion of one's information regarding the teachings of this wonderful youth, who was now growing into manhood. Here are inscribed those beautiful hymns to Aton which rank so high in ancient literature. It is unfortunate that s.p.a.ce does not allow more than a few extracts from the hymns to be quoted here; but something of their beauty may be realised from these. (Professor Breasted's translation.)

"Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of heaven, O living Aton, Beginning of life!

When thou risest in the eastern horizon of heaven Thou fillest every land with thy beauty."

"Though thou art afar, thy rays are on earth; Though thou art on high, thy footprints are the day."

"When thou settest in the western horizon of heaven The world is in darkness like the dead.

Men sleep in their chambers, their heads are wrapt up.

Every lion cometh forth from his den.

The serpents, they sting.

Darkness reigns, the world is in silence: He that made them has gone to rest in his horizon."

"Bright is the earth when thou risest in the horizon ...

When thou sendest forth thy rays The two lands of Egypt are in daily festivity, Awake and standing upon their feet, For thou hast raised them up.

Their limbs bathed, they take their clothing, Their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning.

Then in all the world they do their work."

"All cattle rest upon their herbage, all trees and plants flourish.

The birds flutter in their marshes, their wings uplifted in adoration to thee.

All the sheep dance upon their feet, All winged things fly; they live when thou hast shone upon them."

"The barques sail up-stream and down-stream alike,...

The fish in the river leap up before thee, And thy rays are in the midst of the great sea."

"Thou art he who createst the man-child in woman ...

Who giveth life to the son in the body of his mother; Who soothest him that he may not weep, A nurse even in the womb."

"When the chick crieth in the egg-sh.e.l.l, Thou givest him breath therein to preserve him alive ...

He cometh forth from the egg, to chirp with all his might.

He runneth about upon his two feet."

"How manifold are all thy works!