EGYPTIAN MYTH AND LEGEND

With Historical Narrative, Notes on Race Problems, Comparative Beliefs, etc.

by

Donald Mackenzie

Gresham Publishing Co., London

[1907]

CHAPTER XXVIII

Egypt and the Hebrew Monarchy

Isaiah foretells Egypt's Fall--The Priest Kings--Rise of the Libyans--Philistines and Hebrews--A "Corner" in Iron--Saul and David--Solomon's Alliance with Pharaoh Sheshonk (Shisak)--Jeroboam's Revolt--Israel Worships the "Lady of Heaven"--The Ethiopian Kings--Assyria's Great Empire--The "Ten Lost Tribes"--Pharaoh Taharka and Hezekiah--Assyrian Army destroyed--Isaiah a Great Statesman--Assyrian Conquest of Egypt--Sack of Thebes.

"THE burden of Egypt. Behold, the Lord rideth upon a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt: and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it. And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom. And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof. . . . The brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up; the reeds and flags shall wither. The paper reeds 1 by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and everything sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more. The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish. Moreover, they that work in fine flax, and they, that weave networks, shall be confounded. And they shall be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish" (Isaiah, xix).

From the death of Rameses III to the period of Isaiah, the great Hebrew prophet and politician, we must pass in review about five centuries of turbulence and change. The last great Pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty was followed by nine weak rulers bearing the name of Rameses. Little is known, or is worth knowing, regarding them. They were but puppets in the hands of the powerful priests of Amon-ra, who had become the commanders of the army, the chief treasurers, grand viziers, and high judges of Egypt. The Oracle of Amon-ra confirmed all their doings. In the end the great Theban god became the rival of Osiris as Judge of the Dead, and the high priest, Herihor, thrust aside Rameses XII and seized the crown. Another priest king reigned at Tanis (Zoan) in the Delta.

Egypt was thrown into confusion under ecclesiastical rule, and land fell rapidly in value. Robbery on the highways and especially in tombs became a recognized profession, and corrupt officials shared in the spoils; the mummies of great Pharaohs, including Sed I and Rameses II, had to be taken by pious worshippers from the sepulchral chambers and concealed from the plunderers. No buildings were erected, and many great temples, including the Ramesseum, fell into disrepair.

After the passing of an obscure and inglorious century we find that the mingled tribes of Libyans and their western neighbours and conquerors, the Meshwesh, had poured into the Delta in increasing numbers, and penetrated as far south as Heracleopolis. Egypt was powerless in Palestine. The Philistines had moved southward, and for a period were overlords of the Hebrews. They had introduced iron) and restricted its use among their neighbours, as is made evident in the Bible.

Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel: for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears; but all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock. Yet they had a file for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and for the forks, and for the axes, And to sharpen the goads. So it came to pass in the day of battle, that there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people that were with Saul and Jonathan; but with Saul and with Jonathan his son was there found (1 Samuel, xiii, 19-22).

Thus the Hebrews at the very beginning of their history as a nation had experience of a commercial "corner", which developed their business instincts, no doubt. Their teachers were Europeans who represented one of the world's oldest civilizations. 2 The oppression which they endured welded together the various tribes, and under Saul the Hebrews made common cause against the Philistines. When handsome, red-cheeked David, 3 who had probably a foreign strain in his blood, had consolidated Judah and Israel, the dominance of the Cretan settlers came to an end; they were restricted to the sea coast, and they ceased to have a monopoly of iron. Solomon, the chosen of the priests, was supported by a strong army, which included mercenaries, and became a great and powerful monarch, who emulated the splendour of the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty. His supremacy in southern Syria was secured by an alliance with Egypt.

And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own house, and the house of the Lord, and the wall of Jerusalem round about (1 Kings, iii, 1).

The Pharaoh with whom Solomon had come to an understanding was Sheshonk (Shishak), a vigorous ruler and successful military leader, who established peace in his kingdom. He secured his Delta frontier from attack by laying a firm hand on the territory between Egypt and the "buffer state" of the Hebrews. In time we read that he had "taken Gezer" (an independent city state) "and burnt it with fire, and slain the Canaanites that dwelt in the city, and given it for a present unto his daughter, Solomon's wife" (1 Kings, ix, 16).

Sheshonk was the first king of the Libyan (Twenty-Second) Dynasty, which lasted for about two centuries. He was the descendant of a Meshwesh-Libyan mercenary who had become high priest of Her-shef at Heracleopolis and the commander of the local troops. Under this foreign nobleman and his descendants the nome flourished and became so powerful that Sheshonk was able to control the Delta region, where he allied himself with other Libyan military lords. In the end he married the daughter of the last weak priest king of Tanis, and was proclaimed Pharaoh of Egypt. He made Bubastis his capital, and the local goddess, the cat-headed Bast, became the official deity of the kingdom. Amon was still recognized, but at the expense of other Delta deities who shared in the ascendancy of "the kindly Bast". Sheshonk held nominal sway over Thebes, and appointed his son high priest of Anion-ra, and he was able to extract tribute from Nubia.

Sheshonk's chief need was money, for he had to maintain a strong standing army of mercenaries. He must have cast envious eyes on the wealth which had accumulated in Solomon's kingdom, and, as it proved, was not slow to interfere in its internal affairs when opportunity offered. He extended his hospitality to Jeroboam, the leader of the Israelites who desired to be relieved of the heavy taxes imposed by Solomon. "Solomon sought therefore to kill Jeroboam" (1 Kings, xi, 40). When Rehoboam came to the throne, Jeroboam pleaded on behalf of the oppressed ten tribes of the north, but the new king was advised to say: "My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins". A revolt ensued, and Jeroboam became king of the north, supported, evidently, by Shishak. The golden calf was then worshipped by Jeroboam's subjects; it was probably the symbol of the Hathor-like "Lady of Heaven", whose worship was revived even in Jerusalem, when Jeremiah said: "The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods" (Jeremiah, vii, 18). The religious organization, based upon the worship of the God of Israel, which had been promoted by David, was thus broken up; "there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days" (1 Kings, xiv, 30).

The opportunity afforded for invasion was quickly seized by Sheshonk. According to his own annals, he swept through Palestine, securing great spoils; indeed he claims that his mercenaries penetrated as far north as the River Orontes. It is stated in the Bible that he plundered Jerusalem, and "took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king's house; he even took away all; and he took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made" (1 Kings, xiv, 25-6).

About a century after the death of Sheshonk the power of the royal house is found to have declined; the various hereditary Libyan lords showed but nominal allegiance to the Crown. A rival kingdom had also arisen in the south. When the priest kings were driven from Thebes they founded a theocracy in the Nubian colony, which became known as Ethiopia, and there the Oracle of Amon controlled the affairs of State.

GREAT SEA AND LAND RAID: PHILISTINE PRISONERS

From the bas-relief on the gate of the temple of Rameses III at Medinet Habu

AMON PRESENTING TO SHESHONK LIST OF CITIES CAPTURED IN ISRAEL AND JUDAH

From the bas-relief on the great Temple at Karnak

In time the Ethiopian kingdom became strong enough to control a large part of Upper Egypt, and Thebes was occupied. Then Plankhy, the most capable of all the Ethiopian rulers, extended his conquests until he forced the princes of the north to acknowledge his supremacy.

Piankhy's most serious rival was Tefnekht, prince of Sais, who assembled an army of allies and fought his way southward as far as Thebes. He was driven back by Plankhy, who ultimately swept in triumph to Sais and compelled the submission of Tefnekht and his allies. He did not, however, effect the permanent occupation of Lower Egypt.

Shabaka, the first Pharaoh of the Ethiopian (Twenty-Fifth) Dynasty, ruled over all Egypt, having secured by force of arms the allegiance of the princes, or petty kings, of the north. He is believed to be the Biblical "So, King of Egypt" (2 Kings, xvii, 4). Syria and Palestine had become dependencies of the great Empire of Assyria, which included Babylonia and Mesopotamia and extended into Asia Minor. Shabaka had either dreams of acquiring territory in southern Syria, or desired to have buffer states to protect Egypt against Assyrian invasion, for he entered into an alliance with some of the petty kings. These included King Hoshea of Israel, who, trusting to Egypt's support, "brought no present (tribute) to the King of Assyria as he had done year by year" (2 Kings, xvii, 4). Sargon II of Assyria anticipated the rising, and speedily stamped it out. He had Ilu-bi'-di of Hamath flayed alive; he defeated a weak Egyptian force; and took Hanno, Prince of Gaza, and King Hoshea prisoners. Then he distributed, as he has re-recorded, 27,290 Israelites--"the ten lost tribes"-- between Mesopotamia and the Median highlands. 4 Large numbers of troublesome peoples were drafted from Babylonia into Samaria, where they mingled with the remnants of the tribes which remained. Thus came to an end the kingdom of the northern Hebrews; that of Judah--the kingdom of the Jews--remained in existence for another century and a half.

Taharka, the third and last Ethiopian Pharaoh, whose mother was a negress, is referred to in the Bible as Tirhakah (Isaiah, xxxvii, 9). Like Shabaka, he took an active part in Asian politics, and allied himself with, among others, Lull, King of Tyre, and Hezekiah, King of Judah. Sargon "the later", as he called himself, had been assassinated, and his son, Sennacherib, had to deal with several revolts during the early years of his reign. Ionians had invaded Cilicia, and had to be subdued; many of the prisoners were afterwards sent to Nineveh. Trouble was constantly brewing in Babylonia, where the supremacy of Assyria was being threatened by a confederacy of Chaldeans, Elamites, and Aramns; a pretender even arose in Babylon, and Sennacherib's brother, the governor, was murdered, and the city had to be besieged and captured. This "pretender", Merodach-Baladan, 5 had been concerned in the Egypto-Syrian alliance, and Sennacherib found it necessary to push westward, as soon as he had overrun Chaldea, to deal with the great revolt. He conquered Phnicia, with the exception of Tyre, but King Luli had taken refuge in Cyprus. Hastening southward he scattered an army of allies, which included Pharaoh Taharka's troops, and, having captured a number of cities in Judah, he laid siege to Jerusalem. Hezekiah held out, but, according to the Assyrian account, made terms of peace with the emperor, and afterwards sent great gifts to Nineveh. A later expedition appears to have been regarded as necessary, however, and, according to the Biblical account, it ended disastrously, for Sennacherib's army was destroyed by a pestilence. Isaiah, who was in Jerusalem at the time, said: "Thus saith the Lord . . . Behold I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour and shall return to his own land, and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land" (2 Kings, xix, 7).

And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred and four score and five thousand. . . . So Sennacherib, King of Assyria, departed (2 Kings, xix, 35, 36).

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset was seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved--and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent--the banners alone--
The lances unlifted--the trumpet unblown.

Arid the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentle, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.

Byron.

Isaiah, statesman and scholar, had been no party to the alliance between Egypt and Judah and the other Powers who trusted in the Babylonian Pretender; in fact, he had denounced it at the very outset. He entertained great contempt for the Egyptians. "Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it" (Isaiah, xxxvi, 6) . . . . "The princes of Zoan" (Tanis), he said, "are become fools, and the princes of Noph (Memphis 6 ) are deceived" (Isaiah, xix, 13). He foretold the fall of Tyre and the subjection of Egypt, and admonished the pro-Egyptians of Judah, saying: "Woe to the rebellious children . . . that walk into Egypt . . . to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt" (Isaiah, xxx, 1, 2). "For the Egyptians", he warned Hezekiah, "shall help in vain and to no purpose . . . their strength is to sit still . . . write it before them in a tablet", he added, "and note it in a book" (Isaiah, xxx, 7, 8). He had summed up the situation with characteristic sagacity.

Sennacherib's campaigns paralysed the kingdom of the Jews. Thousands of prisoners were deported, and when peace again prevailed Hezekiah had left only "the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah" (2 Kings, xix, 30).

After Sennacherib was murdered, as the result of a revolt which disturbed Babylon, his son, Assar-haddon, 7 had to deal with another western rising fomented by that scheming Ethiopian Pharaoh Taharka, who was riding speedily on the road to ruin.

About 674 B.C. the young Assyrian emperor conducted a vigorous campaign in Syria, and struck at the root of his imperial troubles by invading Egypt, which he conquered, and divided up between some twenty princes, the chief of whom was the half-Libyan Neche of Sais. Taharka endeavoured to reconquer his kingdom, and Assar-haddon set out with a strong army to deal with him, but died on the march.

A few years later Ashur-banipal, the new Assyrian emperor, defeated Taharka at Memphis. Necho of Sais, who had been intriguing with the Ethiopian king, was pardoned, and appointed chief agent of the emperor in Egypt, which had become an Assyrian province.

Taharka gave no further trouble. When he died, however, his successor, Tanut-amon, King of Ethiopia, endeavoured to wrest Upper and Lower Egypt from the Assyrians. Necho marched southward with a force of Assyrian troops, but was defeated and slain at Memphis. But the triumph of Tanut-amon was shortlived. Ashur-banipal once again entered Egypt and stamped out the last spark of Ethiopian power in that unhappy country. Thebes was captured and plundered, the images of the great gods were carried away to Nineveh, and the temples were despoiled of all their treasure. Half a century later, when Nahum, the Hebrew prophet, foretold the fall of Nineveh, "the bloody city . . . full of lies and robbery . . . the noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots" . . . he referred in his own graphic manner to the disaster which fell upon Thebes at the hands of the vengeful Assyrians.

"Art thou better than populous No (Thebes) that was situate among the rivers", cried the prophet, "that had the waters round about it . . . Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength and it was infinite. . . . Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets; and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains" (Nahum, iii, 8-10).

So the glory departed from Thebes, never again to return. Amon was cast down from his high place, the priesthood was broken up, and the political schemers who escaped the Assyrians found refuge in Ethiopia, where the kings submitted to their rule and became "as clay in the hands of the potter", with the result that the civilization of the Nubian power gradually faded away. Psamtek, who, according to Herodotus, had fled to Syria on the death of his father Necho, became Assyrian governor (Shaknu) in Egypt, and the country was left to settle down in its shame to produce the wherewithal demanded in tribute year by year by the mighty Emperor Ashur-banipal of Assyria.

Footnotes

1 Papyri.
2 "The remnant of the country of Caphtor" (Crete).--Jeremiah, xlvii, 4.
3 "A youth and ruddy and of a fair countenance" (1 Samuel xvii, 42).
4 These tribes were worshippers of the "golden calf". There is no proof that they were not absorbed by the peoples among whom they settled. A good story is told of a well-known archlogist. He was approached by a lady who supports the view that the British are descended from the "ten lost tribes". "I am not an Anglo-Israelite," he said; "I am afraid I am an Anglo-Philistine".
5 He "sent letters and a present to Hezekiah" (Isaiah, xxxix, 1). The shadow of the sundial of Ahaz had gone "ten degrees backward". According to an astronomical calculation there was a partial eclipse of the sun-of the upper part--which was visible at Jerusalem on 11 January, 689, B.C., about 11-30 a.m. (See also a Chronicles, xxxii.)
6 Or Napata, in Ethiopia.
7 Or Esarhaddon

EGYPTIAN MYTH AND LEGEND

With Historical Narrative, Notes on Race Problems, Comparative Beliefs, etc.

by

Donald Mackenzie

Gresham Publishing Co., London

[1907]

CHAPTER XXVII

The Empire of Rameses and the Homeric Age

Sectarian Rivalries--Struggles for Political Ascendancy--New Theology--The Dragon Slayer--Links between Sutekh, Horus, Sigurd, Siegfried, Finn-mac-Coul, Dietrich, and Hercules--Rameses I and the Hittites--Break-up of Mitanni Empire--Seti's Conquests--Wars of Rameses II--Treaty with the Hittites--Pharaoh's Sublime Vanity--Sea Raids by Europeans on Egypt--The Last Strong Pharaoh--The Great Trojan War.

THE Nineteenth Dynasty opens with Rameses I, but no record survives to throw light on his origin, or the political movement which brought him to the throne. He was an elderly man, and does not appear to have been related to Horemheb. When he had reigned for about two years his son Seti was appointed co-regent.

But although history is silent regarding the intrigues of this period, its silence is eloquent. As the king's throne name indicates, he was attached to the cult of Ra, and it is of significance to note that among his other names there is no recognition of Amon.

The history of Egypt is the history of its religion. Its destinies were controlled by its religious cults and by the sects within the cults. Although Ra was fused with Amon, there are indications that rivalries existed not only between Heliopolis and Thebes, but also between the sects in Thebes, where several temples were dedicated to the national god. The theological system which evolved from the beliefs associated with Amon, the old as lunar deity, must have presented many points of difference to those which emanated from Heliopolis, the home of scholars and speculative thinkers. During the Eighteenth Dynasty the priesthood was divided into two great parties: one supported the claims of Queen Hatshepsut, while the other espoused the cause of Thothmes III. It may be that the queen was favoured by the Ra section of the Amon-ra cult, and that her rival was the chosen of the Amon section. The Thothmes III party retained its political ascendancy until Thothmes IV, who worshipped Ra Harmachis, was placed upon the throne, although not the crown prince. It is possible that the situation created by the feuds which appear to have been waged between the rival sects in the priesthood facilitated the religious revolt of Akhenaton, which, it may be inferred, could have been stamped out if the rival sects had presented a united front and made common cause against him.

With the accession of Rameses I we appear to be confronted with the political ascendancy of the Ra section. It is evident that the priests effected the change in the succession to the throne, for the erection was at once undertaken of the great colonnaded hall at Karnak, which was completed by Rameses II. The old Amon party must have been broken up, for the solar attributes of Amon-ra became more and more pronounced as time went on, while lunar worship was associated mainly with Khonsu and the imported moon goddesses of the type of Astarte and the "strange Aphrodite". To this political and religious revolution may be attributed the traditional prejudice against Thothmes III.

The new political party, as its "new theology" suggests, derived its support not only from Heliopolis, but also from half-foreign Tanis in the Delta. Influences from without were evidently at work. Once again, as in the latter half of the Twelfth Dynasty and in Hyksos times, the god Set or Sutekh came into prominence in Egypt. The son of Rameses I, Seti, was a worshipper of Set--not the old Egyptianized devil Set, but the Set who slew the Apep serpent, and was identified with Horus.

The Set of Rameses II, son of Seti I, 1 wore a conical hat like a typical Hittite deity, arid from it was suspended a long rope or pigtail; he was also winged like the Horus sun disk. On a small plaque of glazed steatite this "wonderful deity" is depicted "piercing a serpent with a large spear". The serpent is evidently the storm demon of one of the Corycian caves in Asia Minor--the Typhon of the Greeks, which was slain by the deity identified now with Zeus and now with Hercules. The Greek writers who have dealt with Egyptian religion referred to "the roaring Set" as Typhon also. The god Sutekh of Tanis combined the attributes of the Hittite dragon slayer with those of Horus and Ra.

It is possible that to the fusion of Horus with the dragon slayer of Asia Minor may be traced the origin of Horus as Harpocrates (Her-pe-khred), the child god who touches his lips with an extended finger. The Greeks called him "the god of silence"; Egyptian literature throws no light on his original character. From what we know of Horus of the Osirian legends there is no reason why he should have considered. it necessary to preserve eternal silence.

In a particular type of the dragon-slaying stories of Europe, which may have gone north from Asia Minor with the worshippers of Tarku (Thor or Thunor), the hero--a humanized deity--places his finger in his mouth for a significant reason. After Siegfried killed the dragon he roasted its heart, and when he tasted it he immediately understood the language of birds. Sigurd, the Norse dragon slayer, is depicted with his thumb in his mouth after slaying Fafher. 2 The Highland Finn, the slayer of Black Arky, discovered that he had a tooth of knowledge when he roasted a salmon, and similarly thrust his burnt finger into his mouth. 3 In the Nineteenth-Dynasty fragmentary Egyptian folktale, "Setna and the Magic Book", which has been partially reconstructed by Professor Petrie, 4 Ahura relates: "He gave the book into my hands; and when I read a page of the spells in it, I also enchanted heaven and earth, the mountains and the sea; I also knew what the birds of the sky, the fishes of the deep, and the beasts of the hill all said". The prototype of Ahura in this "wonder tale" may have been Horus as Harpocrates. Ahura, like Sigurd and Siegfried, slays a "dragon" ere he becomes acquainted with the language of birds; it is called "a deathless snake". "He went to the deathless snake, and fought with him, and killed him; but he came to life again, and took a new form. He then fought again with him a second time; but he came to life again, and took a third form. He then cut him in two parts, and put sand between the parts, that he should not appear again" (Petrie). Dietrich von Bern experienced a similar difficulty in slaying Hilde, the giantess, so as to rescue Hildebrand from her clutches, 5 and Hercules was unable to put an end to the Hydra until Iolaus came to his assistance with a torch to prevent the growth of heads after decapitation. 6 Hercules buried the last head in the ground, thus imitating Ahura, who "put sand between the parts" of the "deathless snake". All these versions of a well-developed tale appear to be offshoots of the great Cilician legend of "The War of the Gods". Attached to an insignificant hill cave at Cromarty, in the Scottish Highlands, is the story of the wonders of Typhon's cavern in Sheitandere (Devil's Glen), Western Cilicia. Whether it was imported from Greece, or taken north by the Alpine people, is a problem which does not concern us here.

At the close of the Eighteenth Dynasty the Hittites were pressing southward through Palestine and were even threatening the Egyptian frontier. Indeed, large numbers of their colonists appear to have effected settlement at Tanis, where Sutekh and Astarte had become prominent deities. Rameses I arranged a peace treaty 7 with their king, Sapalul (Shubiluliuma), although he never fought a battle, which suggests that the two men were on friendly terms. The mother of Seti may have been a Hittite or Mitanni princess, the daughter or grandchild of one of the several Egyptian princesses who were given as brides to foreign rulers during the Eighteenth Dynasty. That the kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty were supported by the foreign element in Egypt is suggested by their close association with Tanis, which had become a city of great political importance and the chief residence of the Pharaohs. Thebes tended to become more and more an ecclesiastical capital only.

Seti I was a tall, handsome man of slim build with sharp features and a vigorous and intelligent face. His ostentatious piety had, no doubt, a political motive; all over Egypt his name appears on shrines, and he restored many monuments which suffered during Akhenaton's reign. At Abydos he built a great sanctuary to Osiris, which shows that the god Set whom he worshipped was not the enemy of the ancient deified king, and he had temples erected at Memphis and Heliopolis, while he carried on the work at the great Theban colonnaded hall. He called himself "the sun of Egypt and the moon of all other lands", an indication of the supremacy achieved by the sun cult.

Seti was a dashing and successful soldier. He conducted campaigns against the Libyans on the north and the Nubians in the south, but his notable military successes were achieved in Syria.

A new Hittite king had arisen who either knew not the Pharaoh or regarded him as too powerful a rival; at any rate, the peace was broken. The Hittite overlord was fomenting disturbances in North Syria, and probably also in Palestine, where the rival Semitic tribes were engaged in constant and exhausting conflicts. He had allied himself with the Aramns, who were in possession of great tracts of Mesopotamia, and with invaders from Europe of Aryan speech in the north-west of Asia Minor.

The Hittite Empire had been broken up. In the height of its glory its kings had been overlords of Assyria. Tushratta's great-grandfather had sacked Ashur, and although Tushratta owed allegiance to Egypt he was able to send to Amenhotep III the Nineveh image of Ishtar, a sure indication of his supremacy over that famous city. When the Mitanni power was shattered, the Assyrians, Hittites, and Aramns divided between them the lands held by Tushratta and his Aryan ancestors.

Shubiluliuma was king of the Hittites when Seti scattered hordes of desert robbers who threatened his frontier. He then pressed through war-vexed Palestine with all the vigour and success of Thothmes III. In the Orontes valley he met and defeated an army of Hittites, made a demonstration before Kadesh, and returned in triumph. to Egypt. Seti died in 1292, having reigned for over twenty years.

His son Rameses II, called "The Great" (by his own command), found it necessary to devote the first fifteen of the sixty-seven years of his reign to conducting strenuous military operations chiefly against the Hittites and their allies. A new situation had arisen in Syria, which was being colonized by the surplus population of Asia Minor. The Hittite army followed the Hittite settlers, so that it was no longer possible for the Egyptians to. effect a military occupation of the North Syrian territory, held by Thothmes III and his successors, without waging constant warfare against their powerful northern rival. Rameses II appears, however, to have considered himself strong enough to reconquer the lost sphere of influence for Egypt. As soon as his ambition was realized by Mutallu, the Hittite king, a great army of allies, including Aramns and European raiders, was collected to await the ambitious Pharaoh.

Rameses had operated on the coast in his fourth year, and early in his fifth he advanced through Palestine to the valley of the Orontes. The Hittites and their allies were massed at Kadesh, but the Pharaoh, who trusted the story of two natives whom he captured, believed that they had retreated northward beyond Tunip. This seemed highly probable, because the Egyptian scouts were unable to get into touch with the enemy. But the overconfident Pharaoh was being led into a trap.

The Egyptian army was in four divisions, named Amon, Ra, Ptah, and Sutekh. Rameses was in haste to invest Kadesh, and pressed on with the Amon regiment, followed closely by the Ra regiment. The other two were, when he reached the city, at least a day's march in the rear.

Mutallu, the Hittite king, allowed Rameses to move round Kadesh on the western side with the Amon regiment and take up a position on the north. Meanwhile he sent round the eastern side of the city a force of 2500 charioteers, which fell upon the Ra regiment and cut through it, driving the greater part of it into the camp of Amon. Ere long Rameses found himself surrounded) with only a fragment of his army remaining, for the greater part of the Amon regiment had broken into flight with that of Ra and were scattered towards the north.

It was a desperate situation. But although Rameses was not a great general, he was a brave man, and fortune favoured him. Instead of pressing the attack from the west, the Hittites began to plunder the Egyptian camp. Their eastern wing was weak and was divided by the river from the infantry. Rameses led a strong force of charioteers, and drove this part of the Hittite army into the river. Meanwhile some reinforcements came up and fell upon the Asiatics in the Egyptian camp, slaying them almost to a man. Rameses was then able to collect some of his scattered forces, and he fought desperately against the western wing of the Hittite army until the Ptah regiment came up and drove the enemies of Egypt into the city.

Rameses had achieved a victory, but at a terrible cost. He returned to Egypt without accomplishing the capture of Kadesh, and created for himself a great military reputation by recording his feats of personal valour on temple walls and monuments. A poet who sang his praises declared that when the Pharaoh found himself surrounded, and, of course, "alone", he called upon Ra, whereupon the sun god appeared before him and said: "Alone thou art not, for I, thy father, am beside thee, and my hand is more to thee than hundreds of thousands. I who love the brave am the giver of victory." In one of his inscriptions the Pharaoh compared himself to Baal, god of battle.

Rameses delayed but he did not prevent the ultimate advance of the Hittites. In his subsequent campaigns he was less impetuous, but although he occasionally penetrated far northward, he secured no permanent hold over the territory which Thothmes III and Amenhotep "had won for Egypt. In the end he had to content himself with the overlordship of Palestine and part of Phnicia. Mutalla, the Hittite king, had to deal with a revolt among his allies, especially the Aramns, and was killed, and his brother Khattusil II, 8 who succeeded him, entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with Rameses, probably against Assyria, which had grown powerful and aggressive. The treaty, which was drawn up in 1271 B.C., made reference to previous agreements, but these, unfortunately, have perished; it was signed by the two monarchs, and witnessed by a thousand Egyptian gods and a thousand Hittite gods.

Several years afterwards Khattusil visited Egypt to attend the celebration of the marriage of his daughter to Rameses. He was accompanied by a strong force and brought many gifts. By the great mass of the Egyptians he was regarded as a vassal of the Pharaoh; he is believed to be the prince referred to in the folktale which relates that the image of the god Khonsu was sent from Egypt to cure his afflicted daughter (see Chapter XV).

Rameses was a man of inordinate ambition and sublime vanity. He desired to be known to posterity as the greatest Pharaoh who ever sat upon the throne of Egypt. So he covered the land with his monuments and boastful inscriptions, appropriated the works of his predecessors, and even demolished temples to obtain building material. In Nubia, which had become thoroughly Egyptianized, he erected temples to Amon, Ras and Ptah. The greatest of these is the sublime rock temple at Abu Simbel, which he dedicated to Amon and himself. Beside it is a small temple to Hathor and his queen Nefertari, "whom he loves", as an inscription sets forth. Fronting the Amon temple four gigantic colossi were erected. One of Rameses remains complete; he sits, hands upon knees, gazing contentedly over the desert sands; that of his wife has suffered from falling debris, but survives in a wonderful state of preservation.

At Thebes the Pharaoh erected a large and beautiful temple of victory to Amon-ra, which is known as the Ramesseum, and he completed the great colonnaded hall at Karnak, the vastest structure of its kind the world has ever seen. On the walls of the Ramesseum is the well-known Kadesh battle scene, sculptured in low relief. Rameses is depicted like a giant bending his bow as he drives in his chariot, scattering before him into the River Orontes hordes of Lilliputian Hittites.

But although the name of' Rameses II dominates the Nile from Wady Halfa down to the Delta, we know now that there were greater Pharaohs than he, and, in fact, that he was a man of average ability. His mummy lies in the Cairo museum; he has a haughty aristocratic face and a high curved nose which suggests that he was partly of Hittite descent. He lived until he was nearly a century old. A worshipper of voluptuous Asiatic goddesses, he kept a crowded harem and boasted that he had a hundred sons and a large although uncertain number of daughters.

His successor was Seti Mene-ptah. Apparently Ptah, as well as Set, had risen into prominence, for Rameses had made his favourite son, who predeceased him, the high priest of Memphis. The new king was well up in years when he came to the throne in 1243 B.C. and hastened to establish his fame by despoiling existing temples as his father had done before him. During his reign of ten years Egypt was threatened by a new peril. Europe was in a state of unrest, and hordes of men from "the isles" were pouring into the Delta and allying themselves with the Libyans with purpose to effect conquests and permanent settlement in the land of the Pharaohs. About the same time the Phrygian occupation of the north-western part of Asia Minor was in progress. The Hittite Empire was doomed; it was soon to be broken up into petty states.

The Egyptian raiders appear to have been a confederacy of the old Cretan mariners, who had turned pirates, and the kinsfolk of the peoples who had over run the island kingdom.

AKHENATON, HIS QUEEN, AND THEIR CHILDREN

(The upper panel shows Aton, the solar disk, sustaining and protecting royalty.
The rays terminate in hands, some of which hold the ankh symbols.)

From bas-reliefs in the Berlin Museum

Thothmes II	Rameses II
Rameses III	Seti I

MUMMY HEADS OF NOTABLE PHARAOHS

Included among them were the Shardana 9 and Danauna (? the "Danaoi" of Homer) who were represented among the mercenaries of Pharaoh's army, the Akhaivasha, the Shakalsha, and the Tursha. It is believed that the Akhaivasha were the Achns, the big, blonde, grey-eyed warriors identified with the "Keltoi" of the ancients, who according to the ethnologists were partly of Alpine and partly of Northern descent. It is possible that the Shakalsha were the people who gave their name to Sicily, and that they and the Tursha were kinsmen of the Lycians.

Pharaoh Mene-ptah was thoroughly alarmed, for the invaders penetrated as far as Heliopolis. But the god Ptah appeared to him in a dream and promised victory. Supported by his Shardana and Danauna mercenaries, who had no scruples about attacking their kinsmen, he routed the army of allies, slaying about 9000 men and taking as many prisoners.

A stele at Thebes makes reference to a campaign waged by Mene-ptah in Palestine, where the peoples subdued included the children of Israel.

Although the son of the great Rameses II boasted that he had "united and pacified all lands", Egypt was plunged in anarchy after his death, which occurred in 1215 B.C. Three claimants to the throne followed in succession in ten years, and then a Syrian usurper became the Pharaoh. Once again the feudal lords asserted themselves, and Egypt suffered from famine and constant disorders.

The second king of the Twentieth Dynasty, Rameses III, was the last great Pharaoh of Egypt. In the eighth year of his reign a second strong sea raid occurred; it is dated between 1200 and 1190 B.C. On this occasion the invading allies were reinforced by tribes from Asia Minor and North Syria, which included the Tikkarai, the Muski (? Moschoi of the Greeks), and the Pulishta or Pilesti who were known among Solomon's guards as the Peleshtem. The Pulishta are identified as the Philistines from Crete who gave their name to Palestine, which they occupied along the seaboard from Carmel to Ashdod and as far inland as Beth-shan below the plain of Jezreel.

It is evident that the great raid was well organized and under the supreme command of an experienced leader. A land force moved down the coast of Palestine to co-operate with the fleet, and with it came the raiders' wives and children and their goods and chattels conveyed in wheel carts. 10 Rameses III was prepared for the invasion. A land force guarded his Delta frontier and his fleet awaited the coming of the sea raiders. The first naval battle in history was fought within sight of the Egyptian coast, and the Pharaoh had the stirring spectacle sculptured in low relief on the north wall of his Amon-ra temple at Medinet Habu, on the western plain of Thebes. The Egyptian vessels were crowded with archers who poured deadly fusillades into the enemies' ships. An overwhelming victory was achieved by the Pharaoh; the sea power of the raiders was completely shattered.

Rameses then marched his army northwards through Palestine to meet the land raiders, whom he defeated somewhere in southern Phnicia.

The great Trojan war began shortly after this great attack upon Egypt. According to the Greeks it was waged between 1194 and 1184 B.C. Homer's Troy, the sixth city of the archeologists, had been built by the Phrygians. Priam was their king, and he had two sons, Hector, the crown prince, and Paris. Menelaus had secured the throne of Sparta by marrying Helen, the royal heiress. When, as it chanced, he went from home--perhaps to command the sea raid upon Egypt--Paris carried off his queen and thus became, apparently, the claimant of the Spartan throne. On his return home Menelaus assembled an army of allies, set sail in a fleet of sixty ships, and besieged the city of Troy. This war of succession became the subject of Homer's great epic, the Iliad, which deals with a civilization of the "Chalkosideric" period--the interval between the Bronze and Iron Ages. 11

Meanwhile Egypt had rest from its enemies. Rameses reigned for over thirty years. He had curbed the Libyans and the Nubians as well as the sea and land raiders, and held sway over a part of Palestine. But the great days of Egypt had come to an end. It was weakened by internal dissension, which was only held in check and not stamped out by an army of foreign mercenaries, including Libyans as well as Europeans. The national spirit flickered low among the half-foreign Egyptians of the ruling class. When Rameses III was laid in his tomb the decline of the power of the Pharaohs, which he had arrested for a time, proceeded apace. The destinies of Egypt were then shaped from without rather than from within.

Footnotes

1 Griffiths in Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archlogy, Volume XVI, pp. 88-9.
2 One must distinguish between the various kinds of mythical monsters slumped as "dragons". The "fiery flying serpent" may resemble the "fire drake", but both 341 differ from the "cave dragon" which does not spout fire and the "beast" of Celtic story associated with rivers, lakes, and the sea. The latter is found in Japan and China, as well as in Scotland and Ireland. In "Beowulf", Grendel and his mother belong to the water "beast" order; the dragon which causes the hero's death is a "fire drake". Egypt has also its flood and fire monsters. Thor slew the Midgard serpent at the battle of the "Dusk of the Gods".
3 Teutonic Myth and Legend.
4 Finn and his Warrior Band. The salmon is associated with the water "dragon"; the "essence", or soul, of the demon was in the fish, as the "essence" of Osiris was in Amon. It would appear that the various forms of the monster had to be slain to complete its destruction. This conception is allied to the belief in transmigration of souls.
5 Teutonic Myth and Legend. In Swedish and Gaelic stories similar incidents occur.
6 Classic Myth and Legend. The colourless character of the Egyptian legend suggests that it was imported, like Sutekh; its significance evidently faded in the new geographical setting.
7 It is referred to in the subsequent treaty between Rameses II and the Hittite king.
8 Known to the Egyptians as Khetasar.
9 The old Cretans, the "Keftiu", are not referred to by the Egyptians after the reign of Amenhotep III. These newcomers were evidently the destroyers of the great palace at Knossos.
10 When the Philistines were advised by their priests to return the ark to the Israelites it was commanded: "Now, therefore make a new cart and take two milch kine and tie the kine to the cart".--(1 Samuel vi, 7).
11 The Cuchullin saga of Ireland belongs to the same archlogical period; bronze and iron weapons were used. Cuchullin is the Celtic Achilles; to both heroes were attached the attributes of some old tribal god. The spot on the heel of Achilles is shared by the more primitive Diarmid of the Ossianic saga.

EGYPTIAN MYTH AND LEGEND

With Historical Narrative, Notes on Race Problems, Comparative Beliefs, etc.

by

Donald Mackenzie

Gresham Publishing Co., London

[1907]

CHAPTER XXVI

The Religious Revolt of the Poet King

The Shelley of Egypt--King as a Prophet--The Need of the Empire--Disturbing Race Movements--Fall of Cretan Kingdom--Hittites press Southward--Khabri advance on Palestine--Akhenaton's War on Amon--The New Capital--A Poet's Dream--Empire going to Ruin--Aton the "First Cause"--A Grand Theology--Origin of the New Deity--Shu in the Sun--The Soul in the Egg--The Air of Life--A Jealous God--The Future Life--Paradise or Transmigration of Souls--Death of Akhenaton--Close of a Brilliant Dynasty.

HERODOTUS was informed by the sages of Egypt that the Souls of the dead passed through "every species of terrestrial, aquatic, and winged creatures", and, after a lapse of about three thousand years, "entered a second time into human bodies". If that belief were as prevalent at present in these islands as it was in early Celtic times, we might be at pains to convince the world that Shelley was a reincarnation of Akhenaton. The English poet was born about 3150 years after the death of Egypt's "heretic King", and both men had much in common; they were idealists and reformers at war with the world, and "beautiful but ineffectual angels". With equal force these lines by William Watson may be applied to the one as to the other:--

Impatient of the world's fixed way,
He ne'er could suffer God's delay,
But all the future in a day
Would build divine. . . .

Shelley's reference to himself in "Adonais" is admirably suited for Akhenaton.

Mid others of less note, came one frail form,
A phantom among men; companionless
As the last cloud of an expiring storm,
Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness,
Actn-like, and now he fled astray
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness.

A pard-like spirit beautiful and swift--
A Love in desolation masked;--a Power
Girt round with weakness; it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour;
It is a dying lamp, a failing shower,
A breaking billow;-even whilst we speak
Is it not broken? . . .

Like Shelley, too, Akhenaton appears to have resolved, while yet a boy, to fight against "the selfish and the strong", whom he identified particularly with the priests of Amon, for these were prone indeed to "tyrannize without reproach and check". The Egyptian prince, like the young English gentleman, began to "heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore", and "from that secret store wrought linked armour for his soul"; he embraced and developed the theological beliefs of the obscure Aton cult, and set forth to convince an unheeding world that--

The One remains, the many change and pass,
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly.

From the point of view of the Egyptian Imperialists the reign of Akhenaton, like that of Queen Hatshepsut, was a distinct misfortune. As it happened, the dreamer king ascended the throne with the noble desire to make all men "wise, and just, and free, and mild", just when the Empire was in need of another ruler like Thothmes III to conduct strenuous military campaigns against hordes of invaders and accomplish the subjection of the rebellious Syrian princes.

AMENHOTEP II

From the colossal granite bust in the British Museum

AMENHOTEP IV (AKHENATON)

From the statuette in the Louvre, Paris

Once again, as in the Twelfth Dynasty, the civilized world was being disturbed by the outpourings from mountainous districts of pastoral peoples in quest of "fresh woods and pastures new". Crete had been invaded during the reign of Amenhotep III; the "sack of Knossos" was already a thing of the past; the great civilization of the island kingdom had received its extinguishing blow, and thousands of the "Kheftiu" were seeking permanent homes in the ean, Asia Minor, Phnicia, and Egypt. Ere Akhenaton's father had died, Thebes received ominous intelligence of the southward pressure of the Hittites and also of the advance on Palestine of the Khabri (? Hebrews)--the first "wave" of the third great Semitic migration from eastern Arabia, known as the "Aramn". The days of the half-Iranian, half-Egyptian Tushratta were numbered; the civilization of Mitanni was doomed to vanish like that of Crete.

Akhenaton began to reign as Amenhotep IV. With purpose, apparently, to effect the immediate conversion of Thebes, he began the erection of a temple to Aton (or Aten) in close proximity to that of Amon. Ere long an open rupture between the priesthood and the Pharaoh became the chief topic of political interest. Amon's high priests had been wont to occupy high and influential positions at Court; under Amenhotep III one had been chief treasurer and another grand vizier. Akhenaton was threatening the cult with complete political extinction. Then something was done, or attempted to be done, by the priestly party, which roused the ire of the strong-minded young king, for he suddenly commenced to wage a war of bitter persecution against Amon. Everywhere the god's name was chipped from the monuments; the tombs were entered, and the young Pharaoh did not spare even the name of his father. It was at this time that he himself became known officially as Akhen-aton, "the spirit of Aton" 1 --the human incarnation of the strange god. Then he decided to desert Thebes, and at Tell-el-Amarna, about 300 miles farther south, he caused to be laid out a "garden city", in which were built a gorgeous palace which surpassed that of his father, and a great temple dedicated to "the one and only god". Aton temples were also erected in Nubia, near the third cataract, and in Syria at a point which has not beet, located.

When he entered his new capital, which was called "Horizon of Aton", the young king resolved never to leave it again. There, dwelling apart from the unconverted world, and associating with believers only, he dedicated his life to the service of Aton, and the propagation of those beliefs which, he was convinced, would make the world a Paradise if, and when, mankind accepted them.

Meanwhile more and more alarming news poured in from Syria. "Let not the king overlook the killing of a deputy", wrote one subject prince . . . . .. If help does not come, Bikhura will be unable to hold Kumidi." * * * In a later communication the same prince "begs for troops"; but he begged in vain. "If the king does not send troops," he next informed Akhenaton, "all the king's lands, as far as Egypt, will fall into the hands of the Khabri." Another faithful ally wrote: "Let troops be sent, for the king has no longer any territory; the Khabri have wasted all". To this communication was added a footnote addressed to the royal scribe, which reads: "Bring aloud before my lord, the king, the words, 'The whole territory of my lord, the king, is going to ruin'." 2

In the stately temple at Tell-el-Amarna, made beautiful by sculptor and painter, and strewn daily with bright and perfumed flowers, the dreamer king, oblivious to approaching disaster, continued to adore Aton with all the abandon and sustaining faith of a cloistered medieval monk.

"Thou hast made me wise in thy designs and by thy might", he prayed to the god . . . . . "The world is in thy hand."

Akhenaton accounted it sinful to shed blood or to take away the life which Aton gave. No sacrifices were offered up in his temple; the fruits of the earth alone were laid on the altars. He had already beaten the sword into a ploughshare. When his allies and his garrison commanders in Syria appealed for troops, he had little else to send them but a religious poem or a prayer addressed to Aton.

Hard things are often said about Akhenaton. One writer dismisses him as an "thetic trifler", others regard him as "a half-mad king"; but we must recognize that he was a profoundly serious man with a great mission, a high-souled prophet if an impractical Pharaoh. He preached the gospel of culture and universal brotherhood, and his message to mankind is the only vital thing which survives to us in Egypt amidst the relics of the past.

'T is naught
That ages, empires, and religions there
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;
For such as he can lend,--they borrow not

Glory from those who made the world their prey;
And he is gathered to the kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time's decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.

He remains to us as one of "the inheritors of unfulfilled renown",

Whose names on earth are dark
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
So long as fire outlives the parent spark. . . .

He believed in the "one and only god", Aton, whose power was manifested in the beneficent sun; the great deity was Father of all mankind, and provided for their needs and fixed the length of their days. Aton was revealed in beauty, and his worshippers were required to live beautiful lives--the cultured mind abhorred all that was evil, and sought after "the things which are most excellent"; it shrank from the shedding of blood; it promoted the idea of universal brotherhood, and conceived of a beautiful world pervaded by universal peace.

No statues of Aton were ever made; Akhenaton forbade idolatrous customs. Although Aton was a sun god, he was not the material sun; he was the First Cause manifested by the sun, "from which all things came, and from which ever issued forth the life-giving and life-sustaining influence symbolized by rays ending in hands that support and nourish human beings". "No such grand theology had ever appeared in the world before, so far as we know," says Professor Flinders Petrie, "and it is the forerunner of the later monotheist religions, while it is even more abstract and impersonal, and may well rank as scientific theism." 3 The same writer says: "If this were a new religion, invented to satisfy our modern scientific conceptions, we could not find a flaw in the correctness of its view of the energy of the solar system. How much Akhenaton understood we cannot say, but he had certainly bounded forward in his views and symbolism to a position which we cannot logically improve upon at the present day. No rag of superstition or of falsity can be found clinging to this new worship evolved out of the old Aton of Heliopolis, the sole lord or Adon of the Universe". 4

The chief source of our knowledge of Akhenaton's religion is his great hymn, one of the finest surviving versions of which has been found in the tomb of a royal official at Tell-el-Amarna. It was first published by Bouriant, and has since been edited by Breasted, whose version is the recognized standard for all translations. 5

The development of Aton religion may have been advanced by Yuaa, Queen Tiy's father, during the reign of Amenhotep III, when it appears to have been introduced in Court circles, but it reached its ultimate splendour as a result of the philosophical teachings of the young genius Akhenaton. It has its crude beginnings in the mythological beliefs of those nature worshippers of Egypt and other countries who conceived that life and the universe were of male origin. We can trace it back even to the tribal conception that the soul of the world-shaping giant was in the chaos egg. In the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead Ra is addressed:

O thou art in thine Egg, who shinest from thy Aton.

O thou beautiful being, thou dost renew thyself, and make thyself young again under the form of Aton. . . .

Hail Aton, thou lord of beams of light; thou shinest and all faces (i.e. everybody) live. 6

There was an Aton cult at Heliopolis which taught that the creator Ra was "Shu in his Aton". Aton is the solar disk and Shu is the air god, the source of "the air of life". the Great Father who is the soul of the universe. Like "the Baal", Shu is also associated with the sun; the atmospheric god is manifested by lightning and fire as well as by tempest. Shu is thus not only "air which is in the sun", but also, according to Akhenaton's religion, "heat which is in Aton". In the Tell-el-Amarna poem, Aton, who creates all things, "makest the son to live in the body of his mother". Then follows a reference to "the egg":

When the chick is in the egg and is making a sound within the shell,
Thou givest it air inside it so that it may keep alive.

Budge's trans.

The small bird in the egg, sounding within the shell,
Thou givest to it breath within the egg
To give life to that which thou makest.

Griffith's trans.

When the chicklet crieth in the egg-shell,
Thou givest him breath therein, to preserve him alive. 7

--Breasted's trans.

When Akhenaton and his queen were depicted worshipping Aton, the rays which stretched out from the sun and ended in hands not only supported their bodies but pressed towards their nostrils and lips the "ankh", the "symbol of life". The air of life was the sun-heated air; life was warmth and breath. 8 Why the "ankh" touched the lips is clearly indicated in the great hymn. When the child is born, Aton--

Openest his mouth that he may speak.

Aton was thus, like certain other Egyptian gods, "the opener", 9 who gave power of speech and life to a child at birth or to the mummy of the dead. In this connection Wiedemann says that Ptah "bore a name which is probably derived from the root pth, "to open", especially as used in the ritual term "opening of the mouth". Porphyrius, 10 "who was well informed in Egyptian matters", tells us that the god (Ptah) came forth from an egg which had issued from the mouth of Kneph (a word signifying "air breath", and "spirit Kneph is Khnin his character as an atmosphere god.

Some authorities identify Aton with the old Syrian god Adon. The root "ad" or "dad" signifies "father". As "ad" becomes at "in" Attis it may be that, as a result of habitual phonetic conditions, Adon became Aton. But Akhenaton's Aton was a greater conception than Adon.

The marked difference between the various Egyptian and Asiatic "Great Fathers" and the god of Akhenaton consists in this--Aton was not the chief of a Pantheon: he was the one and only god. "The Aton", says Professor Petrie, "was the only instance of a 'jealous god' in Egypt, and this worship was exclusive of all others, and claims universality." 11 Had Akhenaton's religion been the same as that of the Aton cult at Heliopolis we might expect to find him receiving direct support from that quarter. To the priests of Ra he was as great a "heretic" as he was to the priests of Amon, or Amon-Ra, at Thebes.

Akhenaton's conception of the material universe did not differ from that which generally obtained in. his day in Egypt. There was a Nile in heaven and a Nile in the underworld. In rainless Upper Egypt he believed that--

The Nile in heaven is for the strange people. . . .
Thou (Aton) placest a Nile in heaven that it may rain upon them.

Griffiths.

The Nile of the underworld was "for the land of Egypt".

When thou hast made the Nile beneath the earth
Thou bringest it according to thy will to make the people live. . . .
That it may nourish every field.

Griffiths.

Aton also made the firmament in which to rise:

Rising in thy forms as the living Aton,
Shining afar off and returning . . .
All eyes see thee before them.

Griffiths.

We do not obtain from the hymn any clear idea of Akhenaton's conception of evil. There is no reference to the devil serpent, or to the war waged against the sun god in Heliopolitan myth. But it appears that as light was associated with life, goodness, and beauty, darkness was similarly filled with death and evil. At night men lie down to sleep and "their nostrils are stopped", or "their breath is shut up". Then creatures of evil are abroad; "every lion cometh from his den and serpents of every kind bite" (Budge). Nor is there any reference to the after life. "When thou (Aton) settest in the western horizon the earth is in darkness, and is like a being that is dead" (Budge) or "like the dead" (Breasted and Griffiths). Akhenaton appears to have believed in the immortality of the soul-the bodies of Queen Tiy, his mother, and of his daughter and himself were embalmed--but it is not certain whether he thought that souls passed to Paradise, to which there is no reference in the poem, or passed from egg, or flower, to trees, animals, , until they once again entered human bodies, as in the Anpu-Bata story and others resembling it which survive in the folktales of various ages and various countries.

Akhenaton's hymn to Aton is believed to have been his own composition. Its beauty is indicated in the following extracts from Prof. Breasted's poetic translation:--

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

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

Bright is the earth when thou risest in the horizon,
When thou shinest as Aton by day.
The darkness is banished, when thou sendest forth thy rays.

How manifold are all thy works,
They are hidden from before us,
O thou sole god, whose powers no other possesseth,
Thou didst create the earth according to thy desire
While thou wast alone.

The world is in thy hand,
Even as thou hast made them.
When thou hast risen, they live.
When thou settest, they die.
For thou art duration, beyond thy mere limbs.
By thee man liveth,
And their eyes look upon thy beauty
Until thou settest.

Thou makest the beauty of form. . . .
Thou art in my heart.

The revolution in art which was inaugurated under Amenhotep III is a marked feature of Akhenaton's reign. When sculptors and painters depicted the king he posed naturally, leaning on his staff with crossed legs, or accompanied by his queen and children. Some of the decorative work at Tell-el-Amarna will stand comparison with the finest productions of to-day.

The records which survive to us of the Akhenaton period are very scanty, for when the priests of the old faith again came to power they were at pains to obliterate them. Queen Tiy does not appear to have taken a prominent part in the new movement, which had developed beyond her expectations; and although she occasionally visited the city of Aton, her preference for Thebes, the scene of her social triumphs, remained to the end. Akhenaton's wife was a queen consort, as Tiy had been, and the royal couple delighted to appear among the people accompanied by their children.

The fall of the Amon party was complete. For several years the eight temples of Amon at Thebes lay empty and silent; their endowments had been confiscated for Aton, to whom new temples were erected in the Fayum and at Memphis, Heliopolis, Hermonthis, and Hermopolis.

An endeavour was made to enforce the worship of Aton by royal decree all over Egypt, with the result that the great mass of the people, who appear to have shown little concern regarding the fall of the tyrannical Amon party, were aroused to oppose with feelings of resentment an uncalled-for interference with the immemorial folk customs and beliefs which were so closely associated with their habits of life. But still the power of the "heretic king" remained supreme. The army remained loyal, although it had shrunk to an insignificant force, and when Akhenaton placed in command Horemheb it appears to have effectively controlled the disturbed areas.

Akhenaton died while still a young man, and left no son to succeed him. Semenkh-ka-ra, who had married a princess, became the next Pharaoh, but he appears to have been deposed by another son-in-law of the "heretic", named Tutenk-aton, who returned to Thebes, allied himself with the priests, and called himself Tutenkamon, "Image of Amon". He was followed in turn by Ai (Eye), who called himself "Divine Father" and then a military revolt, instigated by the priests, brought to the throne, after a brief period of anarchy, Horemheb, who secured his position by marrying a princess of the royal line. He popularized himself with the worshippers of the ancient cults by ruthlessly persecuting the adherents of the religion of Akhenaton, erasing the name of Aton everywhere. He appears to have re-established the power of Egypt over a part of Palestine, and he restored order in the kingdom. So the Eighteenth Dynasty came to an end about two and a half centuries after the expulsion of the Hyksos.

Footnotes

1 Or, "Aton is satisfied" (Sethe).
2 "Tell-el-Amarna Letters" in Professor Flinders Petrie's History of Egypt, Vol. II.
3 The Religion of Egypt, London, 1908.
4 A History of Egypt, Vol. II, London.
5 The most important of these appear in the following publications: Breasted's A History of Egypt, Petrie's A History of Egypt (version by Griffiths), Budge's Gods of the Egyptians, and Wiedemann's Religion of the Ancient Egyptians. In Naville's The Old Egyptian Faith (English translation by Rev. C. Campbell) the view is urged that Akhenaton's religious revolt was political in origin.
6 Budge's Gods of the Egyptians and Book of the Dead.
7 Amon-ra also "giveth breath to that which is in the egg" (Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, Wiedemann, p. 115).
8 A ray of light from the moon gave origin to the Apis bull. See Chapter V.
9 Osiris Sokar is "the opener of the mouth of the four great gods who are in the underworld" (The Burden of Isis, p. 54).
10 Eusebius, Praratio Evangelica, III, 11; Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians.
11 The Religion of Ancient Egypt, p. 54.

EGYPTIAN MYTH AND LEGEND

With Historical Narrative, Notes on Race Problems, Comparative Beliefs, etc.

by

Donald Mackenzie

Gresham Publishing Co., London

[1907]

CHAPTER XXV

Amenhotep the Magnificent and Queen Tiy

Prejudice against Thothmes III--Religion of Amenhotep II--Human Sacrifices in his Tomb--Thothmes IV and the Sphinx--Amenhotep III half a Foreigner--Queen Tiy's Father and Mother--A Royal Love Match--Recreations of the King--Tiy's Influence upon Art--A Stately Palace--The Queen's Pleasure Lake--Royalty no longer exclusive--The "Vocal Memnon"--King stricken with a Malady--Tiy's Powerful Influence--Relations with the Priests of Amon--Akhenaton's Boyhood.

FOR some unexplained reason the memory of Thothmes III was not revered by the priests, although he had once been a priest himself, and never failed, on returning from his victorious campaigns, to make generous gifts to Amon's temple at Karnak. No folktales about his tyranny and impiety survive, as in the case of the great Khufu, the Pyramid builder. He has suffered more from a conspiracy of silence. The prejudice against him remained even until Roman times, when an elderly priest translated to Germanicus the annals of Egypt's greatest emperor and coolly ascribed them to Rameses II. This intentional confusion of historical events may have given origin to the legends recorded by Greek writers regarding the mythical Pharaoh Sesostris, to whom was credited, with exaggerations, not only the achievements of Thothmes III and Rameses II, but also those of Senusert III the first Pharaoh who invaded Syria. Herodotus believed that one of the sculptured representations of the Hittite Great Father deity in Lydia was a memorial of Sesostris.

It may be that Thothmes III and Hatshepsut were supported by rival sects of the Theban priesthood, and that the disposal of Senmut and his friends, who were probably executed, was never forgiven. The obliteration of the great queen's name from the monuments, as we have suggested, may have been associated with a revolt which was afterwards regarded as heretical. We know little regarding the religious beliefs of Thothmes, but those of his son, Amenhotep II, were certainly peculiar, if not reactionary. He adored, besides Amon, Khn Ptah, and Osiris, the crocodile god Sebek, and the voluptuous goddess Astarte (Ashtoreth), Bast and Sekhet the feline deities, and Uazit the virgin serpent, and two of the Hathors. In his tomb there are evidences that he revived human sacrifice, which was associated with sun worship in the Fifth Dynasty; the body of a man with a cleft in his skull was found bound to a boat, and the mummies of a woman and child in an inner chamber suggest that he desired the company in the Osirian Paradise of his favourites in the royal household. Although he reigned for twenty years we know little regarding him. Possibly some of his greater monuments were either destroyed or appropriated by his successors. He conducted a campaign in Syria soon after he ascended the throne, and returned in triumph with the bodies of seven revolting princes suspended, heads downward, at the prow of the royal barge; six of these were afterwards exposed on the walls of Thebes, and one was sent to Napata in Nubia. He also conducted a military expedition as far south as Khartoum.

Another mysterious revolt, which may mark the return to power of the anti-Thothmes party, brought to the throne the next king, the juvenile Thothmes IV, who was not, apparently, the prince selected as heir by Amenhotep II. The names of the half-dozen brothers of the new Pharaoh were erased in the tomb of the royal tutor, and they themselves disappear from history. According to a folktale, Thothmes IV was the chosen of the sun god--a clear indication of priestly intervention--who was identified for the first time, as Ra Harmachis, with the great Sphinx at Gizeh. Thothmes had been out hunting, and lay to rest at noonday in the shadow of the Sphinx. He dreamt that the sun god appeared before him and desired that the sand should be cleared away from about his body. This was done, and a temple erected between the paws, which was soon afterwards covered over by the sand drift.

Thothmes IV was evidently favoured by the priests. His distinctly foreign face indicates that his mother was an Asiatic beauty; it is handsome but somewhat effeminate. He died when he was about thirty, after a reign of from eight to ten years. His royal wife was a daughter of Artatama I, the Aryan king of Mitanni; she was the mother of Amenhotep III, and grandmother of Akhenaton. The third Amenhotep had a distinctly non-Egyptian face, but of somewhat different type to that of his father; the cheeks are long, the nose curves upwards, arid he has the pointed chin and slim neck which distinguished his favourite wife Queen Tiy and their son Akenaton.

Much controversy has been waged over the racial origin of Queen Tiy, who was one of Egypt's most notable women. While some authorities regard her as an Asiatic--either Semite, Hittite, or Aryan--others believe her to be either an Egyptian or Libyan. It is impossible to confirm either of the conflicting views that she was a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked beauty with blue eyes, or that she was dark, with lustrous eyes and a creamy complexion; but there can be no doubt that she was a lady of great personal charm and intellectual power. One of her portraits, sculptured in low relief, is a delicately cut profile. Her expression combines sweetness with strength of will, and there is a disdainful pout in her refined and sensitive mouth; her upper lip is short, and her chin is shapely and protruding. Whether she was born in Egypt or not, there can be little doubt that she had alien blood in her veins. Her father, Yuaa, appears to have been one of those Asiatic noblemen who was educated in Egypt and settled there. He held the honorary, but probably lucrative, position of superintendent of Amon's sacred cattle. His mummy shows him to have been a handsome, lofty-browed man with a Tennysonian nose of Armenoid rather than Semitic type; he had also the short upper lip and chin of his daughter. Tiy's mother appears to have been an Egyptian lady. The marriage of the King Amenhotep III to Tiy had no political significance; the boy and girl--they could not have been much more than sixteen--had evidently fallen in love with one another. The union proved to be a happy one; their mutual devotion continued all through life. Tiy was no mere harem favourite; although not of royal birth she was exalted to the position of queen consort, and her name was coupled with that of her husband on official documents.

Amenhotep's reign of thirty-six years (1411 to 1375 B.C.) was peaceful and brilliant, and he earned his title "The Magnificent" rather by his wealth and love of splendour than by his qualities as a statesman. The Asiatic dependencies gave no trouble; the grandsons of the martial princes whom Thothmes III subdued by force of arms had been educated at Thebes and thoroughly Egyptianized. Amenhotep would have, no doubt, distinguished himself as a warrior had occasion offered, for on the single campaign of his reign, which he conducted into Nubia, he displayed the soldierly qualities of his ancestors. He was a lover of outdoor life and a keen sportsman. During the first ten years of his life he slew 102 lions, as he has recorded, and large numbers of wild cattle.

Queen Tiy, on the other hand, was a lady of intellectual attainments and artistic temperament. No doubt she was strongly influenced by her father. When we gaze on Yuaa's profound and cultured face we cannot help concluding that he was "the power behind the throne". The palace favourites included not only highborn nobles and ladies, but the scholars and speculative thinkers to whom the crude beliefs and superstitious conventionalities associated with the worship of Amon and the practices of the worldly minded priests had become distasteful and obsolete; architects and artists and musicians also basked in royal favour. The influence of Queen Tiy on the art of the age was as pronounced as it was beneficial; she encouraged the artists to shake off the stiff mannerisms of the schools, to study nature and appreciate its beauties of form and colour, to draw "with their eyes on the object". And so Egypt had not only its "revolution of artistic methods", but its "renascence of wonder". No doubt the movement was stimulated by the wonderful art which had reached so high a degree of perfection in Crete. Egypt at the time was the most powerful state in the civilized world, and was pulsating with foreign influences; the old giant, shackled by ancient customs and traditions, was aspiring to achieve intellectual freedom.

The new movement was accompanied by a growing love of luxury and display of Oriental splendour which appealed to the young king. To please his winsome bride he caused to be erected a stately palace on the western bank of the Nile at Thebes. It was constructed of brick and rare woods; the stucco-covered walls and ceilings of its commodious apartments were decorated with paintings, which included nature studies, scenes of Egyptian life, and glimpses of Paradise, exquisitely drawn and vividly coloured; here and there were suspended those beautiful woven tapestries which were not surpassed by the finest European productions of later times, and there was a wealth of beautiful vases in coloured glass, porcelain, and silver and gold. The throne room, in which Queen Tiy held her brilliant Courts, was 130 feet long and 40 feet wide. Papyri and lotus-bud pillars of haunting design supported the roof and blossomed against a sky-blue ceiling, with its flocks of pigeons and golden ravens in flight. The floor was richly carpeted and painted with marsh and river scenes, snarers capturing the "birds of Araby", huntsmen slaying wild animals, and fish gaping wide-eyed in clear waters. Amidst the carved and inlaid furniture in this scene of beauty the eye was taken by the raised golden thrones of the king and queen, over which the great gleaming pinions of the royal vulture were displayed in noble proportions.

A shady balcony protruded from the outer decorated walls; it was radiant with greenery and brilliant flowers from Asia, covered with coloured rugs, and provided with cushioned seats. When the invigorating wind from the north blew cool and dry over the desert, Queen Tiy and her artistic friends, lingering on the balcony, must have found much inspiration in the prospect unfolded before them. The grounds within the palace walls, basking in the warm sunlight, were agleam with Asian and Egyptian trees, shrubs, and many-coloured flowers. On the west rose in light and shadow the wonderful Theban hills of every changing hue; eastward between the blue, palm-fringed Nile, with its green banks and background of purple hills, lay a great mile-long artificial lake, sparkling in sunshine and surrounded by clumps of trees and mounds ablaze with strange and splendid blossoms. On this cool stretch of restful water the king and queen were wont to be rowed in their gorgeous barge of purple and gold named Beauties of Aton, while girl voices rose bird-like in song, and sweet music came from many-stringed harps and lyres, and from guitars, and lutes, and warbling double pipes. On nights of festival, religious mysteries were enacted on the illuminated waters, which reflected the radiance of many-coloured lights, the brilliant stars, and the silver crescent of the moon.

In the vicinity of the palace were the luxurious villas and beautiful gardens, with bathing pools and summer houses, of the brilliant lords and ladies who attended the state banquets and entertainments organized by Queen Tiy.

Egypt's king and queen no longer held themselves aloof from the people with the Chinese-like exclusiveness of the Old and Middle Kingdoms. They were the leaders of social life; their everyday doings were familiar to the gossipers. No air of mystery and idolatrous superstition pervaded the Court; domestic life in its finest aspects was held up as an ideal to the people. Public functions were invested with great splendour, royalty drove out in chariots of silver and gold, brilliantly costumed, and attended by richly attired lords and ladies and royal attendants and guards. The king was invariably accompanied by the queen.

Amenhotep vied with his predecessors in erecting magnificent temples. His favourite architect was Amenhotep, son of Hapi, a remarkable man whose memory was long venerated; by the common people he was regarded as a great magician. It must have been he who appealed to the vanity of the king by designing the two colossal royal statues which were erected on the western plain of Thebes; they were afterwards known as the "vocal Memnon", because they were reputed to utter sounds at sunrise, caused, no doubt, by some ingenious device. These representations of Amenhotep III rose to a height of seventy feet, and still dominate the landscape in mutilated condition; they guarded the entrance of the royal mortuary temple which was demolished in the following Dynasty. Amenhotep was worshipped in his temple at Memphis, while Queen Tiy was similarly honoured in Nubia.

Great wealth accumulated in Egypt during this period. Tushratta, the subject king of Mitanni, writing to Amenhotep, declared, when he asked for gold "in great quantity" that "in the land of my brother gold is as plentiful as dust". The Pharaoh had added to his harem a sister of Tushratta's, his Asian cousin, named Gilu-khipa, l and she arrived with over three hundred ladies and attendants, but she did not displace Queen Tiy.

Much light has been thrown on the relations between Egypt and other countries by the Tell-el-Amarna letters--a number of clay tablets inscribed in Babylonian script which were discovered a few years ago. Babylonian was at the time the language of diplomacy. In these we find rulers writing in affectionate terms to one another and playing the game of politics with astuteness and Oriental duplicity.

In the beautiful Theban palace was born to Queen Tiy, in the twentieth year of her husband's reign, the distinguished Akhenaton, who was to become the most remarkable Pharaoh who ever sat on the throne of Egypt. He was the only son; several princesses had preceded him. The young heir of the favourite wife was called Amenhotep, and when his father died he ascended the throne as Amenhotep IV. He was then about fourteen years of age, but had already married Nerfertiti, an Asiatic princess, apparently a daughter of Tushratta.

The last half-dozen years of the life of Amenhotep III were clouded in gloom. He was laid aside by some disease--either paralysis or insanity--which Tushratta of Mitanni sought to cure by sending on two occasions images of the goddess Ishtar. 2 Queen Tiy appears to have governed the kingdom in the interval, and it is possible that she inaugurated the religious revolt, which became so closely associated with the name of her son, to counteract not only the retrogressive tendencies of the priests of Amon, but also, perhaps, to curb their political power; for, no doubt, they did their utmost to exercise a direct influence on the affairs of state. The existence of strained relations between the Amon temple and the royal palace during the boyhood of the future Pharaoh may well have infused his mind with that bitterness against the great religious cult of Thebes which he afterwards did his utmost to give practical expression to by doctrinal teachings and open persecution.

Footnotes

1 Her father was King Sutarna, whose sister was the wife of Thothmes IV. Sutarna's father was Artatama I, a contemporary of Thothmes III.
2 The goddess of Nineveh. Tushratta must therefore have held sway over part of Assyria. The Mitanni King Saushatar, great-grandfather of Tushratta, captured and plundered Ashur.