In the Egypt of 1350 BC there existed a "city of gold and light." Akhet-Aten, the capital of the Egyptian Empire, was considered the most beautiful city in the world. It was the holy city of Pharaoh Akhenaten and his queen, Nefertiti, a city of palaces, temples, and obelisks covered with gold as far as the eye could see. It had luxurious gardens, and a long royal road extending over more than four kilometers. A royal bridge crossed that road. The art, the beauty, and the refinement of Akhet-Aten reflected the very height of Egyptian civilization. The most beautiful women of Egypt, as well as numerous Canaanite, Phoenician, Hittite, Midianite, Nubian and Babylonian princesses were invited to inhabit this terrestrial paradise.
There were entire neighborhoods of alleyways, where all classes of people rubbed shoulders: priests, businessmen, vintners, and bakers, who had come there from every corner of the known world. There was also a large group of artisans, artists, and intellectuals: sculptors, engravers, goldsmiths, painters, stone workers, masons, medical embalmers, architects, contractors, surveyors, scribes, and accountants. There were many people employed to care for the royal palaces and the temples of the god Aten. This entire population participated in the activities of the holy city, which teemed with life.
All these people had received from Pharaoh the immense privilege of coming with their families to live in this sacred city, the Holy City of God Aten. By order of Pharaoh, they had converted to the new religion, the new cult of the One God, to monotheism. Those who found favor in the eyes of Pharaoh Akhenaten or Queen Nefertiti could look forward to the immense honor of being buried in the necropolis situated on the periphery of the city, within the sacred territory of Akhet-Aten.
The city was delimited by border stelae, and for the second time in Egyptian history, Akhenaten had established a difference between a region designated as "sacred" and the rest of Egypt. His first attempt had been to build a sacred site in the center of the sanctuary of the god Amun at Karnak, with temples similar to those he later constructed at Akhet-Aten. The problem there was that the One God, Aten, would be in the company of the King of the Gods, Amun. At that early point in his reign, the pharaoh bore his first royal name, Amenhotep IV (meaning "Amun is in peace"), later known in Greek as Amenophis IV. In the fifth year of his reign, he changed his name to Akhenaten ("the grace, the light, which is used by Aten").
From the viewpoint of the old polytheism, Akhenaten was a heretic. He had forsaken the gods of his father Amenhotep III and embraced the concept of there being but One God, Aten. Aten was seen as the creator god of the universe, and was represented by the solar disk, which extended its beams over all terrestrial creatures.
Amenhotep III had constructed a city called Malkata, containing the royal palace and administration buildings. Imitating his father, Akhenaten decided to construct a new capital for Egypt, from which he would conduct the affairs of state. In the new order, the polytheistic clergy of Amun would be excluded from power. Akhenaten abandoned the sacred land of Karnak, the religious center of the ancient religion of Egypt, and established his new "Holy Land," Akhet-Aten. It was located on the west bank of the Nile, about halfway between Memphis to the north and Thebes to the south, on a site later called Tell el-Amarna.
The pharaoh proclaimed that he had been led to this new region by the god Aten himself, with the promise of life and prosperity for him and his descendants forever. When Akhenaten arrived at the site, he made, as did Abraham in the Bible, a sacrifice in honor of his God, on the very place where he later built the great temple of Aten.1 Following these acts, which are confirmed by Egyptologists, Pharaoh addressed his assembled court. He declared that God had guided him to the holy land of Akhet-Aten in order for temples to be built for his worship. He promised that this land would be the capital of Egypt forever.
All the riches of the country flowed toward Akhet-Aten. Sacred food was offered to the god Aten before being consumed. Consecrated bread and wine were offered in abundance. Approved animals were consecrated in the Atenian temples and redistributed across the country, as happened centuries later in the Temple of Solomon.2
Akhenaten instituted morning and evening prayer, at sunrise and sunset, thus glorifying the appearance and disappearance of the solar disk Aten. The hymns to the glory of God, recited and chanted in the temples, are the origin of the later psalms and prayers. In his capital, as in all Egypt, Akhenaten was worshiped as Aten. He was proclaimed the "Son of Aten," but in the Egyptian mind, that phrase did not exclude his being Aten himself. Inside his royal cartouche, the name "Aten" appeared in translation as "He who is pleasing to Aten." His wife also changed her original name, and became Nefertiti, "perfect is the beauty of Aten." Installed in the capital, Akhenaten reigned as absolute master of the city and of all Egypt, distributing tasks and functions to his intimates.
Ardently desiring to institute one universal religion, Pharaoh had temples built to the glory of Aten throughout Egypt. The expressions "forever" and "eternally" occur regularly in the hymns. These proclamations and declarations were written by Akhenaten himself, and he taught them to his disciples and followers.
If events had developed as planned by the king and queen, the religion of Aten would have spread over all Egypt from the capital Akhet-Aten, the holy place of the new belief. The pharaoh was, above all, a teacher. He diffused his knowledge to the thousands of priests who dwelt in the capital. They had the task of propagating the new religion throughout Egypt, in the name of the new god Aten, and of his supreme representative, Akhenaten.
Akhenaten insisted quite particularly on his role of teacher in the sacred domain, which made him a spiritual teacher. Several texts indicate that Akhenaten conversed daily with his disciples to whom he attempted to make known the nature of Aten.3
Akhenaten also bore the title "He who sees the Great God." As High Priest of the new religion, he was the only intermediary between God and the
Map of Egypt at the time of Amenhotep IV - Akhenaten.
People, the only one with the power to present the great offering in the Temple of Aten. But, even as High Priest, he could not present the great offering alone. That ritual required the presence of both Pharaoh and his queen.
This earliest form of monotheism had a strong base of what today are called "family values." The research carried out at Tell el-Amarna (Akhet-Aten) tells us much about worship practices in the homes of the people. Each house in the city was provided with a stone altar, inscribed on two sides. Cyril Aldred describes it as follows: "All the houses of this kind had a similar trait. They had a sanctuary placed in one of the main rooms. It had the form of a false door with painted red posts and a niche to receive a stela portraying the royal family engaged in cult-based activity."
As a tie-in with the Biblical Exodus story, the red posts are a reminder of the blood the Hebrews were reported as painting on their doorposts. "Yahwe4 will pass through to slay the Egyptians. And when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, Yahwe will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses and slay you" (Hebrew Bible, Exodus 12:23).
In his devotion to the new religion of monotheism, Akhenaten had the names of Amun chiseled away in the temples and on the obelisks. Pushing his heresy further, he profaned the name of Amun inside the cartouche of his father Amenhotep III. To suppress the name of a god was considered a true sacrilege by the inhabitants of ancient Egypt. The Biblical monothe-ists echo this in the words of their One God: "I will utterly erase the name of Amalek from under heaven."5
In chiseling out the name of Amun, Akhenaten was suppressing the existence of that god. He went on to have the statues, the objects of the paternal cult, broken. Akhenaten had committed a sacrilege, something that had never before been done in ancient Egypt. In the Biblical tradition, Abraham also broke the idols of his father.
Akhenaten was a powerful and a mystical pharaoh. The entire nation prostrated itself before him. Kings of other lands came to pay tribute in his capital and to render him homage. He was the Glory of Aten, and promenaded the length of the royal road of Akhet-Aten, accompanied by Nefertiti on his gold and silver carriage, heading for the great temple of Aten.
The pharaoh loved to appear in the company of his wife at the view window of the palace. It was there that he appeared to the people. And, just as the Moses in the Bible did, he held up before the people the two stone tablets where the two cartouches of Aten's name were inscribed. The people prostrated themselves before the name of God. These tablets, inscribed on both sides, could be read from either side. The similarity to the Biblical tablets of Moses is noteworthy. Both were rounded on the perimeter with writing on both sides. "Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hands, tablets that were written on both sides" (Hebrew Bible, Exodus 32:15).
Akhenaten and Nefertiti elevating the name of Aten on stone tablets engraved on both sides. Behind the royal couple the little princesses are shaking the sistra.
As previously mentioned, the new religion emphasized the family. Akhenaten was particularly fond of the company of his six daughters and his wife, giving the people an image of a happy couple. In many homes, the inhabitants kept an effigy of the royal family watched over by the Sun God Aten. The sacred union was made part of the cult of the new religion. It fused the people to the royal family, so that the birth of a social model based on the sharing of family values can be seen in this image.
This social model is even more visible in the homes in the outskirts of Akhet-Aten. Each house was constructed along the same plan - a prime example of social planning. There was a living room, where the Pharaoh's cult could be practiced, plus bedrooms, bathrooms, and toilets.
Everything was pre-planned in that amazing capital, where one could contemplate God every day. What the inhabitants could not know was that simply by living in the Sacred City, they were playing out one of the greatest dramas of Egyptian history, a drama with consequences for all humanity for more than three thousand years.
Most pharaohs were represented in postures evoking power and strictness. Akhenaten is shown as the relaxed pharaoh. The royal sculptor represents him with elongated neck and meditative eyes, a new artistic vision for Egypt, probably one imposed by Akhenaten himself. There was never a pharaoh like him before or after.
In the seventeenth year of his reign, Pharaoh Akhenaten died and was buried in the royal tomb in the valley (wadi) located in the extension of the axis of the Great Temple of Aten.
The tomb must have harbored even more riches than Tutankhamun's. It must have contained an ark (without the god Anubis represented on it), a funerary altar, some "sanctuaries" interlinked with each other, and the "tablets" with the name of Aten on two cartouches. The God of the Dead, Osiris, certainly would not have been represented, but the pharaoh would have had his arms crossed in the "Osiris position," holding the royal scepter in his right hand and the whip in the left. The goddess Hathor would not have appeared as herself, but as the effigy of Nefertiti.
Pharaoh Smenkhkare, Akhenaten's successor, reigned for barely two years, in a hazy historical period, before dying at the age of about twenty-five. The cause of his death is unknown. Murder is one option, particularly with the religious politics of the time. Since he was faithful to the religion of Aten, Smenkhkare may have been in the way of the counter-reformation that was brewing at that time.
At the death of Smenkhkare, his half-brother, Tutankhamun, was eight years old. Since he was too young to reign, it was the "Divine Father," High Priest Ay, who took over the reins of the kingdom. Ay's father, Yuya, bore the title "Divine Father" before his son. "Divine Father" also meant "Father of the God." Yuya had been thus honored by Pharaoh Amenhotep III, who had elevated him to Divine Father as well as Commandant of
Chariots (Grand Master of Cavalry). In other words, Yuya was the commander-inchief of the armies. Yuya bequeathed part of his functions to his son Ay. Later, when Nefertiti, Ay's daughter, married the future Akhenaten, Ay became the father-in-law of the new king while he also bore the title of "Divine Father."
Ay was venerated by the population of Akhet-Aten. A carving of the period shows him standing in the garb of high priest. Before him, the inhabitants prostrate themselves in worship. Ay's status had already become nearly as high as pharaoh's.
Divine Father Ay is little known by Egyptologists. Some don't even mention him when they speak of the Amarnian period, or forget him when they cite the pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Still others speak of him in a rather succinct manner, rapidly passing over the subject. Ay didn't leave many traces of himself when, ten years later, he had become the sacred pharaoh of Egypt. He reigned for only four years before passing power to General Horemheb. However, as it turns out, Divine Father Ay is a central figure in the history of Egypt and in the Biblical story of the Exodus.
Ay was the high priest who, well before becoming pharaoh of Egypt, made the most important decision of that period. He was to change the destiny of not only an empire but of the religious history of the Western world.
At the death of Pharaoh Smenkhkare, Ay took over the government of Egypt, since Tutankhamun was still a youngster. He participated in the coronation, and decided early on to "transfer" the new pharaoh to either Thebes or Memphis - Egyptologists disagree as to which city.
Tutankhamun was crowned pharaoh and, under the influence of the Divine Father Ay, he changed his name from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun. Thus, he erased the name of the One God Aten from his name and added that of the King of the Gods, Amun. This change indicated clearly the gravity of the politico-religious situation in Egypt at the time. It meant the return to Amun by a pharaoh too young to understand what had been imposed on him.
Tutankhamun was a child naturally obedient to his presumed grand uncle. Ay was the only man to have the wisdom, intelligence, and experience to lead a country that he knew inside and out. Smenkhkare's convenient death permitted Ay to act at last - to put into operation his plan of counter-reformation.
Ay didn't simply want to destroy the work of Akhenaten. He wanted to obliterate his memory and reduce his spiritual power to nothingness. The image of the God-Man, whom Ay perceived as detrimental to Egypt, had to disappear from the land. The temples would have to be destroyed or
A reconstruction of the city of Akhet-Aten. Taken from Pierre Grandet, Hymnes de la religion d'Aton.6
Tom down, thus suffering a fate more dramatic than that of the Amun temples in the time of Akhet-Aten's splendor.
In order for all the names of Aten engraved on the walls of Egypt to be obliterated, the names of the king and of Nefertiti had to be effaced as well. The god Aten, the One God, disappeared as rapidly as he had come, a period of but a single adventure.
The most important decision, though - the one to toll the knell on the Aten religion - was to abandon the city of Akhet-Aten, the city that had been the religious and political capital of the empire. Ay declared that city "cursed land," heretical and impure. It was pronounced forever uninhabitable and was to be erased from memory for evermore.
The abandonment of Akhet-Aten by its inhabitants did not take place naturally and without obstacles. The abandonment of the most beautiful city in the world, the terrestrial paradise, had to have been extremely traumatic. The archeologists and Egyptologists are in accord that the inhabitants actually took away all their riches. The city had not been conquered nor destroyed, but abandoned. It was deserted in obedience to the orders of the new power in Egypt, the Divine Father
Some inhabitants probably left for Thebes or Memphis, or elsewhere in Egypt. The others are the subject of the story of the Exodus.
Akhet-Aten became a veritable phantom city. It had to await the reigns of Horemheb, Ramesses I, Sety I, and Ramesses II to see its temples at first dismantled, then destroyed, transforming the city into a vast field of ruins.
Today, the sands have completed the work of destruction, entirely covering the plain of Amarna. It was three thousand years later, in November 1714, that a Jesuit priest, Claude Sicard, visited this desert region and stumbled upon an unusual stone. As he approached, he discovered that it had the appearance of a border stela of an abandoned ancient city. The stela represented a king, a queen, and a princess.
It was the stela of Akhet-Aten, the city that had been built to endure forever.
Notes
1. Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten, King of Egypt. Le Seuil, 1997, p. 49.
2. Christian Jacq, Nefertiti et Akhenaton. Perrin, 1996, p. 146.
3. Ibid., p. 136.
4. Most translations of the Bible substitute the words "Lord" or "God" where the Hebrew uses the name "Yahwe." The translators have chosen to use the original Hebrew words to keep the meaning as close to the original as possible.
5. Exodus 17:14.
6. Pierre Grandet, Hymnes de la religion d'Aton. Le Seuil, 1995.
World History
