The sudden degradation of Amon had not brought about any coldness between the Pharaoh and his princely allies in Asia. The aged Amenôthes had, towards the end of his reign, asked the hand of Dushratta’s daughter in marriage, and the Mitannian king, highly flattered by the request, saw his opportunity and took advantage of it in the interest of his treasury. He discussed the amount of the dowry, demanded a considerable sum of gold, and when the affair had been finally arranged to his satisfaction, he despatched the princess to the banks of the Nile. On her arrival she found her affianced husband was dead, or, at all events, dying. Amenôthes IV., however, stepped into his father’s place, and inherited his bride with his crown.
The new king’s relations with other foreign princes were no less friendly; the chief of the Khâti (Hittites) complimented him on his accession, the King of Alasia wrote to him to express his earnest desire for a continuance of peace between the two states. Burnaburiash of Babylon had, it is true, hoped to obtain an Egyptian princess in marriage for his son, and being disappointed, had endeavoured to pick a quarrel over the value of the presents which had been sent him, together with the notice of the accession of the new sovereign. But his kingdom lay too far away to make his ill-will of much consequence, and his complaints passed unheeded. In Coele-Syria and Phoenicia the situation remained unchanged. The vassal cities were in a perpetual state of disturbance, though not more so than in the past. Azîru, son of Abdashirti, chief of the country of the Amorites, had always, even during the lifetime of Amenôthes III., been the most turbulent of vassals. The smaller states of the Orontes and of the coast about Arvad had been laid waste by his repeated incursions and troubled by his intrigues. He had taken and pillaged twenty towns, among which were Simyra, Sini, Irqata, and Qodshû, and he was already threatening Byblos, Berytus, and Sidon. It was useless to complain of him, for he always managed to exculpate himself to the royal messengers. Khaî, Dûdû, Amenemaûpît had in turn all pronounced him innocent. Pharaoh himself, after citing him to appear in Egypt to give an explanation of his conduct, had allowed himself to be won over by his fair speaking, and had dismissed him uncondemned. Other princes, who lacked his cleverness and power, tried to imitate him, and from north to south the whole of Syria could only be compared to some great arena, in which fighting was continually carried on between one tribe or town and another—Tyre against Sidon, Sidon against Byblos, Jerusalem against Lachish. All of them appealed to Khûniatonû, and endeavoured to enlist him on their side. Their despatches arrived by scores, and the perusal of them at the present day would lead us to imagine that Egypt had all but lost her supremacy. The Egyptian ministers, however, were entirely unmoved by them, and continued to refuse material support to any of the numerous rivals, except in a few rare cases, where a too prolonged indifference would have provoked an open revolt in some part of the country.
Khûniatonû died young, about the XVIIIth year of his reign.* He was buried in the depths of a ravine in the mountain-side to the east of the town, and his tomb remained unknown till within the last few years. Although one of his daughters who died before her father had been interred there, the place seems to have been entirely unprepared for the reception of the king’s body. The funeral chamber and the passages are scarcely even rough-hewn, and the reception halls show a mere commencement of decoration.** The other tombs of the locality are divided into two groups, separated by the ravine reserved for the burying-place of the royal house. The noble families possessed each their own tomb on the slopes of the hillside; the common people were laid to rest in pits lower down, almost on the level of the plain. The cutting and decoration of all these tombs had been entrusted to a company of contractors, who had executed them according to two or three stereotyped plans, without any variation, except in size. Nearly all the walls are bare, or present but few inscriptions; those tombs only are completed whose occupants died before the Pharaoh.
The façades of the tombs are cut in the rock, and contain, for the most part, but one door, the jambs of which are covered on both sides by several lines of hieroglyphs; and it is just possible to distinguish traces of the adoration of the radiant Disk on the lintels, together with the cartouches containing the names of the king and god. The chapel is a large rectangular chamber, from one end of which opens the inclined passage leading to the coffin. The roof is sometimes supported by columns, having capitals decorated with designs of flowers or of geese hung from the abacus by their feet with their heads turned upwards.
The religious teaching at Tel el-Amarna presents no difference in the main from that which prevailed in other parts of Egypt.* The Double of Osiris was supposed to reside in the tomb, or else to take wing to heaven and embark with Atonû, as elsewhere he would embark with Eâ. The same funerary furniture is needed for the deceased as in other local cults—ornaments of vitreous paste, amulets, and Ushabtiu, or “Respondents,” to labour for the dead man in the fields of Ialû. Those of Khûniatonû were, like those of Amenôthes III., actual statuettes in granite of admirable workmanship. The dead who reached the divine abode, retained the same rank in life that they had possessed here below, and in order to ensure the enjoyment of it, they related, or caused to be depicted in their tombs, the events of their earthly career.
A citizen of Khûîtatonû would naturally represent the manners and customs of his native town, and this would account for the local colouring of the scenes in which we see him taking part.
They bear no resemblance to the traditional pictures of the buildings and gardens of Thebes with which we are familiar; we have instead the palaces, colonnades, and pylons of the rising city, its courts planted with sycomores, its treasuries, and its storehouses. The sun’s disk hovers above and darts its prehensile rays over every object; its hands present the crux ansata to the nostrils of the various members of the family, they touch caressingly the queen and her daughters, they handle the offerings of bread and cakes, they extend even into the government warehouses to pilfer or to bless. Throughout all these scenes Khûniatonû and the ladies of his harem seem to be ubiquitous: here he visits one of the officers, there he repairs to the temple for the dedication of its sanctuary. His chariot, followed at a little distance by that of the princesses, makes its way peaceably through the streets. The police of the city and the soldiers of the guard, whether Egyptians or foreigners, run before him and clear a path among the crowd, the high priest Marirî stands at the gate to receive him, and the ceremony is brought to a close by a distribution of gold necklaces or rings, while the populace dance with delight before the sovereign. Meantime the slaves have cooked the repast, the dancers and musicians within their chambers have rehearsed for the evening’s festival, and the inmates of the house carry on animated dialogues during their meal. The style and the technique of these wall-paintings differ in no way from those in the necropolis of the preceding period, and there can be no doubt that the artists who decorated these monuments were trained in the schools of Thebes. Their drawing is often very refined, and there is great freedom in their composition; the perspective of some of the bas-reliefs almost comes up to our own, and the movement of animated crowds is indicated with perfect accuracy. It is, however, not safe to conclude from these examples that the artists who executed them would have developed Egyptian art in a new direction, had not subsequent events caused a reaction against the worship of Atonû and his followers.
Although the tombs in which they worked differ from the generality of Egyptian burying-places, their originality does not arise from any effort, either conscious or otherwise, to break through the ordinary routine of the art of the time; it is rather the result of the extraordinary appearance of the sovereign whose features they were called on to portray, and the novelty of several of the subjects which they had to treat. That artist among them who first gave concrete form to the ideas circulated by the priests of Atonû, and drew the model cartoons, evidently possessed a master-hand, and was endowed with undeniable originality and power. No other Egyptian draughtsman ever expressed a child’s grace as he did, and the portraits which he sketched of the daughters of Khûniatonû playing undressed at their mother’s side, are examples of a reserved and delicate grace. But these models, when once composed and finished even to the smallest details, were entrusted for execution to workmen of mediocre powers, who were recruited not only from Thebes, but from the neighbouring cities of Hermopolis and Siût. These estimable people, with a praiseworthy patience, traced bit by bit the cartoons confided to them, omitting or adding individuals or groups according to the extent of the wall-space they had to cover, or to the number of relatives and servants whom the proprietor of the tomb desired should share in his future happiness. The style of these draughtsmen betrays the influence of the second-rate schools in which they had learned their craft, and the clumsiness of their work would often repel us, were it not that the interest of the episodes portrayed redeems it in the eyes of the Egyptologist.
Khûniatonû left no son to succeed him; two of his sons-in-law successively occupied the throne—Sâakerî, who had married his eldest daughter Marîtatonû, and Tûtankhamon, the husband of Ankhnasaton. The first had been associated in the sovereignty by his father-in-law;* he showed himself a zealous partisan of the “Disk,” and he continued to reside in the new capital during the few years of his sole reign.** The second son-in-law was a son of Amenôthes III., probably by a concubine. He returned to the religion of Amon, and his wife, abjuring the creed of her father, changed her name from Ankhnasaton to that of Ankhnasamon. Her husband abandoned Khûitatonû*** at the end of two or three years, and after his departure the town fell into decadence as quickly as it had arisen. The streets were unfrequented, the palaces and temples stood empty, the tombs remained unfinished and unoccupied, and its patron god returned to his former state, and was relegated to the third or fourth rank in the Egyptian Pantheon.
The town struggled for a short time against its adverse fate, which was no doubt retarded owing to the various industries founded in it by Khûniatonû, the manufactories of enamel and coloured glass requiring the presence of many workmen; but the latter emigrated ere long to Thebes or the neighbouring city of Hermopolis, and the “Horizon of Atonû” disappeared from the list of nomes, leaving of what might have been the capital of the Egyptian empire, merely a mound of crumbling bricks with two or three fellahîn villages scattered on the eastern bank of the Nile.*
Thebes, whose influence and population had meanwhile never lessened, resumed her supremacy undisturbed. If, out of respect for the past, Tûtankhamon continued the decoration of the temple of Atonû at Karnak, he placed in every other locality the name and figure of Amon; a little stucco spread over the parts which had been mutilated, enabled the outlines to be restored to their original purity, and the alteration was rendered invisible by a few coats of colour. Tûtankhamon was succeeded by the divine father Aï, whom Khûniatonû had assigned as husband to one of his relatives named Tîi, so called after the widow of Amenôthes III. Aï laboured no less diligently than his predecessor to keep up the traditions which had been temporarily interrupted. He had been a faithful worshipper of the Disk, and had given orders for the construction of two funerary chapels for himself in the mountain-side above Tel el-Amarna, the paintings in which indicate a complete adherence to the faith of the reigning king. But on becoming Pharaoh, he was proportionally zealous in his submission to the gods of Thebes, and in order to mark more fully his return to the ancient belief, he chose for his royal burying-place a site close to that in which rested the body of Amenôthes III.*
His sarcophagus, a large oblong of carved rose granite, still lies open and broken on the spot.
Figures of goddesses stand at the four angles and extend their winged arms along its sides, as if to embrace the mummy of the sovereign. Tûtankhamon and Aï were obeyed from one end of Egypt to the other, from Napata to the shores of the Mediterranean. The peoples of Syria raised no disturbances during their reigns, and paid their accustomed tribute regularly;* if their rule was short, it was at least happy. It would appear, however, that after their deaths, troubles arose in the state. The lists of Manetho give two or three princes—Râthôtis, Khebres, and Akherres—whose names are not found on the monuments.** It is possible that we ought not to regard them as historical personages, but merely as heroes of popular romance, of the same type as those introduced so freely into the history of the preceding dynasties by the chroniclers of the Saite and Greek periods. They were, perhaps, merely short-lived pretenders who were overthrown one by the other before either had succeeded in establishing himself on the seat of Horus. Be that as it may, the XVIIIth dynasty drew to its close amid strife and quarreling, without our being able to discover the cause of its overthrow, or the name of the last of its sovereigns.***
Scarcely half a century had elapsed between the moment when the XVIII’s dynasty reached the height of its power under Amenôthes III. and that of its downfall. It is impossible to introduce with impunity changes of any kind into the constitution or working of so complicated a machine as an empire founded on conquest. When the parts of the mechanism have been once put together and set in motion, and have become accustomed to work harmoniously at a proper pace, interference with it must not be attempted except to replace such parts as are broken or worn out, by others exactly like them. To make alterations while the machine is in motion, or to introduce new combinations, however ingenious, into any part of the original plan, might produce an accident or a breakage of the gearing when perhaps it would be least expected. When the devout Khûniatonû exchanged one city and one god for another, he thought that he was merely transposing equivalents, and that the safety of the commonwealth was not concerned in the operation. Whether it was Amon or Atonu who presided over the destinies of his people, or whether Thebes or Tel el-Amarna were the centre of impulse, was, in his opinion, merely a question of internal arrangement which could not affect the economy of the whole. But events soon showed that he was mistaken in his calculations. It is probable that if, on the expulsion of the Hyksôs, the earlier princes of the dynasty had attempted an alteration in the national religion, or had moved the capital to any other city they might select, the remainder of the kingdom would not have been affected by the change. But after several centuries of faithful adherence to Amon in his city of Thebes, the governing power would find it no easy matter to accomplish such a resolution. During three centuries the dynasty had become wedded to the city and to its patron deity, and the locality had become so closely associated with the dynasty, that any blow aimed at the god could not fail to destroy the dynasty with it; indeed, had the experiment of Khûniatonû been prolonged beyond a few years, it might have entailed the ruin of the whole country. All who came into contact with Egypt, or were under her rule, whether Asiatics or Africans, were quick to detect any change in her administration, and to remark a falling away from the traditional systems of the times of Thûtmosis III. and Amenothes II. The successors of the heretic king had the sense to perceive at once the first symptoms of disorder, and to refrain from persevering in his errors; but however quick they were to undo his work, they could not foresee its serious consequences. His immediate followers were powerless to maintain their dynasty, and their posterity had to make way for a family who had not incurred the hatred of Amon, or rather that of his priests. If those who followed them were able by their tact and energy to set Egypt on her feet again, they were at the same time unable to restore her former prosperity or her boundless confidence in herself.
THE REACTION AGAINST EGYPT
THE XIth DYNASTY: HARMHABΗTHE HITTITE EMPIRE IN SYRIA AND IN ASIA MINOR—SETI I. AND RAMSES II.—THE PEOPLE OF THE SEA: MÎNEPHTAH AND THE ISRAELITE EXODUS.
The birth and antecedents of Harmhabî, his youth, his enthronement—The final triumph of Amon and his priests—Harmhabî infuses order into the government: his wars against the Ethiopians and Asiatics—The Khâti, their civilization, religion; their political and military constitution; the extension of their empire towards the north—The countries and populations of Asia Minor; commercial routes between the Euphrates and the Ægean Sea—The treaty concluded between Harmhabî and Sapalulu.
Ramses I. and the uncertainties as to his origin—Seti I. and the campaign against Syria in the 1st year of his reign; the re-establishment of the Egyptian empire—Working of the gold-mines at Etaï—The monuments constructed by Seti I. in Nubia, at Karnak, Luxor, and Abydos—The valley of the kings and tomb of Seti I. at Thebes.
Ramses II., his infancy, his association in the Government, his début in Ethiopia: he builds a residence in the Delta—His campaign against the Khâti in the 5th year of his reign—The talcing of Qodshu, the victory of Ramses II. and the truce established with Khâtusaru: the poem of Pentaûîrît—His treaty with the Khâti in the 21st year of his reign: the balance of power in Syria: the marriage of Ramses II. with a Hittite princess—Public works: the Speos at Abu-Simbel; Luxor, Karnak, the Eamesseum, the monuments in the Delta—The regency of Khamoîsît and Mînephtah, the legend of Sesostris, the coffin and mummy of Ramses II.
Minephtah—The kingdom of Libya, the people of the sea—The first invasion of Libya: the Egyptian victory at Piriû; the triumph of Minephtah—Seti II., Amenmeses, Siphtah-Minephtah—The foreign captives in Egypt; the Exodus of the Hebrews and their march to Sinai—An Egyptian romance of the Exodus: Amenophis, son of Pa-apis.
The XIXth dynasty: Harmhabî—The Hittite empire in Syria and in Asia Minor—Seti I. and Ramses II.—The people of the sea: Minephtah and the Israelite Exodus.
While none of these ephemeral Pharaohs left behind them a, either legitimate or illegitimate, son there was no lack of princesses, any of which, having on her accession to the throne to choose a consort after her own heart, might thus become the founder of a new dynasty. By such a chance alliance Harmhabî, who was himself descended from Thûtmosis III., was raised to the kingly office.* His mother, Mûtnozmît, was of the royal line, and one of the most beautiful statues in the Gîzeh Museum probably represents her. The body is mutilated, but the head is charming in its intelligent and animated expression, in its full eyes and somewhat large, but finely modelled, mouth. The material of the statue is a finegrained limestone, and its milky whiteness tends to soften the malign character of her look and smile. It is possible that Mûtnozmît was the daughter of Amenôthes III. by his marriage with one of his sisters: it was from her, at any rate, and not from his great-grandfather, that Harmhabî derived his indisputable claims to royalty.**
He was born, probably, in the last years of Amenôthes, when Tîi was the exclusive favourite of the sovereign; but it was alleged later on, when Harmhabî had emerged from obscurity, that Amon, destining him for the throne, had condescended to become his father by Mûtnozmît—a customary procedure with the god when his race on earth threatened to become debased.* It was he who had rocked the newly born infant to sleep, and, while Harsiesis was strengthening his limbs with protective amulets, had spread over the child’s skin the freshness and brilliance which are the peculiar privilege of the immortals. While still in the nursery, the great and the insignificant alike prostrated themselves before Harmhabî, making him liberal offerings. Every one recognised in him, even when still a lad and incapable of reflection, the carriage and complexion of a god, and Horus of Cynopolis was accustomed to follow his steps, knowing that the time of his advancement was near. After having called the attention of the Egyptians to Harmhabî, Amon was anxious, in fact, to hasten the coming of the day when he might confer upon him supreme rank, and for this purpose inclined the heart of the reigning Pharaoh towards him. Aï proclaimed him his heir over the whole land.**
He never gave cause for any dissatisfaction when called to court, and when he was asked questions by the monarch he replied always in fit terms, in such words as were calculated to produce serenity, and thus gained for himself a reputation as the incarnation of wisdom, all his plans and intentions appearing to have been conceived by Thot the Ibis himself. For many years he held a place of confidence with the sovereign. The nobles, from the moment he appeared at the gate of the palace, bowed their backs before him; the barbaric chiefs from the north or south stretched out their arms as soon as they approached him, and gave him the adoration they would bestow upon a god. His favourite residence was Memphis, his preference for it arising from his having possibly been born there, or from its having been assigned to him for his abode. Here he constructed for himself a magnificent tomb, the bas-reliefs of which exhibit him as already king, with the sceptre in his hand and the uraaus on his brow, while the adjoining cartouche does not as yet contain his name.*
He was the mighty of the mighty, the great among the great, the general of generals, the messenger who ran to convey orders to the people of Asia and Ethiopia, the indispensable companion in council or on the field of battle,* at the time when Horus of Cynopolis resolved to seat him upon his eternal throne. Aï no longer occupied it. Horus took Harmhabî with him to Thebes, escorted him thither amid expressions of general joy, and led him to Amon in order that the god might bestow upon him the right to reign. The reception took place in the temple of Luxor, which served as a kind of private chapel for the descendants of Amenôthes. Amon rejoiced to see Harmhabî, the heir of the two worlds; he took him with him to the royal palace, introduced him into the apartments of his august daughter, Mûtnozmît; then, after she had recognised her child and had pressed him to her bosom, all the gods broke out into acclamations, and their cries ascended up to heaven.**
“Behold, Amon arrives with his son before him, at the palace, in order to put upon his head the diadem, and to prolong the length of his life! We install him, therefore, in his office, we give to him the insignia of Eâ, we pray Amon for him whom he has brought as our protector: may he as king have the festivals of Eâ and the years of Horus; may he accomplish his good pleasure in Thebes, in Heliopolis, in Memphis, and may he add to the veneration with which these cities are invested.” And they immediately decided that the new Pharaoh should be called Horus-sturdy-bull, mighty in wise projects, lord of the Vulture and of the very marvellous Urseus in Thebes, the conquering Horus who takes pleasure in the truth, and who maintains the two lands, the lord of the south and north, Sozir Khopîrûrî chosen of Eâ, the offspring of the Sun, Harmhabî Mîamûn, giver of life. The cortege came afterwards to the palace, the king walking before Amon: there the god embraced his son, placed the diadems upon his head, delivered to him the rule of the whole world, over foreign populations as well as those of Egypt, inasmuch as he possessed this power as the sovereign of the universe.
This is the customary subject of the records of enthronement. Pharaoh is the son of a god, chosen by his father, from among all those who might have a claim to it, to occupy for a time the throne of Horus; and as he became king only by a divine decree, he had publicly to express, at the moment of his elevation, his debt of gratitude to, and his boundless respect for, the deity, who had made him what he was. In this case, however, the protocol embodied something more than the traditional formality, and its hackneyed phrases borrowed a special meaning from the circumstances of the moment. Amon, who had been insulted and proscribed by Khûniatonû, had not fully recovered his prestige under the rule of the immediate successors of his enemy.
They had restored to him his privileges and his worship, they had become reconciled to him, and avowed themselves his faithful ones, but all this was as much an act of political necessity as a matter of religion: they still continued to tolerate, if not to favour, the rival doctrinal system, and the temple of the hateful Disk still dishonoured by its vicinity the sanctuary of Karnak. Harmhabî, on the other hand, was devoted to Amon, who had moulded him in embryo, and had trained him from his birth to worship none but him. Harmhabî’s triumph marked the end of the evil days, and inaugurated a new era, in which Amon saw himself again master of Thebes and of the world. Immediately after his enthronement Harmhabî rivalled the first Amen-ôthes in his zeal for the interests of his divine father: he overturned the obelisks of Atonû and the building before which they stood; then, that no trace of them might remain, he worked up the stones into the masonry of two pylons, which he set up upon the site, to the south of the gates of Thûtmosis III. They remained concealed in the new fabric for centuries, but in the year 27 B.C. a great earthquake brought them abruptly to light. We find everywhere among the ruins, at the foot of the dislocated gates, or at the bases of the headless colossal figures, heaps of blocks detached from the structure, on which can be made out remnants of prayers addressed to the Disk, scenes of worship, and cartouches of Amenôfches IV., Aï, and Tûtankhamon. The work begun by Harmhabî at Thebes was continued with unabated zeal through the length of the whole river-valley. “He restored the sanctuaries from the marshes of Athû even to Nubia; he repaired their sculptures so that they were better than before, not to speak of the fine things he did in them, rejoicing the eyes of Râ. That which he had found injured he put into its original condition, erecting a hundred statues, carefully formed of valuable stone, for every one which was lacking. He inspected the ruined towns of the gods in the land, and made them such as they had been in the time of the first Ennead, and he allotted to them estates and offerings for every day, as well as a set of sacred vessels entirely of gold and silver; he settled priests in them, bookmen, carefully chosen soldiers, and assigned to them fields, cattle, all the necessary material to make prayers to Râ every morning.” These measures were inspired by consideration for the ancient deities; but he added to them others, which tended to secure the welfare of the people and the stability of the government. Up to this time the officials and the Egyptian soldiers had displayed a tendency to oppress the fellahîn, without taking into consideration the injury to the treasury occasioned by their rapacity. Constant supervision was the only means of restraining them, for even the best-served Pharaohs, Thûtmosis, and Amenôthes III. themselves, were obliged to have frequent recourse to the rigour of the law to keep the scandalous depredations of the officials within bounds.*
The religious disputes of the preceding years, in enfeebling the authority of the central power, had given a free hand to these oppressors. The scribes and tax-collectors were accustomed to exact contributions for the public service from the ships, whether laden or not, of those who were in a small way of business, and once they had laid their hands upon them, they did not readily let them go. The poor fellow falling into their clutches lost his cargo, and he was at his wits’ end to know how to deliver at the royal storehouses the various wares with which he calculated to pay his taxes. No sooner had the Court arrived at some place than the servants scoured the neighbourhood, confiscating the land produce, and seizing upon slaves, under pretence that they were acting for the king, while they had only their personal ends in view. Soldiers appropriated all the hides of animals with the object, doubtless, of making from them leather jackets and helmets, or of duplicating their shields, with the result that when the treasury made its claim for leather, none was to be found. It was hardly possible, moreover, to bring the culprits to justice, for the chief men of the towns and villages, the prophets, and all those who ought to have looked after the interests of the taxpayer, took money from the criminals for protecting them from justice, and compelled the innocent victims also to purchase their protection. Harmhabî, who was continually looking for opportunities to put down injustice and to punish deceit, at length decided to pro-mulgate a very severe edict against the magistrates and the double-dealing officials: any of them who was found to have neglected his duty was to have his nose cut off, and was to be sent into perpetual exile to Zalu, on the eastern frontier. His commands, faithfully carried out, soon produced a salutary effect, and as he would on no account relax the severity of the sentence, exactions were no longer heard of, to the advantage of the revenue of the State. On the last day of each month the gates of his palace were open to every one.
Any one on giving his name to the guard could enter the court of honour, where he would find food in abundance to satisfy his hunger while he was awaiting an audience. The king all the while was seated in the sight of all at the tribune, whence he would throw among his faithful friends necklaces and bracelets of gold: he inquired into complaints one after another, heard every case, announced his judgments in brief words, and dismissed his subjects, who went away proud and happy at having had their affairs dealt with by the sovereign himself.*