CHAPTER IX.

The Eighteenth Dynasty—_continued_.

(_Circa_ 1600-1400 B.C.)

Of the reign of Thothmes IV. there is very little record left excepting the curious story of his own youth, which was written on a tablet suspended by his order upon the breast of the Sphinx at Ghizeh—to the following effect:—‘Thothmes had been practising spear-throwing in the neighbourhood of Memphis, where he also slung brazen bolts at a target and hunted lions in the “valley of the gazelles.”[40] The prince rode in his two-horsed chariot, and his horses were swifter than the wind. With him were two of his servants. No man knew them. The hour came when he gave his servants rest. Thothmes went alone to the little sanctuary between the outstretched paws of the great image of Horus in the city of the dead, to present an offering of the seeds of flowers upon the heights, and to pray to the “great mother Isis” and to other deities. A great enchantment rested on this place since the beginning of time even as far as the district of Babylon,[41] the sacred road of the gods to the western horizon. To the spot where the prince was standing the inhabitants of Memphis and the surrounding country were wont to come, to raise their hands in prayer and offer oblations. It so chanced that on one of these feast days the prince arrived at this spot about the hour of mid-day, and he laid himself down to rest in the shade of this great god until sleep overtook him. The sun was in the zenith when he dreamed, and lo! this great god spoke to him with his own mouth as a father speaks to his son. “Behold me, look at me, my son Thothmes! I am thy father Hormakhu-Ra. The kingdom shall be given thee; thou shalt wear the white crown and the red crown on the throne of the earth god Seb. The world shall be thine in its length and its breadth; plenty and riches shall be thine, the best from the interior of the land, and rich tributes from all nations. Long years shall be granted thee: my heart clings to thee.

The sand of this region in which I dwell has covered me up. Promise me that thou wilt do that which my heart desireth; then shall I know whether thou indeed art my helper.” The prince awoke and repeated these words, and understood their meaning; and he laid them up in his heart, saying to himself—“I see how the people of this city honour the god with sacrificial gifts without ever thinking of freeing from sand the noble image of Hormakhu.”

The tablet here breaks off, but no doubt it recorded the fulfilment by Thothmes of the god’s request.

Amenhotep III., successor of Thothmes IV., maintained with vigour the supremacy of Egypt both in the north and in the south. He must have been no ordinary sportsman if he speared, as he is said to have done, 102 lions with his own hand in the forest lands of Mesopotamia. His conquests were principally achieved in the south; for the sake of gold quite as much as for increase of territory he carried his arms into the Soudan, and subdued the negro peoples who dwelt beneath its burning sun. But the chief glory of Amenhotep III. was not won by spearing lions in Asia or conquering negroes in Africa; his name is remembered chiefly through his architectural achievements at Thebes. He erected a splendid gate-tower before the great temple at Karnak, and planned the avenue of sphinxes which connected it with another temple which he began at Luxor. To the north and south of the great temple he also built two smaller ones. On the western bank he constructed another and a magnificent temple.

His architect and namesake, Amenhotep, has left some notices of his own life and labours. ‘The king appointed me under secretary. I studied the holy book and beheld the glories of the god Thoth. I was acquainted with the sacred mysteries, and was a master in the art of speech.’ Amenhotep was besides intrusted with the charge of the royal household and the collection of the revenue, and he was commander-in-chief of the king’s forces. All his varied services, however, might have sunk into oblivion for later ages had it not been that in his capacity of chief architect he devised a scheme for immortalising the memory of his royal master by the execution of two portrait statues ‘in noble hard stone for his great building,’ in Western Thebes. These colossal statues were about 60 feet high, and each was cut out of a single block of stone. Amenhotep caused eight ships to be built to convey them down the river; he tells us that all the masons under his direction were full of ardour in the work, and that the safe arrival and landing of the statues at Thebes was a ‘joyful event.’ ‘Every heart,’ he says, ‘was filled with joy, and the people shouted in praise of the king.’ They were raised in their appointed place some little distance in front of the new temple the king had founded on the western side of the river. And he tells us that ‘they made the gate-towers look small. They were wonderful for size and height, and they will last as long as heaven.’

A few scattered ruins only of the temple remain, but these two battered giants sit there still and keep their watch upon the desert plain. These were the statues called by Greek fancy the ‘statues of Memnon,’ who was, they said, the son of Aurora, and came to the aid of the Greeks at the siege of Troy. One of them was broken in two during a terrible earthquake that wrought great destruction in Egypt in A.D. 27. The upper part fell to the ground, and it was after this event that the statue became vocal, and emitted every morning at sunrise a musical and melancholy strain. The fact of such a sound being heard was attested by an immense number of inscriptions left there by both Greek and Roman travellers. Septimius Severus afterwards repaired the statue, and from that time the phenomenon ceased, but has ever since been subject of curious speculation.

As might be supposed from the extent and splendour of his works, the reign of Amenhotep III. was not of short duration. We read of one thirty years’ jubilee that was celebrated amid national rejoicings. Some of the taxpayers brought, it is said, on that occasion ‘when the overseer had spoken but one word, more than the actual amount due, and the king rewarded their devotion by the presentation of golden chains and collars—the customary badges of honour.’

The portraits of Egyptian kings and queens bear every sign of being truthful and characteristic likenesses. The kings of the Thothmes family are all fine-looking men, their noses straight, their features well formed; those of the second and third Thothmes being particularly refined and delicately cut. And Queen Tai-ti, wife of Amenhotep III., is unquestionably the most beautiful amongst the Egyptian queens that we know. But the monarch who reigned next, or next but one to the last-named sovereign, is of quite peculiar ugliness; he has a retreating forehead, a very long aquiline nose, and an extraordinary chin, long and pointed. His figure is thin and effeminate, his legs feeble and attenuated, and his expression somewhat idiotic. It is difficult to believe that he could have belonged to the same family, or even the same nation as the Thothmes and Amenhoteps, his predecessors, and one is inclined to conclude with Mr. Villiers Stuart,[42] that a princess must have unexpectedly succeeded to the throne whose husband was a foreigner. This idea would agree with the fact that the new sovereign actually introduced a new form of worship into the country.

The mysterious god of Thebes was worshipped under the name and figure of the sun, but this was regarded as only one of his manifestations, who was a being ‘of many names, of holy transformations, of mysterious forms.’[43] But the new king worshipped Aten or the sun’s disk, and recognised no other god. He also adopted the name of Khu-en-aten or ‘Splendour of the Disk.’ It is hard to understand theological controversies of so very ancient a date, but it is easy to feel what must have been the indignation among the priests and people at Thebes, when a royal edict was issued commanding that the names of Amen and of Mut should be erased from all the monuments in this, the ancient seat of their worship. Royal authority, however, proved sufficient to accomplish this outrage upon the national faith, but the king’s further scheme of erecting a temple to his god Aten in Thebes itself could not be carried out, the influence of the rich and powerful priesthood and the strength of the national feeling were too great.

Khu-en-aten therefore abandoned Thebes altogether, and migrated with his court to a spot about midway between that city and Memphis. Here he built an entirely new city and a splendid temple, with fire altars in honour of Aten. He summoned the masons of all Egypt to his work, and called together the chief men of the people, most of whom must have rendered but a sullen and unwilling obedience. There were courtiers, however, ready to adopt the royal creed, and to become, some of them at least, its zealous advocates. Amongst these the foremost was one Meri-ra, who was promoted to the dignity of chief seer. ‘Be thou chief seer of the disk of the sun according to thy wish,’ said the king, ‘for thou wast my servant who wast obedient to the teaching. Thou treasurer of the chamber of silver and gold! reward the chief seer of Aten—place a gold chain around his neck, and join it behind—place gold at his feet, because he was obedient unto the teaching of the king.’

At Tel-el-Amarna, east of the Nile, are still to be seen the ruins of this great and hastily constructed city, which was about two miles in length, but very narrow in width. Travellers say that the ground-plan of the houses may still be traced, and that there are some immense mounds covered by the drifting sand, where temples and palaces might be buried. Four miles off are tombs and rock-temples excavated in the hill-side, but often entirely blocked up by sand. Wherever the new worship was portrayed, the sun’s disk is represented above, with long rays reaching downwards, and each ending in a hand—the sign of divine protection; the hand often holds the symbol of life before the king.

The family life of Khu-en-aten is depicted more than once. In one group he is seen with his queen Nefer-tai and their young daughters, distributing gifts of honour at some festival. One little boy is there too, but he is too young to take part in the distribution, and is caressing his mother’s face. Strong affection appears to have united the royal family, who doubtless felt their position a very isolated one. The prayers and praises, however, that are recorded as forming part of the new ritual, are very similar in tone and expression to those used in the customary worship. Prayer for the reigning sovereigns is frequent; on one festive occasion we read that the king gave his city the name of ‘Delight of the Sun’s disk,’ and offered sacrifices with solemn invocation. ‘Tender love fills my heart for the queen and her young children. Grant long years of life to Nefer-tai, that she may keep the king’s hand. Grant long life to the royal daughters, that they may keep the hand of the queen, their mother, for evermore.’ Nefer-tai appears to have died comparatively young; in one of the sculptures she is represented ‘with terrible fidelity,’ Mr. Villiers Stuart says, as apparently in the last stage of wasting disease. Her only son must have died quite in childhood; he is not represented again, but the daughters, seven in number, are frequently seen. As Khu-en-aten died without a male heir, the crown passed to his daughters’ husbands, two if not three of whom reigned in succession. They soon returned to Thebes, and to the worship of Amen-Ra, but none of them were ever acknowledged as true-born kings; it is doubtful whether they were crowned at Thebes. Ai was the last of them, and a beautiful rose-coloured sarcophagus of granite found in a tomb to the west of the royal sepulchres bears his cartouche.[44] It is worthy of notice that he is styled _prince_, not king. Each of these rulers, in fact, occupied the throne only in right of his wife,[45] and were themselves apparently merely officers in high position at Khu-en-aten’s court—a fact sufficient to account for the coldness with which the priests of Amen regarded them, in spite of their official return to the national worship. The government, however, appears to have been well administered by them, and foreign tributes were duly paid. A scene is represented on the walls of a tomb at Thebes, in which the governor of the south (whose tomb it was) is introducing a negro queen into the presence of Tutankh-amen, one of these princes. She has come in person to lay tribute and gifts at his feet. The boats are depicted in which the party have travelled and brought with them giraffes and leopards from the South, which are now presented to the king with other offerings, amongst which is a model of one of the negro dome-shaped huts with palm trees, around the tops of which giraffes are nibbling. The dark-hued princess made use of a sort of chariot drawn by oxen; her offerings are by no means devoid of artistic merit, though they cannot vie, in this respect, with those presented at the same levée by Asiatic princes of red complexion, and long curling black hair; they bring costly works wrought in gold, silver, and precious stones—the produce of skilled Phœnician art.

None of these kings apparently left any children. The official lists of sovereigns do not include any names between that of Amenhotep III. and Horus. It was to Horus that all eyes turned when the direct succession failed. He was then living in retirement at a city called Ha-Suten in middle Egypt, but had held high office at court at one time, and had been promoted to the dignity of ‘guardian,’ and afterwards of ‘Adon’ or ‘Lord,’ of the land—if indeed he had not been in some way recognised as heir to the throne itself. Horus was esteemed and beloved for the uprightness and gentleness of his character. ‘He took pleasure in justice,’ it is said of him, ‘which he carried in his heart; he followed the gods Thoth and Ptah in all their ways, and they were his shield and protectors on earth for evermore.’ He was especially acceptable to the priesthood on account of his fervent attachment to the old faith and the national gods—the god Horus being regarded as his special patron and guardian. To him was ascribed his elevation to the royal dignity. ‘Horus made his son great, and willed to prolong his life until the day came when he should receive the office destined for him.’ It is doubtful whether he was himself of royal descent, but it is certain that he married a princess of the direct line, and that no one else was thought of for a moment when the throne became vacant. There is a long account preserved of his accession, and solemn reception, and coronation at Thebes. ‘Heaven and earth rejoice together—the gods invested him with the double crown. Heaven kept festival, and all the land was glad. The deities rejoiced on high, and the people of Egypt raised their rapturous songs of praise even unto heaven; great and small united their voices with one accord. It was as if Horus, son of Isis, were once more presenting himself after his triumph over Set.’

The new king was indeed regarded as, in some sense, an avenger triumphing over evil. One can imagine that even though the previous rulers had returned to Thebes and its gods, it would have been hardly possible for their wives, who must have shared their sovereignty, to indulge in any bitter animosity towards the city in which they had been brought up, towards the worship which their father had established there, or towards the names and memory of their parents. But at the accession of Horus, all restraint was removed, and the full tide of animosity let loose against the ‘city of the delight of the sun’s disk.’ City, temples, and tombs were destroyed, and every vestige and trace of the reign and the religion of Khu-en-aten effaced as far as possible. The stone was taken to be employed in the building of Theban temples. Only a few ruins and a few inscriptions have escaped to tell the traveller of this curious episode in Egyptian history.

Equal diligence was shown by this sovereign in rebuilding and beautifying the temples which had long been neglected. The cities of the gods, we are told in decidedly hyperbolical language, ‘lay as heaps of rubbish.’ ‘He renewed the temples of the sun-god,’ we read, ‘and Ra rejoiced to see that renewed which had been destroyed in former times.’ The king also provided for the sacrifices; he appointed holy persons, singers, and bodyguards for the temples, and assigned for their use and service arable land, cattle, and all that was required—that ‘they might sing thus each new morning unto Ra: “Thou hast made the kingdom great for us in thy son the delight of thy heart, King Horus. Grant him length of years and victory in all lands, even as unto Horus, son of Isis.”’

Horus reigned for more than twenty years, and his death was followed by the accession of a new dynasty—the nineteenth.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] This valley lay west of the pyramids in the Libyan desert, and was a favourite resort of sportsmen for hunting lions and other wild animals.

[41] This district of ‘Babylon’ was that where Cairo now stands.

[42] See the _Nile Gleanings_, where the portraits of the sovereigns are given. If Khu-en-aten’s is a caricature even, it is a caricature founded on a different type of countenance.

[43] From a chapter in the Ritual.

[44] The oval in which the royal names are always inscribed.

[45] And the wives, _in all probability_, inherited only through their mother, Khu-en-aten’s wife.