History Mystery: Amarna Capital Of Heretic Pharaoh -5

Fashion, in the modern sense of fluctuating styles of dress, evolved side by side with the wealth and taste fore luxury which arose under the new kingdom. Chic Egyptian began to wear fuller and more complex garments. Short-sleeved blouses became popular, and the traditional loincloth was covered with a large piece of transparent drapery. In Amarna, the front of this piece of fine linen was folded upwards to form a long pleated pocket. New, discreetly voluptuous forms began to replace the austere lines of traditional wear. Women’s dresses, full length and flared, were knotted under the breasts, sometimes leaving them bare. Whether male or female, all high-born Egyptians lavished great care on their complexions. Men shaved regularly with bronze or copper razors: a high –ranking Egyptian never wore facial hair, a custom that distinguished him sharply from his Asiatic neighbours. On bas-reliefs, Syrians are immediately recognizable by their beards. Men’s hair was cut short, and a curly wig worm on top. Women wore heavier artificial hairdos, especially for banquets, when the wig was plaited and fell to the shoulders in a mass of ribbons and flowers, often crowned with a jeweled diadem. The jewellery of the New Kingdom was magnificent. Women’s necks were adorned with beaded necklaces, their wrists with arrays of bracelets. Materials varied according to the wearer’s station: from pottery or glass paste to gold, sliver, ivory, and precious stones such as lapis lazuli, turquoise, or malachite.

 This iridescent splendour reflected more than wealth or high rank. Decorative amulets of magical significance were shaped in the forms of hieroglyphs meaning ‘Life’, ‘Health’, or ‘Longevity’. Even before the Amarna period, the distinction between men’s and women’s clothing was becoming blurred. In Akhenaten’s time, this tendency reached its high point. It is clear from portraits that the king had a strangely feminine appearance, and under his rule characteristics traditional associated with women were exalted: Love, tenderness, affection for nature, and domesticity. At the same time, conventionally masculine skills of warfare and statecraft were being abandoned a move that was to have catastrophic consequences for the empire. The reign of Akhenaten lasted 17 years. During that time, Egypt’s hard-won dominion over Palestine and Syria was disintegrated. A cache of state archives, written on clay tablets, was discovered at Amarna in 1887. Many of the tablets are letters from the rulers of contemporary states such as mitanni, discussing diplomatic gifts. Others present a vivid picture of an empire in decline. They include letters written by vassals of Egypt in the Middle Eastern territories, begging of help against rival states, or complaining about Egypt’s failure to send troops. In fairness to Akhenaton, the process of decay must have set before he came to the throne. Many of the letters are addressed to his father, Amenhotep III. Some schorals have suggested that it was official policy to keep the eastern states quarrrelling among themselves, on the time-honoured principle of ‘divide and rule’. If so, the policy backfired.

A people now known by their Biblical name of the Hittites were emerging as a major power in the Middle East. They profited from Egypt’s neglect by seizing Syria. No evidence survives to suggest that the loss worried Akhenaten in his secluded world on the banks of the Nile. While night stole across the imperial domain, Amarna bathed in the rays of the setting sun. The last years of the pharaoh’s reign are shadowy. Queen Nefertiti disappears – she may have died or fallen from favour, or she may have moved to Thebes as the pharaoh’s representative. Her place at Akhenaten’s side was taken by her eldest daughter, the princess meretaten. In 1362 BC Akhenaton died, and was succeeded by his son-in-law, Smekhkare, husband of Meretaten. Smenkhkare reigned far a mere two years, and was succeeded by another son-in-law of Akhenaten, Tutankhaten. Already Egypt was turning away from the god which had failed to keep the empire intact. The new sovereign change his name to Tutankhamun, reflecting a reversion to the ancient dynasty deity previously worshipped in Thebes. The name of Tutankhamun became famous after the discovery, in 1922, of his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. His reign was short, but significant for the restoration of the traditional gods. Deserted shrines were rebuilt in splendour, and their priesthoods returned. But the taint of heresy lingered about the royal house. The efforts of Tutankhamun and his successors to appease the angry heavens did not go far enough. Around the end of the 14th century BC, one of Tutankhamun’s chief advisers, a general called Horemheb, came to the throne, and set about annihilating Akhenaton’s memory.

Amarna, already partially deserted, was obliterated. Statues of Akhenaten were smashed, monuments razed to the ground. Particular vengeance was reserved for the great temple; the walls were demolished, and thousands of stone slabs ferried along the Nile for re-use in temples dedicated to the ancient gods, as though to atone for the outrage committed against them. In a final gesture, a layer of cement was poured over the foundations of Amarna’s temples. Under the new dynasty of pharaohs, Egypt’s old imperial ambitions were revived, and the Amarna episode was committed to oblivion. Yet, in a curios paradox, it is the only major Egyptian city of which a fairly clear picture survives. Urban centres in the populated regions have all disappeared under successive layers of habitation, but the remote site of Amarna was never re-occupied. In addition, the cement which Horemheb poured over the foundations of the temple protected them from erosion, and the layout of the town survives exactly as it was in the age of Akhenaton – a blueprint of Egyptian town planning preserved. An extraordinary mystery surrounds the fate of Akhenaton himself. The pharaoh had prepared a family tomb to the east of the city, and this has been excavated. One of the royal princesses, who had died young, was buried there, but no other members of the household reached their appointed resting place. Four granite coffins have been unearthed at the site – they had been shattered. Somehow, the Egypitans denied the dead pharaoh his intended burial, perhaps wishing to forget the son of the Aten and his divine, faceless father.

History Mystery: Amarna Capital Of Heretic Pharaoh -4

The wealthier houses at Amarna were like miniature estates. They included gardens and many outbuildings, all enclosed by rectangular gardens and many outbuildings, all enclosed by a rectangular wall, and were largely self-sufficient. The kitchens were always situated in the outbuildings, as were the cattle sheds, stables, kennels, a well and the servants’ quarters. Grain brought from the west bank of the river was stored in a large courtyard equipped with grain lofts. Soil had to be brought in from outside the city to enrich the gardens, which were tended with exceptional care. Trees planted in rows according to species were often arranged around a large, rectangular pond. Most gardens contained a chapel, with an engraved stone showing the royal family making an offering to the Aten. Images of the Disc and of Akhenaten, his prophet, were everywhere in the city. In the desert space outside the city, the pharaoh built a number of royal palaces where he and his family could retreat for relaxation. At Maru-Aten, to the south of the town, he constructed several artificial lakes, the largest of which might have been used for water sports. In the middle of another lake, on an island, were three pavilions – in oasis of calm which may have served as the pharaoh’s summer palace. Another royal residence to the north of the town seems to have included a zoological garden. Frescoes here and elsewhere in the city bear tribute to Akhenaten’s delight in nature, depicting an exotic world of flowers, birds, and water plants. The Egyptians had always lived close to nature, and the animal kingdom featured prominently in their art. The Amarna period brought greater spontaneity – a more vibrant sense of life, independent of its mythological associations. The rigid lines of conventional art melted into more fluid forms. Representations of the human figure, for instance, began to show how people really looked, rather than following an established stereotype.

Musculature was examined, the casual gesture revealed. These new developments are most evident in the countless representations of the pharaoh and his family. Many cravings show scenes from their private life. On one relief, the royal couple heartily enjoys a meal. Akhenaten holds a chop, Nefertiti a piece of chicken; they are eating with gusto. Another relief shows the royal couple side by side on a chariot Akhenaten holding the reins and Nefertiti embracing him. Such displays of intimacy must have outraged traditionalists. Charmingly casual though the scene often was the royal couples were always represented with the Disc of the Sun blazing overhead. The rays of the heavenly body were drawn as long lines terminating in a hand which held a looped cross an ankh – the hieroglyph symbolizing life. Even in death, the image of the pharaoh and Aten accompanied the citizens of Amarna. Tombs were built in the wall of cliffs along the eastern frontier of the city. Like other Egyptian burials, they were decorated with scenes from the dead person’s earthly existence. But at Amarna, Akhenaten himself, crowned by the rays of the Sun, always dominates the pictures. All the mythology of the Egyptian underworld was swept away by Akhenaten’s reforms. The occupants of the tombs faced the unknown under the protection of the pharaoh alone.

It was he who illuminated his subjects’ burial places, and he acted as their exclusive guardian against the terrors of the afterlife. An entire village for the tomb workers was built near the cliffs, laid out according to a careful plan. Five streets ran between its terraced houses linking some 70 dwellings, all more or less identical except for the foreman’s larger house. The village limits were marked by a mud-brick wall. Death masks and casts have been excavated from the villa of a sculptor named Thutmose. The modeling room and studio contained chisels and drills, and models of heads fashioned out of gypsum plaster. Such likenesses were the sculptor’s stock-in-trade, from which portraits would later be carved in stone. Many customers were private were private individuals, from fairly low-born citizens who had profited by Akhenaten’s favour to the highest in the land. The head of Nefertiti found at Amarna is the work of Thutmose. The piece combines the formal simplicity of traditional Egyptian art with the naturalism encouraged by Akhenaten. It has none of the distortions which mar some of Amarna’s stone reliefs. While Thutmose was clearly one of the foremost artists of his day, he was not the sculptor-in-chief.

 That high title belonged to a certain Bak, whose father had been head sculptor under Amenhotep III. Whether Bak resented Akhenaten’s personal influence on the arts is not known. Like everyone else at Amarna, he paid at least token homage to the pharaoh’s new vision of he world, styling himself as chief sculptor, ‘whom his majesty himself taught’. Other excavations at Amarna have revealed little new information about the ordinary routines of daily life. Most of the workers were involved in farming the land; irrigating the fertile banks of the Nile according to age-old traditions. But frescoes and figurines from the period do reflect important changes in high society since the days of the Old Kingdom. These are nowhere more evident than in the styling of clothes. Under the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians had always dressed simply. Men wore nothing more than a loincloth, long or short, sometimes pleated, sometimes starched. Women wore long, tight-fitting dresses fastened at the shoulder with straps. The material in both cases was plain white linen. The difference between the clothing of the rich and the poor lay principally in the fineness of the fabric.

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History Mystery: Amarna Capital Of Heretic Pharaoh -3

The great Temple of Aten was situated slightly to the north of the private palace, in a vast sacred enclosure measuring 800m (2,625 ft) by almost 300m (984 ft). Like other Egyptian temples, the sanctuary consisted of a series of courtyards radiating from a single axis, and the entrance to the complex was framed by tow pylons – huge, tapering stone masses. But the likeness to traditional temples ended here, because the Temple of Aten had been conceived in a revolutionary way. In traditional temples, such as those at Karnak and Luxor, a courtyard led into a succession of increasingly dark and small rooms, with lowered ceilings and raised floors, culminating in the sanctuary itself, away from the crowds and from daylight. But the temple at Amarna had no roof – the walls acted merely as partitions between chambers open to the sky. Akhenaten was anxious that nothing should block the Sun’s holy rays. Reliefs from Amarna evoke the grandeur of the ceremonies held inside the Sun-drenched sanctuary. Events are presented frame by frame, with an almost cinematic effect. The king drove his own chariot to the temple. Nefertiti drove a second chariot. Behind came the princesses and ladies of the court, and soldiers carrying standards ran beside the procession. At the temple, servants led the horses and their chariots away, and priests greeted the royal couple with a bow. Women beat tambourines, and subjects raised their arms in homage.

 Luxury verging on decadence is apparent everywhere. The women wore diaphanous pleated dresses. The king and queen were similarly attired in fine fabrics revealing the contours of their limbs. Feathers decked the horns of the sacrificial oxen, whose bodies were so fattened that they could barely move. Within the temple enclosure, the king approached the main gate. The little princesses trooped in after their parents. The children were naked and their heads were shaved, except for a single lock of hair, as was the practice for Egyptian children. Each of them carried a sistrum, a musical instrument used in Egyptian religious ceremony. It consisted of a metal ring fastened to a handle. Rods loosely attached to the ring tinkled when the instrument was shaken. The sound was associated with love and joy, and was credited with warding off evil spirits. The music of the sistrum provided a familiar background to the ceremonies, but the rites of Aten were startlingly new. Egyptian gods were traditionally worshipped in effigy: a statue would be washed, dressed and perfumed exactly like a living being, and presented with offerings of food. No such idolatries attended the new religion.

The Aten had no statue; it was never represented in human or animal form. Offerings were piled on a great altar – gifts of bread, poultry, beef and garlands of flowers – and the Disc of the Sun witnessed the rites as the pharaoh consecrated gifts, burned incense, and poured water, with the queen officiating at his side. The temple site contains an astonishing number of lesser altars – some 2,000 in all – which may have been used by Amarna’s citizens. The possibility that the king and his subjects worshipped the Aten in the same sacred space indicates another revolutionary departure form the conventions of earlier Egyptian rites. Residential areas grew haphazardly to the north and south of the city’s official buildings. The homes of he wealthier citizens were spaced out along the streets at irregular intervals, and humbler citizens occupied the areas in between, different classes living side by side. Whatever their size, whether humble dwellings or princely palaces, houses in Amarna were laid out according to the same basic plan. All were divided into three parts: an antechamber, a living room, and a private area with bedrooms.



The antechamber was a long and often beautiful room, its ceiling supported by wooden columns, and it was sometimes surrounded by a suite of smaller rooms. The square living room was the centre of the house. The walls were not open the sun, so the room temperature was cool and comfortable. They led up to a ceiling higher than that of the rest of the house, supported by wooden columns. Daylight entered through small windows set high in the walls. The private apartments consisted of the master’s chamber and rooms reserved for family and guests. There were no true bathrooms – a simple chamber provided a space where servants would shower family members with water from a jar. A small adjacent room provided somewhere to relax, and a staircase led to the terrace roof where the family might sleep if the summer heat made the house unbearable.

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History Mystery: Amarna Capital Of Heretic Pharaoh -2

It was obvious that Thebes was still too devoted to the ancient gods to allow the new Sun cult to flourish. A new capital was needed, unstained by the worship of other gods, and a place known today as Tell el-Amarna was selected. It was named Akhetaten – ‘the Horizon of the Disc’. The site lay on the east bank of the Nile, at a point where the river’s fierce waters had once gouged out a huge natural amphitheatre – a desert space some 12 km (7 ½ miles) long and 5 km (3 miles) wide, bordered by a wall of cliffs to the east. The northern and southern extremities of the site were marked with inscriptions on stone slabs known as frontier stelae. The engravings are surmounted by images showing the king and his queen, Nefertiti (meaning ‘the beautiful one has come’), making an offering to Aten.

The stones declared the boundaries of the area dedicated to the celestial father. More inscriptions were placed in the cliffs to the east, and on the west bank of the Nile. The cliffs were patrolled, and all newcomers were checked. The soil of Amarna was somewhat above the flood level of the Nile, and therefore infertile. In order to maintain a supply of agricultural produce, an expanse of arable land on the left bank was colonized. Amarna was founded not just as a royal capital, but also as a self-sufficient community. Some of those who accompanied the pharaoh must have been true believers, motivated by faith in his vision. Others must have clung silently to their ancient beliefs. Whatever the background of its people, the original community of Amarna was large enough to form the nucleus of a metropolis which expanded over the years that followed. Surrounded by cliffs and water, the site was had to reach. Transporting large stone slabs for temple-building proved difficult, so to speed things up, only to face the walls. Houses were hurriedly erected with sun-dried mud brick. In the heart of Amarna, the official quarter was constructed, comprising the royal place, the Temple of Aten, and administrative buildings. The house of the vizier, head of the administration, was about 1.5 km (1 mile) from the place, and could be reached quickly be chariot.

The palace overlooked the Nile on one side, and on the other it faced the Royal Highway - a broad avenue running through the middle of the city. The ruins of the place extend for more then 400m (1,312 ft), a labyrinthine sprawl of courts and chambers from which archaeologists has identified the principal areas. A large central courtyard contained colossal statues of the pharaoh and his queen, and led to a harem and an immense throne room containing more than 500 pillars. The king did not live in the place – it was reserved for official functions. His personal residence, a more modest villa with gardens and outbuildings, lay on the opposite side of the Royal Highway. The two complexes, official and private, were connected by a covered bridge across the avenue, and this structure played a vital role in the life of the city. From a balcony in the middle of the bridge, the pharaoh would toss shimmering hoards of gold to his most favoured subjects. It has long been the custom of the pharaohs to reward loyal subjects with gifts. Under the Old Kingdom, the royal bounty often took the form of a stone coffin or a funerary adornment for a tomb. Under the New Kingdom, gifts of gold become more usual – the precious metal satisfied the material cravings of a more commercially minded age. Gold could be used in trade, but it also had religious associations – it was an incorruptible solar substance symbolizing immortality.

An award of the ‘gold or recompense’ was considered the honour in Amarna, and the scene if often depicted in the city’s tomb paintings. The honoured subject is generally shown standing on the Royal Highway at the foot of the palace bridge. The royal family appears above him, and articles of gold are tossed down: cups, bracelets, and heavy necklaces with servants fasten around the neck of the receiver. Ecstatic crowds witness the subject’s day of glory: colleagues, friends and servants – all of whom bow down before their ruler. After the ceremony comes dancing and celebration, and the gifts are taken back to the home of the favoured one. Akhenaten certainly knew how to nurture the faith of his followers.

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History Mystery: Amarna Capital Of Heretic Pharaoh -1

It was a dazzling moment in Egypt’s history when Akhenaten ordered the worship of a single deity – the Aten, or Disc of the Sun. but the old gods took revenge through his successors, who buried the heart of his city beneath a sea of cement. The religion of ancient Egypt embraced a pageant of human and half-human deities, from Isis, the horned goddess, and Osiris, lord of the dead, to hawk-faced Horus, and Thoth, god of intelligence, depicted with the beak of an ibis. Scores of lesser divinities were also worshipped – snake-gods, cat-gods, jackal-gods – in a long tradition derived from ancient cults. Their worship bonded Egyptian society for thousands of years. During the reign of Amenhotep IV (1379-1362 BC) the pantheon was swept aside. The pharaoh ordered that only one god was to be worshipped: the Sun, or more properly, the Aten (‘Disc of the Sun’). The new monotheistic religion was revolutionary, exalting universal harmony, the beauty of nature, and love among all mankind – and represented nothing less than a cultural revolution.

When the renegade pharaoh mounted the throne, Egypt was at the height of its power. Since the founding of the18th dynasty in 1570 BC – the beginning of the era known as the New Kingdom - Egyptian wealth and might had grown immeasurably. The nation ruled the largest empire the world had yet seen, encompassing Upper and Lower Egypt and the greater part of Nubia, beyond the fourth cataract of the Nile to the south. The empire received tributes from subject kingdoms, and Thebes, the capital, become a city of fabulous riches. Much of the wealth reached the priests of the capital’s main deity, Amun – ‘The Hidden One’. The figure of Amun encompassed many divinities, most notably Ra (the Sun), and the gods of war and conquest. His cult was Egypt’s official religion, and his Temple of Karnak at Thebes becomes one of the biggest religious complexes ever built. The priests of Amun wielded immense power – enough to threaten the throne.

By the time of Amerhotep III, decadence was beginning to taint Egyptian society. The empire’s frontiers seemed secure, and warlike skills were neglected. Art had become more mannered, and the religious monopoly of Amun was breaking down. Amid the wealth and splendour of the civilization, a feeling of disquiet pervaded. The name of Aten, Disc of the Sun, first appeared on some monuments as another title for the Sun god, Ra. The cult may have been given royal sponsorship in an attempt to break the powerful grip of the established priesthood on Egypt’s political lift. It was in this setting that the drama of Akhenaten unfolded – a drama which was to shake Egyptian society to its roots.

Amenhotep IV came to the throne in 1379 BC surrounded by all the usual pomp and ceremony of the established cult of Amun – even the name Amenhotep means ‘Amun is content’. But the new pharaoh had a particular zeal for Sun worship. Amenhotep began installing monuments dedicated to Aten in the Temple of Amun at Karnak. This must have stirred a whirlwind of fury among the established priesthood. As the pharaoh’s religious ardour increased, he began closing he temples of Amun and persecuting the priests. The name of the god was obliterated from monuments throughout the country, and Amenhotep decided to take a new name, Akhenaten, ‘He who is pleasing to Aten’.

It was not only the cult of Amun which was disbanded; those of the other ancient deities – Isis and Osiris, Horus and Thoth – were swept away, too. At the expense of a company of gods who had coexisted since the dawn of Egyptian civilization, Akhenaten imposed monotheism: the belief in a single, universal deity. He dismantled an entire universe, leaving the vulnerable Egyptians protected only by the blank gaze of a celestial disc.

The strength of the pharaoh’s religious beliefs suggests some kind of personal revelation. A great hymn surviving from the period, which may have been composed by Akhenatem, reveals a fresh and sparkling vision of the world. It is a paean to the supreme life force, the Sun, and names Akhenaten as the son of the solar divinity – the sole intermediary between mankind and the divine:

‘You arise in beauty in the horizon of the sky, oh living Aten, creator of life… Earth lights up when you appear on the horizon, Aten who shines throughout the day. ‘You chase the darkness and bless us with your rays. The two countries (Upper and Lower Egypt) rejoice. The people awaken, they stand upright. ‘It is you who have caused them to raise… trees and plants grow green. The birds fly from their nests, praising your spirit with their wings. All creatures leap in frolic… ‘No one knows you but your son Neferkheperure Waenre (another name for Akhenaten). You have informed him of your ways and of your power.’

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