Читать книгу The Life and Times of Akhenaton, Pharaoh of Egypt - Arthur E. P - Страница 12

Besides Yuaa and Tuau and the Queen-Dowager Mutemua, there was a certain noble, named Amonhotep-son-of-Hapu, who may have exercised considerable influence upon the young Pharaoh. So good and wise a man was he, that in later times he was regarded almost as a divinity, and his sayings were treasured from generation to generation. It may be that he furthered the cause of the Heliopolitan priesthood against that of Amon; and it is to be observed in this connection that, in the inscription engraved upon his statue, he refers to the Pharaoh as the “heir of Atum” and the “first-born son of Horakhti,” those being the Heliopolitan gods. When, presently, a daughter was born to Tiy, who was named Setamon, this philosopher was given the honorary post of “Steward” to the princess; while at the same time he filled the office of Minister of Public Works, and held various court appointments. At this period, when religious speculation was beginning to be freely indulged in, the influence of a “wise man” of this character would necessarily be great; and should any of his sayings come to light, they will perhaps be found to bear upon the subject of the religious changes which were now taking place. A late tradition tells us that this Amonhotep had warned the Pharaoh that if he would see the true God he must drive from his kingdom all impure persons; and herein one may perhaps observe some reference to the corrupt priests of Amon, whose ejection from their offices was daily becoming more necessary.

Amonhotep-son-of-Hapu, the “wise man” of the Court of Amonhotep III.

At the time of which we write Egypt still remained at that height of power to which the military skill of Thothmes III. had raised her. The Kings of Palestine and Syria were tributaries to the young Pharaoh; the princes of the sea-coast cities sent their yearly impost to Thebes; Cyprus, Crete, and even the Greek islands, were Egyptianised; Sinai and the Red Sea coast as far south as Somaliland were included in the Pharaoh’s dominions; and the negro tribes of the Sudan were his slaves. Egypt was indeed the greatest state in the world, and Thebes was a metropolis at which the ambassadors, the merchants, and the artisans from these various countries met together. Here they could look upon buildings undreamed of in their own lands, and could participate in luxuries unknown even in Babylon. The wealth of Egypt was so enormous that a foreign sovereign who wrote to the Pharaoh asking for gold mentioned that it could not be considered as anything more valuable than so much dust by an Egyptian. Golden vases in vast quantities adorned the tables of the king and his nobles, and hundreds of golden vessels of different kinds were used in the temples.

The splendour and gaiety of the court at Thebes remind one of the tales from the Arabian Nights. One reads of banquets, of splendid festivals on the water, of jubilee celebrations, and of hunting parties. When the scenes depicted on the monuments are gathered together in the mind, and the ruins which are left are there reconstructed, a life of the most intense brilliancy is shown. This was rather a development of the period than a condition of things which had been derived from an earlier régime. The Egyptians had always been a happy, light-hearted people; but it was the conquests of Thothmes III. that had given them the security and the wealth to live as luxuriously as they pleased. The tendency of the nation was now to break away from the old, hardy traditions of the earlier periods of Egyptian history; and virtually no other body, except the priesthood of Amon, held them down to ancient conventionalities. But while the king and his court made merry and amused themselves in sumptuous fashion, that god Amon and his representatives towered over them like some sombre bogie, holding them to a religion which they considered to be obsolete, and claiming its share of royal wealth.

CEILING DECORATION FROM THE PALACE OF AMONHOTEP III.

About the time of his marriage Amonhotep built a palace on the western bank of the Nile, on the edge of the desert under the Theban hills, and here Queen Tiy held her brilliant court. The palace was a light but roomy structure of brick and costly woods, exquisitely decorated with paintings on stucco, and embellished with delicate columns. Along one side ran a balcony on which were rugs and many-coloured cushions, and here the king and queen could sometimes be seen by their subjects. Gardens surrounded the palace, almost at the gates of which rose the splendid hills. On the eastern side of the building the king later constructed a huge pleasure-lake especially for the amusement of Tiy. The mounds of earth which were thrown up during its excavation were purposely formed into irregular hills, and these were covered with trees and flowers. Here the queen floated in her barge, which, in honour of the Heliopolitan god, she called “Aton-gleams”; and as she watched the reflections of the hills and the trees in the still water, she may well have imagined herself in those fair lands of Syria from which Aton or Adonis had come.

The name Aton was Syrian. The setting sun, as we have seen, was called in Egypt Atum, which was derived from the Asiatic Adon or Aton; and it is now that we first find the word introduced into Egypt as a synonym of Ra-Horakhti-Khepera-Atum of Heliopolis. Presently we find that one of the Pharaoh’s regiments of soldiers is named after this god Aton, and here and there the word now occurs upon the monuments. Thus, gradually, the court was bringing a new-named deity into prominence, closely related to the gods of Heliopolis; and it may be supposed that the priesthood of Amon watched the development with considerable perturbation. The Pharaoh himself does not seem to have worried very considerably with regard to these religious matters. He was, it seems, a man addicted to pleasure, whose interests lay as much in the hunting-field as in the palace. He loved to boast that during the first ten years of his reign he had slain 102 lions; but as he was a mere boy when he first indulged in this form of sport, it is to be presumed that his nobles assisted him handsomely in the slaughter on each occasion. In one day he is reported to have killed fifty-six wild cattle, and a score more fell to him a few days later; but here again one may suppose that the glory and not the deed was his.

Site of the Palace of Queen Tiy.

In the fifth year of his reign he led an expedition into the Sudan to chastise some tribe which had rebelled, and he records with pride the slaughter which he had made. It is stated that these negroes “had been haughty, and great things were in their hearts; but the fierce-eyed lion, this prince, he slew them by the command of Amon-Atum.” It is interesting to notice that Atum is thus brought into equal prominence with Amon, and one may see from this the trend of public opinion.

At this time the Vizir, a certain Ptahmes, held also the office of High Priest of Amon; but when he died he was not succeeded in his duties as Vizir by the new head of the Amon priesthood, as was to be expected. The Pharaoh appointed a noble named Rames as his prime minister, and thus separated the civil and the religious power: a step which again shows us something of the movement which was steadily diminishing the power of Amon.

Queen Tiy seems to have borne several daughters to the king, and it is possible that she had also presented him with a son. But, if this is so, he had died in early childhood, and no heir to the throne was now living. It may have been partly due to this fact that Amonhotep, in the tenth year of his reign, married the Princess Kirgipa or Gilukhipa, daughter of the King of Mitanni, and probably niece of the Dowager-Queen Mutemua.13 The princess came to Egypt in considerable state, bringing with her 317 ladies-in-waiting; but she seems to have been thrust into the background by Tiy, who, even in the official record of the marriage, is called the king’s chief wife. The marriage may have been purely political, as was that of Thothmes IV.; and there is certainly no record of any children born to Gilukhipa. She and her ladies but added a further foreign element to the life of the palace, and swelled the numbers of those who had no sympathy with the old gods of Thebes.

Coffin of Yuaa.

It must have been somewhere about the year 1390 B.C. that Tiy’s aged father, Yuaa, died; and Tuau soon followed him to the grave. They were buried in a fine sepulchre in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes; and if they are not to be considered as royal, this will have been the first time that persons not of royal blood had been buried in a tomb of large size in this valley. A quantity of funeral furniture was placed around the splendid coffins in which their mummies lay, and amongst this there were a few objects which evidently had been presented by the bereaved king and queen and by the young princesses, Setamon and another whose name is now lost. Yuaa and his wife had evidently been much beloved at the court, and as the parents of the great queen they had commanded the respect of all men. To us they are remarkable as the grandparents of that great teacher, Akhenaton, whose birth has now to be recorded.