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David Arthur Walters


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Pharaoh of Love


by


David Arthur Walters

The ultimate sacred power cannot be arbitrarily confined to an idol nor can it be contained by a city of a god, not even the ideal city the prophet Jeremiah had in mind instead of the Jerusalem he resided in. A spiritual iconoclast disavows the worship of a city even if it happens to be the throne of a god or the central seat of political power. He would disavow the exaltation of any object, not only a carved idol, a painted image and such, but an entire city; for example, the dream city built by the iconoclastic pharaoh, Akhnaton (He-who-serves-Aton), during the end of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty, the city he named Akhetaton, or 'City of the Horizon of the Sun-disk.'

Akhnaton (c.1395-1366 B.C.E.) found the site for his holy city in the black virgin soil undefiled by man and the pantheon of gods Egypt had accumulated over the centuries: "For it was Aton, my Father, that brought me to this City of the Horizon. There was not a noble who directed me to it; there was not any man in the whole land who led me to it, saying, 'It is fitting for his majesty that he make a City of the Horizon of Aton in this place'...Behold the Pharaoh found that this site belonged not to a prince, nor to a princess. There was no right for any man to act as owner of it."

So there Akhnaton built the ark that was to carry the seeds of the revolutionary race consecrated to the Sun-god. He built it quickly of brick and mortar along modern, "natural" lines - there was no time for massive quarrying - and inscribed on a stone tablet his vow never to leave it: "I will not pass beyond it, for ever and ever," he promised. He declared his oath and the tablet upon which it was written would forever endure: "It shall not be erased. It shall not be washed out. It shall not be kicked. It shall not be struck with stones." Ironically, Akhnaton's city flourished for only twenty-five years. Nonetheless, never before had a king built a city so thoroughly suited to the worship of one god.

What sort of person was Akhnaton? His unusual conduct and personal appearance have been the subject of considerable speculation. He was portrayed with an oddly shaped head, a thin face with a brooding, in-drawn expression, a slender neck, narrow sloping shoulders, protruding breasts, a pot-belly and wide hips - his physiognomy was once believed to be the product of incestuous inbreeding, but that hypothesis has been discarded. He apparently wore simple clothing and did not adorn himself with jewelry. Of course his personal characteristics were caricatured in the naturalistic art of his reign - artists naturally flattered the royal model of natural human beauty. Akhnaton has been variously described by modern critics as an introspective intellectual; iconoclast; heretic; reformer; revolutionary; the world's first individualist, idealist and modernist; and an hallucinating mystic - not to mention a hermaphrodite. Furthermore, given  the incest noted by travelers to ancient Egypt, he may have been Sophocles' model for 'Oedipus'. A rather far-fetched theory opines that he was an androgynous being descended from outer space. However, a down-to-earth report states he was the last child descended from the marriage of a common woman who became Queen Tiy and her husband, Amenhotep III. Hence Akhnaton was originally Amenhotep IV, a member of a dynasty that worshipped Amon. He later changed his name from Amenhotep (Amon-is-satisfied) to Akhnaton (He-serves-Aton) to reflect his dedication to Aton. As for his sexual orientation and reproductive status, we know Akhnaton and his beautiful queen Nefertiti had six daughters; the family's mutual affection was openly displayed; his obvious compassion and tenderness and the portrayal of female participation in public life is evidence of a strong feminism.

Indeed, some scholars believe Ahknaton received his ideas about Aton at a very early age, while under the influence of Mitanni women at the royal court in Thebes. The Mitannis had been ruled by the "Aryans" of India, and had brought Surya, the Vedic version of the solar god,in whom the supreme power resides, to the Egyptian court with them. Surya was initially represented abstractly, as a disk, wheel, or swastika, but eventually took on an anthropomorphic form as a god. Now with liberal Mitanni women on the one hand and the strict conservative priests of Amon on the other, Akhnaton was apparently a troubled teenager, quite eager to get out of Thebes, out from under the priests of Amon, in order to do his own thing, to found his City of the Horizon at what is now called Tell-el-Amarna (rediscovered in the 1820's), which he dedicated to the one god symbolized by the Sun-disk.

Monotheistic Jeremiah certainly would have sympathized with Akhnaton's one, universal god. Akhnaton proclaimed: "O thou sole God, whose powers no other possesseth, Thou didst create the earth according to Thy desire, whilst Thou wast alone: men, all cattle large and small, all that are upon the earth, that go about upon their feet; all that are on high, that fly with their wings. The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt; Thou settest every man in his place, Thou suppliest their necessities. Every one had his possessions, and his days are reckoned. Their tongues are divers in speech, their forms likewise and their skins, for Thou, divider, hast divided the peoples."

Of course Akhnaton did not invent Sun-worship: life on Earth is necessarily devoted to the Sun. Actually, Akhnaton forbade the perennial worship of the Sun per se, and emphasized instead the "Heat-in-the-Sun" and "Light-in-the-Sun." He must have believed the perceived forms of energy should only be regarded as the manifestations of the hidden, original cause. Indeed, enthusiasts have credited Akhnaton with the discovery of the "principle of equivalence" of heat, light, and other forms of energy, as well as the equation of matter and energy set forth in the modern theory of relativity. No doubt the discoveries and inventions of our modern solar physicists would fascinate Akhnaton and provide him with further verification of the wonders of Aton.

The Egyptian gods Akhnaton was confronted with as a youth were evolved "mythopoetic" conceptions designated by the sundry terms of language. As is usually the case given the liberty of the human imagination, different Egyptian terms designated the same basic ideas; concepts overlapped; underlying substances were subject to mysterious modifications; the metamorphisizing gods took different forms, perhaps according to their functions or because of some chance juxtaposition of events observed in nature. The ancients may appear hopelessly confused to us, but their logic worked well for them. In any event, through the hierarchical process of generalizing, especially in the moral province of ultimate values, and through the competition of "my god is better than your god", certain ideas and gods came to predominate over others in a sort of crude pyramidal scheme, with the first family or trinity at its apex; indeed, the underlying logic of the trinity is familial although the female is sometimes ignored: the natural form is, In the Name of the Father, the Child, and the Mother, as One (Amon, Amen). We find in Egypt, for example, Osiris and Isis and their child Horus. It seems all good things come in threes.

As for Re and Amon, who were predominant in Akhnaton's time, Re, the Sun-god, was amalgamated with the invisible god of air, Amon. Amon could be portrayed as a man painted blue to connote invisibility. The combined Amon-Re was the predominant national god who, at one time or another, could be separately considered either as Amon, the prevailing god at Thebes, or as Re, prevailing god at Heliopolis. Among the Hebrews, Amon was a competitor to Yahweh; the Greeks compared Amon to their Zeus: Egypt periodically sent ambassadors of Amon to Athens. An early divine trinity comprised Amon-Re the Father, husband of his mother; Mut the Mother, Queen of Darkness (the Black Virgin); and Khons the Child. A later trinity absent the feminine element was Re the Father; Ptah the Son; Amon the Spirit; an Amon hymn of the Nineteenth Dynasty states: "Amon, who came into being at the beginning, so that the mysterious nature is unknown. His image is not displayed in writing. Hidden (amen) is his name as Amon, he is Re in the face and his body is Ptah."

Of course there were many other gods; one or the other god might seem to prevail here and there according to the predilection of the worshipper and the occasion. It was a common practice to flatter the god presently worshipped by saying he or she was "the sole god besides whom there is no other." Leaving that aside, Akhnaton brought the syncretic evolution of the pantheon to focus on a single symbol of the signified divine being: Aton, the Sun-disk, symbol of divine energy radiating rays with hands at the end of them ministering to all. The "stimulating" form of the Vedic deity Surya also reached out with "golden arms" to all beings.

Aton was not concealed in an ark or in a darkened chamber at the end of a temple, nor was he subject of occult incantations and ritual rigmarole. Quite to the contrary: although Aton's essence was invisible, his symbol and forms were celebrated in plain view by the broad light of day. Aton's temples had no roofs and their doors were flung wide open; there were no sacred icons or holy images within; artistic decoration consisted of natural scenes, flowers, plants and animals. And there was no abracadabra mumbo-jumbo: Atonism simply described Aton's effulgent beauty as it is experienced in nature. There was no wrath, jealousy, revenge, thou-shalt-nots, or dead stiffness of eternity. The emphasis was on the positive, on love, on the lively. The only "shalt" was to have positive gratitude for life. The hidden was revealed by the unhidden nature, and occult secrecy was replaced by exoteric publicity. The Sun stood not as a symbol for the other world, the world of the dead, but was a symbol for life in this world. Aton's food was ma'at, or truth, exemplified by the candor of the Sun and by the pharaoh's candid life expressed in the revolutionary "naturalism" of contemporary art.

Ordinary people still had their household idols, but Akhnaton ordered all public references to Amon as well as references to plural "gods" hacked out with hatchets, hammers and chisels. The Egyptians were well aware of the magical hold names have on the mind, of the pervasive influence of words inscribed on tablets and temples, tombs and other monuments; they believed the visible sign signified an invisible double that could be obliterated with the destruction of the sign; they were, therefore, firm believers in iconoclasm as the antidote for undesirable gods and propaganda. Akhnaton's solar disk was the most convenient visible symbol for the universal deity: the solar sign might be effaced, but the all powerful Sun would defiantly remain as evidence of the invisible essence of the one god.

In the City of the Horizon the only personification of Aton was the pharaoh, the Son-of-Re the father, a form of Aton. Akhnaton was, for his people, the Son of God. He asserted the Divine Right of Pharaoh. His iconoclastic policy was to destroy the organized polytheistic religion of Egypt together with its political and economic trappings. Many people of the old priestly order lost their jobs and influence while newcomers found theirs. But Atonism was an abstract religion of intellectuals; ordinary people missed their vulgar icons and idols as well as the related handicraft industry, just as much as the old elite missed their powers. Hence the Egyptian Reformation began and ended with Akhnaton, the rebel pharaoh; after he died, Amon was easily restored along with his human sycophants. Most imortantly, the old god Amon had been a triumphant god of war who had built up the Empire, whereas Aton, the god of Love, had in the space of a few years lost all the hard-won gains excepting for a small corner of Palestine.

We have the correspondence. We know Akhnaton virtually ignored the desperate pleas for military help coming in from his vassals. The Empire was his personal property: he turned his cheek and gave away his cloak, or so the story goes. His pragmatic mother Queen Tiy eventually came down from Thebes to set him straight. A coregent was named and sent obediently backsliding to Thebes and Amon. But Queen Nefertiti was no backslider; she refused to cooperate with the militant reform, hence was relocated to a northern suburb of the dream city on the horizon - where she presumably continued to faithfully adore Aton and her husband. His end is even more sketchy than his beginning: he died, perhaps of the plague - several members of the royal family presumably succumbed to it as well. A few years thereafter his glorious City of the Horizon was abandoned. The general of his army, General Horemheb, ascended to the throne, and determined there would be no anarchy under his watch. He ordered workmen to destroy the signs of Aton and Akhnaton. Some time later Ramses the Great continued to blot out the official city of Akhnaton, using its monuments as a quarry for the building of Hermopolis. It became a crime to even mention Akhnaton's name: he could only be officially referred to as "that criminal."

In retrospect we might assume the world was not ready for universal love yet and Akhnaton was too preoccupied with his pacific ideals to ensure their protection by force of arms. Modern writers criticize Atonism for being a religion reliant on the "oceanic feeling of oneness." Such a "nebulous, romantic idealism", devoid of priorities, is unsuitable for the complexities of real life, hence is an inadequate guide to conduct. Furthermore, the religion of absolute love ignores the need for "just wars" and "limited violence" to limit violence, the need for terrorists to be identified and exterminated by freedom fighters. The faith in love held by the few at the core of the love-is-god religion must be violently defended from attack until that faith is universal. Unconditional love simply will not work until - as Jeremiah prophesied - love is inscribed in every heart. Merely chiseling the word on stone tablets or erecting whole cities to it is futile. Pending that internal change of heart, war is inevitable and providence will continue to try the consciences of lovers and the arms of warriors.

T





Note:

The view of Akhanaton presented above is the popular legend. A few archeologists and revisionist historians now insist that evidence at Amarna, such as a well-worn footpath around the perimeter, indicates the existence of a heavy military presence, suggesting at least to them that Akhnaton might have been an oppressive despot rather than an enlightened pharoah of Love.

Copyright 2002 David Arthur Walters

Biographical


David Arthur Walters is a freelance author who resides in Honolulu.