Pharaoh Akhenaten is a mystery, a pharaoh legend. Reformer, heretic. Still would! Swung into the holy of holies - religion! Fearlessly set out to change the ritual. Even in our days, when changes are coming from a cornucopia, we understand what kind of act it was. And therefore, since the advent of Egyptology, scientists have not ceased to argue about Akhenaten and cannot come to one opinion.
A huge article was published in the Spanish newspaper "El Pais", which was called "Akhenaten - tyrannical pharaoh-heretic, the forerunner of Stalin." New discoveries, it was said in it, put Akhenaten, who was previously considered a kind of mystical pacifist, on the same level with such criminals as Hitler and Stalin.
The famous British historian-Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves, who wrote in 2001 the book "Akhenaten - the False Prophet of Egypt", compared him with Stalin.
However, there is another extreme. For example, another famous Egyptologist Arthur Weigall, idealizing Akhenaten, wrote: “For 3,000 years he has been giving us an example of what a spouse, a father, an honest person should be like. He showed what a poet should feel, what a preacher should instruct, what an artist should strive for, what a scientist should believe and what a philosopher should think.
And here is a polar assessment of his activities: "Alas, his own life has proved to what extent his principles were non-vital." And this is natural - too large, extraordinary figure! In fact, the controversy around Akhenaten will continue also because the most serious and long-term archaeological research, excavations, and decoding of texts are associated with his name. New data appear, shades appear in views and judgments - one way or another, the figure of Pharaoh Akhenaten is one of the main, most attractive and significant figures in Egyptology.
Immediately after the death of Akhenaten, his successors deleted his name from the list of pharaohs - there is no place for a heretic among the rulers of the country! He was secretly buried, the place of his burial is unknown to this day. But truly "it is not given to us to predict how our word will respond." The more fierce the attempts were to erase the memory of him, the more significant and necessary it became for history. The result was just the opposite. Few of whom we know today as much as this "heretic pharaoh."
His birth name was Amenhotep IV, he was the successor of the great ruler Amenhotep III, who spent more than 60 years in power. He became Akhenaten during his legendary religious reform.
This was the middle of the XIV century BC. e. Just think about it! After so many years, this figure still excites the imagination of people today. Why? More than 3,000 years ago, Akhenaten tried to make a spiritual and political revolution in the great, one might even say the world power of those times.
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Egypt, which at that time reached the limits of the Euphrates in the north and the fourth threshold of the Nile in the south, seized Syria, Palestine, Nubia, that is, spread over two continents, was a huge formation, which was very difficult to keep with the forces of that time. One of Akhenaten's main problems was to preserve this great structure. But how to do that? Maybe he saw the way out in the reform he made. Worshiping the disk of the Sun, the single god Aton, perhaps, he saw as an act of unity, rallying the people, an act of strengthening and strengthening the state?
But it is known that there is nothing more stable and conservative than religious views, rooted in the deepest layers of consciousness. A person is able to accept another religion under the influence of circumstances or his own inner convictions - peoples abandon it only as a result of conquests, but then they cease to be what they were before. After the baptism of Rus, the Slavs remained pagans for centuries. The bloodiest and most cruel wars, as we know, are religious, people go to death, but they cannot accept a new religion, because the rejection of their gods is the most terrible sin, more terrible than death.
And yet at first it seemed that he was able to do the impossible. A new official cult was introduced in the country. They built a new capital, the city of Akhetaton. In Egypt, there was a real revolution in the visual arts. Many hundreds of years later, in modern times, the term "Amarna art" arose, which designated the era of the highest rise of the culture of the Ancient East.
What is the legendary sculptural portrait of Akhenaten's wife, Queen Nefertiti! Several versions of her images are kept in the best museums in the world, the most beautiful one I know is in the Berlin Egyptian Museum. Nefertiti is Akhenaten's wife, her name is translated as "Beauty is coming". And in reality it came - came for thousands of years.
Art refers to the Aristotelian principle of imitation of nature. If Nefertiti is really beautiful, let us convey her human beauty, and not just her high position. If Akhenaten's daughters are really thin, fragile, with very thin hands, they are portrayed as such.
So, Amenhotep IV was the tenth pharaoh of the famous XVIII dynasty. Its ancestor was Ahmose I, the conqueror of the Hyksos, who for 130 years plunged the powerfully blossoming Egypt of the Middle Kingdom into chaos and darkness. Ahmose finished with them, Egypt was further strengthened, and Thebes became the main city. All of Ahmose's successors - Amenhotep I, Thutmose I, Thutmose II, his widow, the woman-pharaoh Hatshepsut, and the famous conqueror Thutmose III, under whom Egypt gained its final borders - all of them revered the city of Thebes as the center of Egyptian revival, the center of the liberation movement against the conquerors …
As a result, the Theban priests own incredible wealth, which is brought to them from everywhere. Under Amenhotep III, the priests received 14 tons of gold. This figure cannot be taken literally, but it shows that they were the most influential people in the state. It was believed that it was the priests who, with their effective prayers to the god Amun, the solar deity, strengthened the power of Egypt. Akhenaten's reform did not undermine the idea of the Sun as a deity, Akhenaten suggested only worshiping not the image, but the disc itself, directly to nature. However, even this frightened the priests.
Amenhotep III had many wives, among them were not only Egyptians - after all, the problem of polygamy was simply not there. Theia, apparently the beloved wife of Amenhotep III, became the mother of the future heretic-pharaoh. We know almost nothing about his childhood. But - amazing luck - we know the name of his teacher!
His name was Amenhotep, son of Hapu. He was a priest who lived to be about 80 years old - a rare occurrence in ancient times. Inclined to a mystical perception of life, he sang the sunshine and thus clearly influenced the future of Akhenaten. The priest was a healer - pilgrims came to his grave, more than one hundred years after his death they said that miraculous healings were taking place there. This is the kind of teacher the king's little son had. And this is important. It is in childhood that that deep root system is formed, germinating in maturity, giving a dense crown.
To paraphrase famous words, you can say: "Tell me who your teacher is, and I will tell you who you are." The famous researcher and writer from France Christian wrote in the 90s, XX century the book "Egypt of the Great Pharaohs". In this pathetic tone he wrote about the teacher of Akhenaten: “His name will survive the centuries, while the names of his contemporaries will be forgotten. His heirs are not monuments and not children, but books, knowledge that he wrote down … The magical power of his writings will reach the reader and guide him on the right path”. Under Amenhotep III, the priest became a prominent nobleman and, in the end, the teacher of the future pharaoh. It is known that he was also an architect - then, in antiquity, such a variety of talents and occupations were in the order of things.
Akhenaten (then still Amenhotep IV) became ruler at about 15 years old. Gifted beyond measure, he began to live and act in a different way. In the first years of his reign, he ordered to build in Thebes, in the very traditional capital, the temple of Aten, his future deity. About 100 images of Amenhotep were placed around the temple, some of them have survived, and all of them were not made according to the canon. On them, Amenhotep IV is not a colossus, not a stone idol that frightens people, as was customary during the early XVIII dynasty, and even more so in the era of the Middle Kingdom.
This is an ordinary person, not an athlete, his physique is imperfect: rather narrow shoulders, a sunken chest. He looks like an intellectual - he has the forehead of a thinker and, in addition, a pointedly elongated skull. His daughters inherited the unusual shape of the skull. There was a lot of talk and debate about this. There is a version that this is a hereditary disease. This is because the rulers of Ancient Egypt got married and married their close relatives. Incest could lead to genetic failures. But still, no one made a final conclusion. Perhaps this was the artistic style or the peculiarity of the technique of a master who deviated from the canons.
The name Amenhotep stands for "Living Truth". Already after the construction of the temple of Aton, the priests were clearly worried - why suddenly a temple was placed on the solar disk, and not to that great deity Amun, to whom Egypt owes its prosperity? And these were only the first lightning flashes of the future revolution.
In the sixth year of his reign, the pharaoh made the unthinkable decision to leave the capital of Thebes and change his name (and the name of the pharaoh is the name of a living god). Akhenaten (henceforth this is his name, it means "Pleasant to Aton") takes with him several thousand people, including architects, artisans, stonecutters, and sets off about 400 km north of Thebes. And there, on the eastern bank of the Nile, he began to build a new capital, which he called Achehaton - "Horizon of Aton".
How archaeologists became aware of this capital in the 19th century is a separate story. True, they tell it in different ways. Some wrote that a certain Egyptian woman was rinsing linen in the Nile and found a plate on which some lines were inscribed. Knowing that white people buy this kind of plaque, she sold it. The lines turned out to be cuneiform. The text of the international treaty between the ruler of Egypt and the Hittite king was written on the tablet in Aramaic.
There is another story, even more exotic. The woman was actually rinsing her clothes, and one of the archaeologists or traveling white tourists approached her with a question. Somehow she didn't like the "franc", as the locals called the white travelers, and she threw a sign at him. Wow!
Excavations began in the 1890s. Particularly noteworthy are the efforts of the English archaeologist Petrie, who devoted many years to the search. Finally, good luck. Found that new capital, which was built according to the will and order of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. She, like a miracle in the desert, like a mirage, grew rapidly, as if by magic … and after millennia turned out to be a paradise for archaeologists. Because immediately after the death of Akhenaten, there was an order from the priests of Amun to leave this city, to leave it forever.
In one of the inscriptions preserved in Akhetaton, Pharaoh Akhenaten claimed that the Sun itself, with its ray, showed him the place for a new capital. The city was harmonious and beautiful, but its life was short-lived - the sands did their job, they filled it up, turning it into a necropolis. And for a long time, for millennia, they preserved it. It was revenge. You wanted to delete it for good, you did a lot for this, gentlemen of Theban priests, but without thinking, without foreseeing, you brought to us an unprecedented amount of information about this particular city and the reasons for hatred towards it.
The capital, founded at the behest of the Sun itself, Akhenaten vowed never to leave. He kept his oath: he lived in it until the end of his days, more than ten years. Beautiful palaces were built there, magnificent parks were created, country villas were built. Life was in full swing, trade was in full swing on the large market square - a rich, lively, actively living city appeared.
It was in it, during the excavation of a room that was probably the workshop of a sculptor named Thutmose, that the famous sculpture of Queen Nefertiti was discovered. Thutmose's workshop was destroyed, some works were destroyed, and Nefertiti survived. She was lying face down on the ground. Perhaps the sculptor, guessing that he had performed a miracle, laid her down in the hope that he could save her.
Judging by the images and texts, the relationship between Akhenaten and Nefertiti was at first impeccable, even ideal - perhaps deliberately idealized. Many bas-reliefs have survived with touching family scenes, which was atypical for images of the pharaohs. During the Middle Kingdom, they were colossus, cold, with stone faces.
And Akhenaten sits on the throne, on his lap is Nefertiti, holding his daughter. In another bas-relief, Akhenaten gently kisses one of his six daughters. All this was previously absolutely impossible in ancient Egyptian art. This is already heresy, which, as is often the case, has borne remarkable fruits, an innovation that is met with hostility, and after millennia is admired.
Akhenaten and Nefertiti were probably living impeccably well. Divine services began every day at sunrise, this was a strict rule. In none of the images did we see Akhenaten punishing, hanging someone, scourging someone. The former pharaohs had it. And he is on a chariot with Nefertiti, with children, and everywhere the sun accompanies him … The solar disk was depicted as a disk with long rays, the tips of the rays are palms that tenderly reach out to people and caress them.
As you can see, one of the motives of his religious reform, naive and philosophical, is the desire to bring together the peoples that Egypt conquered. It is naive, but we will quote in translation by Boris Alexandrovich Turaev, our wonderful orientalist, a hymn to Aton, the solar disk, which is attributed to the Pharaoh himself:
“In your indivisible unity, you created all people, all animals, all domestic animals, everything that steps with its feet on the earthly firmament, everything that soars on its wings in the Heavens. In Palestine and Syria, in gold-bearing Nubia, in Egypt, you have assigned every mortal his place. You satisfy the needs and wants of people, each has his own food, each day is numbered. Their dialects are different, their appearance and mores are original, and they do not become, the color of their skin. For you distinguish country from country and people from people."
This is in clear contradiction with the ideology of Ancient Egypt during the Middle Kingdom. 200 years before Akhenaten, Egypt had become a major power. It was then that, one might say, with some reservations, Egyptian chauvinism appeared. Only the Egyptians appear in the inscriptions of those times, only Egypt, which is called "the land of people", is of interest to them.
Outside Egypt - "the land of sand", "the despicable country of Kush", and finally, the "land of gold" - gold-bearing Nubia. At the time of the Amenemkhets, Seti, and entire dynasties of the pharaohs, Egypt tramples on all other nations with its powerful hand and strong army. And these peoples are valued little. In a huge power for that period, to ensure calmness of the borders was a difficult, almost impossible task, the peoples on the outskirts are rather vassals who paid tribute to the Egyptian pharaoh, they are afraid of his power, his strength. How to combine them?
And Pharaoh Akhenaten stepped back from his usual ideas. Chauvinism is the simplest weapon. In all ages, this primitive ideology is the most popular. Akhenaten chooses unpopular. These rays of the sun, see them? They caress everyone, people can be of different skin colors, but they all have to live together.
However, did his fellow tribesmen like it? A huge part is not. On whom could he still rely? He found support in the serving nobility. At all times, sooner or later such people appear - not aristocrats, but people who have been promoted in the service. In this Akhenaten can be compared with Peter 1. This new nobility, which had a very expressive name - "nemhu", which means "orphans", reasoned like this: "We may not be noble and we are called orphans, but we are rich and have merits before the Pharaoh ". Akhenaten surrounded himself with these people. And they, of course, served him faithfully. And they changed it very quickly, with ease.
There is also a little scientific, but interesting version explaining the temporary success of Akhenaten's reform. According to her, this was facilitated by natural events, as we would say now, a series of environmental disasters associated with the possible death of the island of Santorini (supposed Atlantis) in the Mediterranean Sea. This in turn caused terrible black storms with strong winds. The sun disappeared, black clouds covered it for a long time.
Akhenaten could explain this in his own way: it means that the Egyptians prayed badly to the Sun, you need to pray better, and it will return. But even a short eclipse of the sun in ancient times and in the Middle Ages caused a monstrous panic. It seemed to people that the end of the world had come. And since in the event of an ecological catastrophe the eclipse could last for a long time, it is likely that it was at this time that Akhenaten's reform found the sympathy of the people.
For about 10 years, Akhenaten lived in his new capital - life seems cloudless. But his second daughter, Maketaton, died, she was 10–12 years old. This and the following events have been captured in detail in the visual arts. The bas-reliefs, reliefs, images of those times are like a documentary about the family of the pharaoh. So the funeral procession began - they bury this girl, they reached the burial place, here the mourners, Pharaoh Akhenaten and Nefertiti are in grief, they wring their hands like ordinary earthly people. Why Aton, to whom they prayed so much and so fervently, could allow the death of a sinless child?
Just after this funeral, something happens between Akhenaten and Nefertiti. The gap? They don't live together. She moves to a country palace. Thanks to the excavations, we know a lot about her life there - quiet, peaceful, rather closed. She had a menagerie, where she collected rare animals, maybe they entertained her. With her lived a boy, perhaps the future Pharaoh Tutankhamun. He subsequently changed his name and departed from the reform of his predecessor.
Something is happening … Akhenaten has another wife, Kiya, apparently from the common people, probably the daughter of one of his employees. She's beautiful. Different than Nefertiti, but beautiful. Her images have survived to this day. Our wonderful Egyptologist Y. Perepelkin wrote a lot about her. Akhenaten and his new wife seem to have a very passionate, very close relationship.
An epitaph has been preserved on her grave, which resembles Solomon's Song of Songs: “I will hear the sweet breath coming out of your mouth, I will see your kindness every day, this is my desire. I will hear your voice, so I hear your voice in the palace of the sun stone, when you do your service to your father, Aten alive. May you live like the Sun, forever, forever. These words could hardly have come from anyone other than Akhenaten. Nefertiti faded into the background …
Did Akhenaten have children from his new wife? If so, who are they? Isn't Tutankhaton, the future Tutankhamun, their son? These questions will probably never be answered. Because a whole horde of robbers marched through the tombs of Akhenaten and Kiya. The city of Akhetaton itself was not plundered, and the tombs outside the city were destroyed and devastated.
The end of Akhenaten's life was rather sad. He parted ways with Nefertiti, who was clearly his associate, the reform was not very successful. The neighboring peoples, favored by the sun, should have sided with Egypt, but rebelled against Egyptian rule. Troubled in Mittani, troubled in Assyria. The mysterious warlike white people of the Hittites appear on the historical arena, who came from nowhere and went nowhere. But before leaving, the Hittites defeated the Egyptians.
The end of Akhenaten's reign is the beginning of the collapse of the great empire. Images of Akhenaten with a cane date back to this time. And he is only 35 years old. As you can see, he is not very healthy, his figure is very fragile, very thin. Maybe his genetic disease progressed markedly. Sometimes they talk about dropsy of the brain, other diseases are also called, but not a single version has been proven, although they probably have a right to exist.
Egypt, this almost world-wide empire, begins to burst at the seams. Because of his reforms as well. The reform has not helped and may have even hurt. In particular, according to experts, the abolition of the cult of Osiris was a dangerous step. Man lost the afterlife, guaranteed to everyone in Ancient Egypt, endless, happy. Excavations at Akhetaton showed that in small huts where ordinary people lived, small images of past gods and deities were probably kept secretly. This means that there was resistance not only by the priests, who allegedly organized a coup and almost poisoned and blinded Akhenaten - his innovations were not accepted by ordinary people.
A remarkable find was found at Akhetaton: a small chariot fashioned from clay, into which a monkey is harnessed. It is controlled by a chariot monkey, a monkey is sitting next to it. It is so much like a caricature - Akhenaten and Nefertiti's departure to worship Aton - that it is possible to imagine how strong the resistance to his reform was.
We do not know how this rebellious ruler, a heretic reformer, passed away. After him, the mysterious Smenkhkare ruled for less than a year. Who he is is unknown. After - Tutankhamun, who was replaced by an official, an important nobleman Eye. The next ruler, a certain Horemheb, a general, chief of the troops, who ruled for 27 years, imposed a taboo on the mention of Akhenaten's name, deleted all his closest predecessors from the lists of pharaohs, directly declaring himself the heir of Amenhotep III. Here it is, a typical attempt at falsifying history. He did not know that there would be such a science of archeology, which would put everything in its place.
N. Basovskaya