By Dr
Kate Spence
The appeal of the Amarna period
Some people are
drawn by interest in Akhenaten himself or his religion, others by a fascination
with the unusual art which appeals strongly to the tastes of modern viewers and
provides a sense of immediacy rarely felt with traditional Egyptian representation.
The radical changes Akhenaten made have led to his characterisation as the
'first individual in human history' and this in turn has led to endless
speculation about his background and motivation; he is cast as hero or villain
according to the viewpoint of the commentator.
Akhenaten came
to the throne of Egypt around 1353 BC. The reign of his father, Amenhotep III,
had been long and prosperous with international diplomacy largely replacing the
relentless military campaigning of his predecessors. The reign culminated in a
series of magnificent jubilee pageants celebrated in Thebes (modern Luxor), the
religious capital of Egypt at the time and home to the state god Amun-Re. The
new king was crowned as Amenhotep IV (meaning 'Amun is content') and temple construction
and decoration projects began immediately in the name of the new king. The
earliest work of his reign is stylistically similar to the art of his
predecessors, but within a year or two he was building temples to the Aten or
divinised sun-disk at Karnak in a very different artistic style and had changed
his name to Akhenaten in honour of this god.
Akhenaten's
'great king's wife' was Nefertiti and they had six daughters. There were also
other wives, including the enigmatic Kiya who may have been the mother of
Tutankhamun. Royal women play an unusually prominent role in the art of the
period and this is particularly true of Nefertiti who is frequently depicted
alongside her husband. Nefertiti disappears from the archaeological record
around year 12 and some have argued that she reappears as the enigmatic
co-regent Smenkhkare towards the end of Akhenaten's reign.
Religious reforms
The Egyptians
had traditionally worshipped a whole pantheon of gods who were represented in
human or animal form or as animal-headed humans. Some gods were specific to
particular towns or places; others had broader appeal. From early periods solar
gods such as Re had played an important role in Egyptian state religion because
the distant but universal power of the sun fitted well with prevailing ideas of
the supreme power of the king both within Egypt and beyond its borders.
In the New
Kingdom, solar gods again became prominent, among them the Aten, the visible
sun-disk which can be seen traversing the sky each day. Akhenaten raised the
Aten to the position of 'sole god', represented as a disk with rays of light
terminating in hands which reach out to the royal family, sometimes offering
the hieroglyphic sign for life. Akhenaten and his family are frequently shown
worshipping the Aten or simply indulging in everyday activities beneath the
disk. Everywhere the close ties between the king and god are stressed through
art and text. The king forms the link between the god and ordinary people whose
supposed focus of worship seems to have been Akhenaten and the royal family
rather than the Aten itself.
Akhenaten's religion is probably not strictly speaking monotheistic,
although only the Aten is actually worshipped and provided with temples. Other
gods still existed and are mentioned in inscriptions although these tend to be
other solar gods or personifications of abstract concepts; even the names of
the Aten, which are written in cartouches like king's names, consist of a
theological statement describing the Aten in terms of other gods. The majority
of traditional gods were not tolerated, however, and teams of workmen were sent
around the temples of Egypt where they chiselled out the names and images of
these gods wherever they occurred.
A number of
hymns to the Aten were composed during Akhenaten's reign and these provide a
glimpse of what James Allen has described as the 'natural philosophy' of
Akhenaten's religion. The wonders of the natural world are described to extol
the universal power of the sun; all creatures rejoice when the sun rises and
nasty things come out at night when the sun is not present.
The art of the Amarna period
Early in his
reign Akhenaten used art as a way of emphasising his intention of doing things
very differently. Colossi and wall-reliefs from the Karnak Aten Temple are
highly exaggerated and almost grotesque when viewed in the context of the
formality and restraint which had characterised Egyptian royal and elite art
for the millennium preceding Akhenaten's birth. Although these seem striking
and strangely beautiful today, it is hard for us to appreciate the profoundly
shocking effect that such representations must have had on the senses of those
who first viewed them and who would never have been exposed to anything other
than traditional Egyptian art.
With the move to
Amarna the art becomes less exaggerated, but while it is often described as
'naturalistic' it remains highly stylised in its portrayal of the human figure.
The royal family are shown with elongated skulls and pear-shaped bodies with
skinny torsos and arms but fuller hips, stomachs and thighs. The subject matter
of royal art also changes. Although formal scenes of the king worshipping
remain important there is an increasing emphasis on ordinary, day-to-day
activities which include intimate portrayals of Akhenaten and Nefertiti playing
with their daughters beneath the rays of the Aten. Animals and birds are shown
frolicking beneath the rays of the rising sun in the decoration of the royal
tomb. While traditional Egyptian art tends to emphasise the eternal, Amarna art
focuses on the minutiae of life which only occur because of the light - and
life-giving power of the sun.
In addition to the changes he made to religious practices and art,
Akhenaten also instigated changes in temple architecture and building methods:
stone structures were now built from much smaller blocks of stone set in a
strong mortar. Even official inscriptions changed, moving away from the
old-fashioned language traditional to monumental texts to reflect the spoken
language of the time.
Horizon of the Aten
Akhenaten
decided that the worship of the Aten required a location uncontaminated by the
cults of traditional gods and to this end chose a site in Middle Egypt for a
new capital city which he called Akhetaten, 'Horizon of the Aten'. It is a
desert site surrounded on three sides by cliffs and to the west by the Nile and
is known today as el-Amarna. In the cliffs around the boundaries of the city
the king left a series of monumental inscriptions in which he outlined his
reasons for the move and his architectural intentions for the city in the form
of lists of buildings.
To the east of
the city is a valley leading into the desert in which the king began excavating
tombs for the royal family. On the plain near the river massive temples to the
Aten were constructed: these were open to the sky and the rays of the sun and
were probably influenced by the design of much earlier solar temples dedicated
to the cult of Re. Other sites of religious importance are located on the edges
of the desert plain. There were also at least four palaces in the city which
vary considerably in form, plus all the administrative facilities, storage and
workshops necessary to support the royal family, court and the temple cults.
Akhetaten is sometimes described as if it were some sort of broad Utopian
project. However, while temple and palace areas of the city are clearly
planned, there is actually no evidence that Akhenaten showed any interest in
the living arrangements of his people and residential areas suggest organic
urban development. The wealthy seem to have enclosed an area of land with a
high wall and built their spacious houses and ancillary structures within,
while the houses and shacks of those that followed the court are crammed in
between these luxurious walled estates. The city was probably less dense than
other urban centres of the day but this was only because it was inhabited for
such a short time and processes of infilling were in their infancy. Amarna is
one of the few sites where we have a significant amount of archaeological
information about how people actually lived in ancient Egypt.
The aftermath
Akhenaten died
in his seventeenth year on the throne and his reforms did not survive for long
in his absence. His co-regent Smenkhkare, about whom we know virtually nothing,
appears not to have remained in power for long after Akhenaten's death. The
throne passed to a child, Tutankhamun (originally Tutankhaten) who was probably
the son of Akhenaten and Kiya. The regents administering the country on behalf
of the child soon abandoned the city of Akhetaten and the worship of the Aten
and returned to Egypt's traditional gods and religious centres. The temples and
cults of the gods were restored and people shut up their houses and returned to
the old capitals at Thebes and Memphis.
Over time, the
process of restoration of traditional cults turned to whole-scale obliteration
of all things associated with Akhenaten. His image and names were removed from
monuments. His temples were dismantled and the stone reused in the foundations
of other more orthodox royal building projects. The city of Akhetaten gradually
crumbled back into the desert. His name and those of his immediate successors
were omitted from official king-lists so that they remained virtually unknown
until the archaeological discoveries at Akhetaten and in the tomb of
Tutankhamun made these kings amongst the most famous of all rulers of ancient
Egypt.
No comments:
Post a Comment