■
Sir--
TUTANKHAMEN
AMENISM, ATENISM AND
EGYPTIAN MONOTHEISM
WITH HIEROGLYPHIC TEXTS OF HYMNS TO AMEN
AND ATEN, TRANSLATIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY
SIJi ERNEST JiW'ALLIS BUDGE, LITT.D., JD.LITT.
KEEPER OF THE EGYPTIAN AND ASSYRIAN
ANTIQUITIES IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
LONDON: MARTIN HOPKINSON
AND COMPANY LTD: 14 HENRIETTA
STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1923
SI
V5
Printed in Great Britain by
HarrisoQ & Sons, Ltd., 45-47, St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C
TO
THE MEMORY OF
GEORGE EDWARD STANHOPE MOLYNEUX HERBERT
EARL OF CARNARVON
CONTENTS
The Reign of Tutankhamen
Tutankhamen and the Cult of Amen
A Hymn to Amen and Aten
The Cult of Aten, the God and Disk of the
Sun, its origin, development and decline
Development of the Cult of Aten under
Amenhetep IV
Hymns to Aten
A Hymn to Aten by the King
A. Hymn to Aten by Ai, Overseer
Horse
Hymns to the Sun-god
Egyptian Monotheism
Index . . . . . . . .
of the
PAGE
I
14
46
55
75
III
116
122
136
140
153
ILLUSTRATIONS
I. Plates
Painted limestone head of a queen supposed
to represent Queen Nefertiti, wife of
Amenhetep IV . . . . . . Frontispiece
Hui, presenting to Tutankhamen tribute pagb
and gifts from vassal peoples To face p. ii
Granite lion dedicated by Tutankhamen
to the Temple of Sulb . . To face p. 12
Colossal head of Amenhetep III . . „ 34
Stele of Her and Suti . . • • „ 46
Queen Ti, wife of Amenhetep III . . „ 66
Scarab recording the wild cattle hunt of
Amenhetep III . . . . To face p. 70
Portrait figure of Amenhetep IV . . „ 76
Portrait head of Amenhetep IV . . „ 80
Sphinx, with the head of Amenhetep IV
To face p. 82
Portraits of two daughters of Amenhetep
IV . . . . . . . . To face p. 94
Variegated glass bottle in the form of a
fish .. .. .. .. To face p. 104
VUl
ILLUSTRATIONS
2. Illustrations in the Text.
Amen-Ra, King of the Gods . .
Amenit
Heraakhuti, Horns of the Two Horizons
Temu, ancient solar Man-headed god
Amenhetep III accepted by Amen-Ra
his son
Khnem, Anqit and Sati, Triad
Elephantine
Amenhetep III in the Temple of Sulb
Hathor of Thebes
Mut, consort of Amen-Ra . .
Khensu, the Moon-god
Anpu (Anubis), son of Set and Nephthys
Sebak, the Crocodile-god
Net (Neith) consort of Sebak
Iler-Semsu, Horus the Aged
Her-pa-khart (Harpokrates)
Her-netch-tef-f
Ment-Heraakhuti, War-god of Hermonthis
Menu Ka-mut-f
Geb, the Earth-god . .
Nut, the Sky-goddess
Ptah, Man-god of Memphis . .
as
of
PAGE
14
14
19
19
23
25
26
27
27
29
29
30
30
31
31
33
33
36
38
38
39
ILLUSTRATIONS ix
PAGE
Sekhmit (Sekhet), consort of Ptah . . . . 39
Horns and Set, twin gods . . . . . . 56
Nephthys, consort of Set . . . . . . 56
Shu, god of heat and Hght . . . . . . 57
Tefnut, consort of Shu, goddess of moisture
and water . . . . . . . . . . 57
Osiris, king and judge of the dead . . . . 59
Isis, consort of Osiris . . . . . . . . 59
Osiris Khenti Amentt . . . . . . 63
Ptah-Seker-Asar, god of the Osirian
Resurrection . . . . . . . . 63
Aten, source of hfe . . . . . . . . 78
Heqit, a primeval frog-headed goddess . . 81
Thoth, the mind of the Creator . . . . 86
Maat, goddess of Law and Truth . . . . 86
Amenhetep IV and his wife making offerings
to Aten 88
Amenhetep IV and his queen and family
adoring Aten . . . . . . . . 90
Amenhetep IV bestowing gifts on courtiers 91
Amenhetep IV and his queen and family
seated under the rays of Aten . . . . 93
The four grandsons of Horus the Aged,
guardians of the viscera of the dead . . 95
Amenhetep IV on his portable Uon-throne 97
Amenhetep IV bestowing gifts . . . . 99
PREFACE
The announcement made early in December,
1922, of the discovery of the Tomb of Tutankh-
amen in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings in
Western Thebes by the late Lord Carnarvon and
Mr. Howard Carter sent a thrill of wonder and
expectation through all the civilized peoples on the
earth. In the accounts of the contents of the Tomb,
which were pubUshed with admirable promptness
and fuUness in The Times, we read of bodies of
chariots, chairs of state, gilded couches, royal
apparel, boxes of trinkets and food and cosmetics
and toilet requisites, large bitumenized wooden
statues, alabaster vessels of hitherto unknown
shapes and beauty, and countless other objects,
until the mind reeled in its attempts to imagine the
sight that met the eyes of the two discoverers
when they entered the two outer chambers. Those
who have seen the smaller objects and have
enjoyed the privilege of examining them have been
amazed at their exquisite beauty and finish ; and
there is no doubt that the importance of the " find,"
from an artistic point of view, can be expressed in
words only with difficulty. It is easy to believe
Sarwat Pasha when he says none of the accounts
published have really done justice to the " finds,"
which, however, is not surprising, since their
beauty is unique and indescribable {Times, Jan. 18,
1923, p. 9)-
xii PREFACE
All the writers who have described and discussed
the discovery have, quite rightly, lost no oppor-
tunity of proclaiming the great value and import-
ance of Lord Carnarvon's " find " as illustrating the
arts and crafts that were practised in the city of
Aakhut- Aten under its founder, the famous Atenite
king, Amenhetep IV. But some of them have been
led astray by their eagerness to do ample justice to
the great discovery, and have introduced into their
eulogies statements of a historical character which
are incorrect. Some have declared that the informa-
tion derived from the " find " makes necessary the
rewriting and recasting of the history of the
XVIIIth dynasty, but there is no foundation for
this statement, for the authorized accounts of the
Tomb of Tutankhamen and its contents include no
new historical facts. Lord Carnarvon may have
obtained from the tomb information that would
amplify our knowledge of the reign of Tutankh-
amen, but if he did so he did not publish it. As
matters stand we know no more now about the
reign of this king than we did before Lord Carnarvon
made his phenomenal discovery. Other writers
have tried to make out that Tutankhamen was
one of the greatest of the kings of Egypt, but this
is not the case. When he came to the throne he
professed the same religion as his wife, that is to
say, the cult of Aten, the Solar Disk, or Atenism,
and for a short time he continued to do so. But
he soon realized that Atenism had failed, and then
he substituted the name of Amen for Aten in his
own name and that of his wife, and became a fervent
PREFACE xiu
follower of Amen and a worshipper of the old
gods of his country. The fame of Tutankhamen
really rests on the fact that he restored the national
worship of Amen, and made the Atenites to re-
linquish their hold upon the revenues of this god.
Other writers again have tried to show that
Tutankhamen was the " Pharaoh of the Exodus,"
and also that it was his wife Ankh-s-en-pa-Aten
(or Amen) who took Moses out of his ark of
bulrushes and brought him up. But there was
more than one Exodus, and Tutankhamen was
not King of Egypt when any of them took place.
And strange views have been promulgated even
about some of the articles of furniture that Lord
Carnarvon found in the tomb. Thus the funerary
couch or bier with legs made in the form of a
strange beast has been declared to be of Meso-
potamian origin ; but such is not the case. The
beast represented is the composite monster called
" Ammit," i.e. " Eater of the Dead," and she is
found in the Judgment Scene in all the great
papyri containing theTheban Recension of the Book
of the Dead. About her component parts there
is no doubt, for in the Papyrus of Hunefer it is
written, " Her fore-part is crocodile, her hind-
quarters are hippopotamus, her middle part lion (or
The Mesopotamians knew of no such beast, and
the couch or bier could only have been made in
xiv PREFACE
Egypt, where the existence of Ammit was believed
in and the fear of her was great.
Some of the writers on Lord Carnarvon's dis-
coveries discussed not only the Tomb of Tutankh-
amen, but the religious revolution which seems
to have been inaugurated by Amenhetep III, at
the instance of his wife Queen Ti, and was certainly
carried on with increasing vigour by their son,
Amenhetep IV, who believed that he was an
incarnation of Aten, the god of the Solar Disk.
Their discussions gave many people an entirely
false idea of the character of Amenhetep IV, and
of the nature of the cult of Aten. This king was
described as a reformer, an individualist, and an
ideaHst and a pacifist ; but he was a reformer who
initiated no permanent reform, an individuahst
who diverted the revenues of the gods of his
country to his own uses, an ideaHst who followed
the cult of the material, and a pacifist who lost
Egypt's Asiatic Empire. His " Teaching " pro-
claimed the " oneness " of Aten, which has been
compared to the monotheism of Christian nations ;
but for centuries before his time the priesthoods
of Heliopolis, Memphis, Hermopolis and Thebes
had proclaimed this self-same oneness to be the
chief attribute of their gods. This " Teaching "
was said to inculcate a religion and morahty
superior to any doctrine found in the Old Testa-
ment, and some enthusiasts would have us beUeve
that in spiritual conceptions and sublime precepts
it surpassed Christ's teaching as set forth in the
Gospels. Practically all that we know of the
PREFACE XV
" Teaching " of Amenhetep IV is found in a
short hymn, which is attributed to the king him-
self, and in a longer hymn, which is found in the
Tomb of Ai, his disciple and successor, at Tall al-
'AmsLmah. The language and phrasing of these
works are very interesting, for they show a just
appreciation of the benefits that man and beast
alike derive from the creative and fructifying
influence of the heat and light of the sun. But I
cannot find in them a single expression that
contains any spiritual teaching, or any exhortation
to purity of life, or any word of consciousness
of sin, or any evidence of beUef in a resurrection
and a life beyond the grave. It is of course
possible that all the religious works of the Atenites,
except these hymns, have perished, but the fact
remains that it is upon these two hymns, and the
extracts from them which are found in the tombs
of officials at Tall al-' Amamah, that modem writers
have founded their views and statements about
the highly spiritual character of the rehgion and
morahty of the Atenites.
Whilst discussing these and similar matters here
with Lord Carnarvon about the middle of last
December, he suggested that I should put together,
in a small book, the known facts about the reign
of Tutankhamen, and add two or three chapters on
the cults of Amen, Aten, and Egyptian Monotheism,
which had been so completely misrepresented. He
was particularly anxious that translations of some
of the hjnnns to Amen and Aten should be given,
and that the most important of them should be
xvi PREFACE
accompanied by the original hieroglyphic texts, so
that those who cared to go into the matter might
have the means of forming their own conclusions
about the character of the hymns to Aten, and
deciding whether it was spiritual or material. In
the following pages I have tried to carry out his
suggestion, and in the circumstances perhaps it
will not be out of place to say a few words about
his labours in the field of Egyptian Archaeology.
In the winter of 1907-08, Lord Carnarvon carried
out a series of comprehensive excavations at Drah
abu'l Nakkah and in the Valley of Der al-Bahari
in Western Thebes. In these, as in all his subse-
quent excavations, he was assisted by Mr. Howard
Carter, formerly Inspector in the Service of
Antiquities of Egypt. This gentleman possessed
very special qualifications for the work that he
undertook for Lord Carnarvon, namely, a good
knowledge of colloquial Arabic, great experience
in dealing with the natives and the " antica "
dealers in the country, skiU in the practical work
of excavation, and keen interest in Egyptian
Archaeology. At Der al-Bahari, Lord Carnarvon
discovered two important ostraka inscribed with
texts, the one dealing with the deeds of King
Kames, and the other containing a portion of a
new version of the Precepts of Ptah-hetep. In
1908-09 he discovered the tomb of Tetaki, and a
tomb of the XXVth dynasty containing the
coffins of nine persons. In 1 910- 11 he discovered
an unfinished temple of Hatshepsut, a ruined
temple of Rameses IV, a cemetery of the Xllth
PREFACE xvii
dynasty, and a number of early burials. A full
account of what he did at Thebes will be found in
his Five Years' Explorations at Thebes (1907-11),
Oxford, 1912. This book is illustrated by eighty
fine folio plates, and is one of the fullest accounts
hitherto published of archaeological work done in
Egypt. In 1911-12 he continued his excavations
at Thebes, and broke new ground at Xois, in the
Delta. In 191 2 he discovered at Thebes a large
temple-deposit of Hatshepsut, consisting of ala-
baster jars, tools, etc., and a number of pit-tombs
of the Xllth dynasty. In 1915 he discovered and
cleared out the Tomb of Amenhetep I, and in
1916-17 he discovered a tomb which had been pre-
pared for Hatshepsut. The latter contained a
magnificent sarcophagus of crystalline limestone
inscribed with the Queen's name and titles as wife
of the reigning Pharaoh. It is impossible to
enumerate here, however briefly, the various
excavations which he carried out at Thebes
between 1907 and 1921, but it must be stated that
he superintended them all personally, and that
he alone defrayed all the expenses, which, as wiU
be readily understood, were very considerable.
In recent years he sought for a wider sphere of
excavation, and turned his attention to the
Valley of the Tombs of the Kings in Western
Thebes, which was one of the sites reserved for
Government excavation. During the early years
of this century Mr. T. Davis obtained permission
to dig there from the late Prof. Maspero, Director
of the Service of Antiquities of Egypt, and, with
xviii PREFACE
the help of Mr. Howard Carter and Mr. Ayrton, he
succeeded in locating and excavating the tombs
of Queen Hatshepsut, Thothmes IV, Heremheb,
Menephthah, Saptah, and the unopened tomb of
luau and Tuau, the father and mother of Queen Ti.
When he had done this he announced to Maspero,
*' The Valley is now cleared, there are no more
royal tombs in it " ; and most people were willing
to accept these words as the statement of a fact.
But Lord Carnarvon did not believe that Mr.
Davis's opinion was correct, and, having obtained
the necessary permission from the Government, he
and Mr. Carter set to work to prove that it was
not. Each felt that somewhere in the Valley one
or two royal tombs must still exist, and knowledge,
judgment, unceasing labour, and luck enabled
them to light upon the most magnificent archaeo-
logical " find " ever made in Egypt. The follow-
ing extract from a letter which he wrote to me
on December i, 1922, shows how he personally
regarded his great triumph. He says : —
" One line just to tell you that we have found the most
remarkable ' find ' that has ever been made, I expect, in Egypt
or elsewhere. I have only so far got into two chambers, but
there is enough in them to fill most of your rooms at the B.M.
(upstairs) ; and there is a sealed door where goodness knows
what there is. It is not only the quantity of the objects,
but their exceptional beauty, finish and originaUty, which
makes this such an extraordinary discovery. There is a
throne, or chair, there more beautiful than any object that
has been foimd in Egypt ; alabaster vases of the most mar-
vellous work, and quite imknown except as represented in the
tombs ; couches of state, chairs, beds, wonderful beadwork.
PREFACE xix
four chariots encrusted with precious stones, life-size bitu-
menised figures of the king in soUd gold sandals and covered
with insignia, boxes innumerable, the king's clothes, a shawabti
about 3 feet high, sticks of state. I have not opened the boxes,
and don't know what is in them ; but there are some papyrus
letters, faience, jewellery, bouquets, candles on ankh candle-
sticks. All this is in [the] front chamber, besides lots of
stuff you can't see. There is then another room which you
can't get into owing to the chaos of furniture, etc., alabaster
statues, etc., piled up 4 or 5 feet high. Then we come to the
sealed door behind which, I am sure, is the king and God
knows what. Some of the stuff is in excellent condition, some
is poor, but the whole thing is marvellous ; and then there is
that sealed door ! ! Even Lacau^ was touched by the sight.
[Two paragraphs omitted.] It is going to cost me something
awful, but I am going to try to do it all myself. I think it
wiU take Carter and three assistants nearly two years to remove,
if we find much behind the seals. I am coming back in ten
days and will try and see you. — Yours ever, Carnarvon."
Having found the archaeological "pearl of great
price," with characteristic generosity he was
anxious that all who could should come to Luxor
to see it and to rejoice over it with him. He made
an arrangement with The Times to publish detailed
accounts of the clearing of the outer chambers,
and to reproduce the splendid photographs of the
most striking objects, which were made for him by
a member of the American Archaeological Mission,
and thus people in all parts of the world were
able to watch almost daily the progress of the
work. Visitors from many countries thronged
to Luxor to see Tutankhamen's tomb and the
wonders that it contained, and Lord Carnarvon
* The present Director of the Service of Antiquities.
XX PREFACE
spent himself freely in helping them in every way
in his power. He gave them his time and energy
and knowledge imgrudgingly, but this work, alas !
used up his strength and exhausted him. He was
not physically a strong or robust man, and the
effects of a serious motor accident, sustained many
years ago, and of two illnesses in recent years, had
taken toll of his vitality. His spirit and courage
were invincible, nothing could daunt those, but the
work that he had imposed upon himself was too
exhausting for him. Then, when he was overtired
and overworked, came the mosquito bite on his
face. Every traveller in Egypt who has been the
victim of the maUgnant and deadly mosquitoes,
which are blown into the country in millions by
the hot south winds in March and April, knows
how serious are the fever and prostration that
follow their successful attacks on the human body.
The days passed and his work increased, and, as
he refused to spare himself, serious illness came
upon him, and he was obliged to go to Cairo and
place himself in the hands of the doctors. There
everything that medical science and skill could
devise was done for him, but little by little he
sank, and early in the morning of April 5 he
passed peacefully away. The sympathy of the
whole world went forth to him as he lay in that
sick chamber in Cairo, fighting his fight with
Death ; that he should die so soon after winning
such a glorious triumph seemed incredible.
The death of Lord Carnarvon is a serious blow
for Egyptian Archaeology, and his loss is irreparable.
PREFACE xxi
For sixteen long years he devoted himself to
excavations in Egypt, and he gave to them time,
energy, and money on a scale which no other
archaeologist has ever done. The spirit of Ancient
Egypt gripped him nearly twenty years ago, and
every year that passed strengthened its hold upon
him. The dry bones of Egyptian philology left
him cold, and when Egyptologists squabbled over
dates and chronology in his presence his chuckle
was a delightful thing to hear. But he was fired
by the exquisite beauty of form and colour which
he found in the antiquities of Egypt, and his
collection of small Egyptian antiquities at High-
clere Castle is, for its size, probably the most
perfect known. He only cared for the best, and
nothing but the best would satisfy him, and having
obtained the best he persisted in believing that
there must be somewhere something better than
the best ! His quest for the beautiful in Egyptian
design, form, and colour became the cult of his
Ufe in recent years. His taste was faultless, and
his instinct for the true and genuine was unrivalled.
When compared with a beautiful " antica " money
had no value for him, and he was wont to say,
with Sir Henry Rawhnson, "It is easier to get
money than anticas." His work in Egypt brought
him into contact with natives of all kinds, and
he was universally popular with them, and he will
be remembered for a long time as a generous
employer and friend. His keen sense of humour,
his quick wit, his capacity for understanding a
matter swiftly, his ready sympathy, and his old-
xxii PREFACE
world courtesy appealed greatly to the governing
classes in Egypt, and endeared him to his friends,
who were legion, both Oriental and Occidental.
Here I have only ventured to speak of Lord
Carnarvon as the great and disinterested archaeo-
logist, who gave years of his life and untold
treasure for the sake of his love for science, for I
have neither the knowledge nor the ability to deal
with his successes as a pioneer of colour photo-
graphy, and as a collector of prints, pictures,
books, etc. These, and many of the phases of his
character and pursuits, are treated felicitously and
sympathetically in a careful appreciation of his
life and character which appeared in The Times,
published on the day of his burial on Beacon Hill
(April 30).
E. A. Wallis Budge.
British Museum,
May 7, 1923.
NOTES
The kings of the XVIIIth dynasty reigned about 230
years, i.e., from about B.C. 1580 to 1350 ; their names are
as follows : —
Aa^imes 1580, reigned about 22 years.
Amenljetep I, about 1558-7, reigned about 10 years.
Thothmes I, about 1546, reigned about 30 years.
Thothmes II, about 1500, reigned about 3 years.
Hatshepsutj -^
-k. .V, TTT V about 1500 to 1447.
Thothmes III /
Amenhetep II, about 1448, reigned about 26 years.
Thothmes IV, about 1420, reigned about 8 years.
Amenhetep III, about 1412, reigned 36 years.
■^ Amenhetep IV, about 1376, reigned 17 years.
Sakara 1
Tutankhamen Ueigned 8-12 years.
Ai J
Herembeb, about 1350, reigned 34 years.
In the transliterations of proper names a few diacritical
marks are used : — a=short a, e, or i ; a=a in father ; h is a
strongly aspirated h ; t=a sound something Uke d ; k, a
deep guttural like the Hebrew p ; 'a=the sound of the Hebrew
ayin.
THE REIGN OF TUTANKHAMEN.
MQHHSEH ("Living image of
Amen "), King of Egypt, about B.C. 1400.
When and where Tutankhamen was born is
unknown, and there is some doubt about the
identity of his father. From a scarab which was
found in the temple of Osiris at Abydos/ we learn
that his mother was called Merit-Ra 1 ^\
r O ^ { ( J . In the inscription on the red
granite lion in the Southern Egyptian Gallery in
the British Museum (No. 431), he says that he
" restored the monuments of his father. King of
the South and North, Lord of the Two Lands,
Nebmaatra, the emanation of Ra, the son of
Ra, Amenhetep (III), Governor of Thebes." It
is possible that Tutankhamen was the son of
Amenhetep III by one of his concubines, and that
when he calls this king his father the statement is
literaUy true, but there is no proof of it. On
the other hand, Tutankhamen may have used
the word " father " simply as a synonym of
" predecessor." The older Egyptologists accepted
the statement made by him on the lion that he
dedicated to the Temple of Sulb in Nubia as
true, but some of the more recent writers reject
it. The truth is that the name of Tutankhamen's
father is unknown. He became king of Egypt by
1 See Mariette, Abydos, Paris, 1880, torn. II, pi. 40N.
A
fl
2 TUTANKHAMEN
virtue of his marriage with princess Ankhsen-
PAATEN, the third daughter of Amenhetep IV, ■¥• ^
^^ 3y^ at least that is what it is natural
to suppose, but it is possible that he got rid
of his immediate predecessor, Smenkhkara, or
Seaakara, who married the princess Meritaten,
or Atenmerit, (1 '^"==3^ (1(1 ^ J, the eldest
daughter of Amenhetep IV, and usurped his
throne.
When Tutankhamen ascended the throne he
was, or at all events he professed to be, an
adherent of the cult of At en, or the " Solar
Disk," and to hold the religious views of his wife
and his father-in-law. Proof of this is pro-
vided by the fragment of a calcareous stone
stele preserved at Berlin (No. 14197), on which
he is described as " Lord of the Two Lands,
Rakheperuneb, Lord of the Crowns, Tutankhaten
( (j /v^ o v\ o •¥• J , to whom life is given for ever.
He did not at once sever his connection with the cult
of At en, for he started work on a temple, or some
other building, of Aten at Thebes. This is certain
from the fact that several of the blocks of stone
which Heremheb, one of his immediate successors,
used in his buildings bear Tutankhamen's name.
It is impossible to describe the extent of Tutankh-
amen's building operations, for this same Herem-
heb claimed much of his work as his own, and
cut out wherever possible Tutankhamen's name
and inserted his own in its place. He went so
far as to usurp the famous stele of Tutankhamen
^ This name means " Her life is of Aten " {i.e., of the Solar
Disk).
2 See Aegyptische Zeitschrift, Bd. 38, 1900, pp. 112-114.
"S
THE REIGN OF TUTANKHAMEN 3
that Legrain discovered at Karnak in 1905.^
From this stele we learn that the " strong names "
and of&cial titles which Tutankhamen adopted
were as follows : —
I. Horns name. Ka-nekht-tut -mes
^S-riPI-
2. Nebti name. Nefer-hepu-s-gerh taui
3. Golden Horus name. Renp-khau-s-hetep-
4. Nesu bat name. Neb-kheperu-Ra
5. Son of Ra name. TutankhAmen
In some cases the cartouche of the nomen
contains the signs T |^, which mean "governor
of Anu of the South " {i.e., Hermonthis). When
Tutankhaten ascended the throne he changed
his name to Tutankhamen, i.e., " Living image of
Amen."
Our chief authority for the acts of Tutankhamen
is the stele in Cairo already referred to, and from
the text, which unfortunately is mutilated in
several places, we can gain a very good idea of the
^ See Annates du Service, Vol. V, 1905, p. 192 ; Recueil de
Travaux, Vol. XXIX, 1907, pp. 162-173.
A 2
4 TUTANKHAMEN
state of confusion that prevailed in Egypt when
he ascended the throne. The hieroglyphs giving
the year in which the stele was dated are broken
away. The first lines give the names and titles
of the king, who says that he was beloved of
Amen-Ra, the great god of Thebes, of Temu and
Ra-Heraakhuti, gods of Ann (HeliopoUs), Ptah
of Memphis, and Thoth, the Lord of the " words
of god " (i.e., hieroglyphs and the sacred writings).
He calls himself the " good son of Amen, bom of
Kamutef," and says that he sprang from a glorious
seed and a holy e^^, and that the god Amen
himself had begotten him. Amen built his body,
and fashioned him, and perfected his form, and the
Divine Souls of Anu were with him from his youth
up, for they had decreed that he was to be an eternal
king, and an established Horns, who would devote
aU his care and energies to the service of the
gods who were his fathers.
These statements are of great interest, for
when understood as the king meant them to be
understood, they show that his accession to the
throne of Egypt was approved of by the priest-
hoods of Heliopolis, Memphis, Hermopolis and
Thebes. Whatever sjmipathy he may have pos-
sessed for the Cult of Aten during the lifetime of
Amenhetep IV had entirely disappeared when he
set up his great stele at Karnak, and it is quite
clear that he was then doing his utmost to fulfil the
expectations of the great ancient priesthoods of
Egypt.
The text continues : He made to flourish
again the monuments which had existed for
centuries, but which had fallen into ruin [during
the reign of Aakhimaten]. He put an end
to rebeUion and disaffection (I I ,^ . Truth
marched through the Two Lands [which he
THE REIGN OF TUTANKHAMEN 5
established firmly]. When His Majesty became
King of the South the whole country was in a
state of chaos, similar to that in which it had been
in primeval times {i.e., at the Creation). From
Abu (Elephantine) to the Swamps [of the Delta]
the properties of the temples of the gods and
goddesses had been [destroyed], their shrines were
in a state of ruin and their estates had become a
desert. Weeds grew in the courts of the temples.
The sanctuaries were overthrown and the sacred
sites had become thoroughfares for the people.
The land had perished, the gods were sick unto
death, and the country was set behind their
backs.
The state of general ruin throughout the country
was, of course, largely due to the fact that the
treasuries of the great gods received no income
or tribute on any great scale from the vassal
tribes of Palestine and Syria. It is easy to under-
stand that the temple buildings would fall into
ruin, and the fields go out of cultivation when once
the power of the central authority was broken.
Tutankhamen next says that if an envoy were
sent to Tchah J FQ "l c^^^ (Syria) to broaden the
frontier, of Eg"ypt,<^p.^Pg^^lf^.
his mission did not prosper ; in other words, the
collectors of tribute returned empty-handed be-
cause the tribes would not pay it. And it was
useless to appeal to any god or any goddess, for
there was no reply made to the entreaties of
petitioners. The hearts of the gods were dis-
gusted with the people, and they destroyed the
creatures that they had made. But the days
wherein such things were passed by, and at
length His Majesty ascended the throne of his
father, and began to regulate and govern the
6 TUTANKHAMEN
lands of Horns, i.e., the temple-towns and their
estates. Egypt and the Red Land (i.e., Desert)
came under his supervision, and every land
greeted his will with bowings of submission.
The text goes on to say that His Majesty was
living in the Great House which was in Per-
Aakheperkara. This palace was probably situated
either in a suburb of Memphis or in some district
at no great distance from that city. (Some think
that it was in or quite near Thebes.) Here " he
reigned like Ra in heaven," and he devoted him-
self to the carrying out of the " plan of this land."
He pondered deeply in his mind on his courses
of action, and communed with his own heart
how to do the things that would be acceptable
to the people. It was to be expected that,
when once he had discarded Aten and all his works,
he would have gone and taken up his abode in
Thebes, and entered into direct negotiations with
the priests of Amen. In other words, Tutankh-
amen was not certain as to the kind of reception
he would meet with at Thebes, and therefore he
went northwards, and lived in or near Memphis.
Whilst here " he sought after the welfare of
father Amen," and he cast a figure of his " august
emanation," ^ (]|^^^^ ^ 0^^, in gold, or
silver-gold. Moreover, he did more than had
ever been done before to enhance the power and
splendour of Amen. The text unfortunately gives
no description of the figure of Amen which he
made in gold, but a very good idea of what it was
like may be gained from the magnificent solid gold
figure of the god that is in the Carnarvon Collec-
tion at Highclere Castle, and was exhibited at the
Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1922. A handsome
silver figure of Amen-R5, plated with gold, is
exhibited in the British Museum (Fifth Egyptian
THE REIGN OF TUTANKHAMEN 7
Room, Table-case I, No. 42). This must have
come from a shrine of the god. He next fashioned
a figure of " Father Amen " on thirteen staves,
a portion of which was decorated with gold tcham
(i.e., gold or silver-gold), lapis lazuli and all
kinds of valuable stones ; formerly the figure of
Amen only possessed eleven (?) staves. He also
made a figure of Ptah, south of his wall, the
Lord of Life, and a portion of this likewise was
decorated with gold or silver-gold, lapis lazuli, tur-
quoises and all kinds of valuable gems. The figure
of Ptah, which originally stood in the shrine in
Memphis, only possessed six (?) staves. Besides this,
Tutankhamen built monuments to all the gods, and
he made the sacred images, ^ ^,^ ^ ^^ Jj 1 , of
them of real tchdm metal, which was the best
produced. He built their sanctuaries anew, taking
care to have durable work devoted to their con-
struction ; he estabUshed a system of divine
offerings, and made arrangements for the main-
tenance of the same. His endowments provided
for a daily supply of offerings to all the temples,
and on a far more generous scale than was originally
contemplated.
He introduced (JP*^^) or appointed liba-
tioners and ministrants of the gods, whom he
chose from among the sons of the principal men in
their villages, who were known to be of good
reputation, and provided for their increased sti-
pends by making gifts to their temples of immense
quantities of gold, silver, bronze and other metals.
He filled the temples with servants, male and
female, and with gifts which had formed part
of the booty captured by him. In addition to
the presents which he gave to the priests and
servants of the temples, he increased the revenues
8 TUTANKHAMEN
of the temples, some twofold, some threefold
and others fourfold, by means of additional gifts
of tchdm metal, gold, lapis lazuli, turquoises,
precious stones of all kinds, royal cloth of byssus,
flax-linen, oil, unguents, perfumes, incense, dhmit
(] ra ^^ I and myrrh. Gifts of "all beautiful
things " were given lavishly by the king. Having
re-endowed the temples, and made provision for
the daily offerings and for the performance of
services which were performed every day for the
benefit of the king, that is to say, himself, Tutankh-
amen made provision for the festal processions on
the river and on the sacred lakes of the temples.
He collected men who were skilful in boat-building,
and made them to build boats of new acacia wood
of the very best quality that could be obtained in
the country of Negau ^5 ^^^^^tX- Many
parts of the boats were plated with gold, and their
effulgence Ughted up the river.
The information contained in the last two
paragraphs enables us to understand the extent
of the ruin that had fallen upon the old reUgious
institutions of the country through the acts of
Aakhunaten. The temple walls were mutilated
by the Atenites, the priesthoods were driven out,
and all temple properties were confiscated and
appHed to the propagation of the cult of At en.
The figures of the great gods that were made of
gold and other precious metals in the shrines
were melted down, and thus the people could not
consult their gods in their need, for the gods had
no figures wherein to dwell, even if they wished to
come upon the earth. There were no priests
left in the land, no gods to entreat, no funeral
ceremonies could be performed, and the dead
had to be laid in their tombs without the blessing
of the priests.
THE REIGN OF TUTANKHAMEN 9
During this period of religious chaos, which
obtained throughout the country, a number of
slaves, both male and female, and singing men,
"▼ ^ ^Qt^ af ' » shematu, and men of the acrobat
class, © J ^."^ 11 ^ ^ ^ i ' ^^^ ^^^^ employed
by the Atenite king to assist in the performance of
his religious services, and at festivals celebrated
in honour of Aten. These Tutankhamen " puri-
fied " and transferred to the royal palace, where
they performed the duties of servants of some
kind in connection with the services of all the
" father-gods." This treatment by the king was
regarded by them as an act of grace, and they were
exceedingly content with their new positions. The
concluding lines of the stele tell us little more than
that the gods and goddesses of Egypt rejoiced
once more in beholding the performance of their
services, that the old order of worship was re-
established, and that all the people of Egypt
thanked the king for his beneficent acts from the
bottom of their hearts. The gods gave the king Ufe
and serenity, and by the help of Ra, Ptah and
Thoth he administered his country with wisdom,
and gave righteous judgments daily to all the
people.
In line 18 on the Stele of Tutankhamen it
is stated that the gifts made by the king to the
priests and temples were part of the booty which
His Majesty had captured from conquered peoples
that even during his short reign of from
eight to ten years he managed to make raids
— they cannot be called wars — ^in the countries
which his predecessors had conquered and
made dependencies of Egypt. The truth of his
10 TUTANKHAMEN
statement is fully proved by the pictures and
inscriptions found in the tomb of Hui
in Western Thebes. This officer served in Nubia
under Amenhetep IV, and as a reward for his
fidelity and success the king made him Prince
of Kesh (Nubia), and gave him full authority
to rule from Nekhen, the modem Al-k§.b, about
50 miles south of Thebes, to Nest-Taui Z3 S S '" ^
or Napata (Jabal Barkal), at the foot of the
Fourth Cataract. During the reign of Tutankh-
amen Hui returned from Nubia to Thebes,
bringing with him large quantities of gold, both
in the form of rings and dust, vessels of gold and
silver, bags full of precious stones, Siidani beds,
couches, chairs of state, shields and a chariot.^
With these precious objects came the shekh
of Maam, the shekh of Uait, the sons of all the
principal chiefs on both sides of the river from
Buhen (Wadi Half ah) to Elephantine, and a
considerable number of slaves. Hui and his
party arrived in six boats, and when all the gifts
were unloaded they were handed over to Tutankh-
amen's officials, who had gone to receive them.
It is not easy to decide whether this presentation
of the produce of Nubia by Hui was an official
delivery of tribute due to Tutankhamen, or a
personal offering to the new king of Egypt. If
Hui was appointed Viceroy of Kesh by Amen-
hetep IV or his father, it is possible that he was
an adherent of the cult of Aten. In this case, his
gifts to Tutankhamen were probably personal,
and were offered to him by Hui with the set
^ This is a name of Thebes, but it was also applied to the
town of Napata, where the great temple of Amen-Ra of Nubia
was situated.
' See the drawing pubUshed by Lepsius, Denkmdler III,
pi. 116-118.
THE REIGN OF TUTANKHAMEN ii
purpose of placating the restorer of the cult of
Amen. Be this as it may, the gold and silver and
precious stones from Nubia were most acceptable
to the king, for they supplied him with means for
the re-endowment of the priests and the temples.
Egyptologists, generally, have agreed that the
scenes in Hui's tomb representing the presentation
of gifts from Nubia have a historical character, and
that we may consider that Tutankhamen really
exercised rule in Nubia. But there are also
painted on the walls scenes in which the chiefs
and nobles of Upper Retennu ci 0 \\ r^r\^ ^
(Syria) are presenting the same kinds of gifts
to Tutankhamen, and these cannot be so easily
accepted as being historical in character. In his
great inscription, Tutankhamen says explicitly that
during the reign of Aakhunaten it was useless to
send missions to Syria to " enlarge the frontiers
of Egypt," for they never succeeded in doing so.
But he does not say that he himself did not send
missions, i.e., make raids, into some parts of
Phoenicia and Sjnia, and it is possible that he
did. It is also possible that some of the Syrian
chiefs, hearing of the accession of a king who was
following the example of Thothmes III and
honouring Amen, sent gifts to him with the view
of obtaining the support of Egyptian arms against
their foes.
Exactly when and how Tutankhamen died is
not known, and his age at the time of his death
cannot be stated. No tomb of his has been found
in the mountains of Tall al-*Amamah, and, up to
the present, there is no evidence that he had a
tomb specially hewn for him in the Valley of the
Tombs of the Kings. During the course of his
excavations in this Valley, Mr. Theodore Davis
found a tomb which he beheved to be that of
12 TUTANKHAMEN
Tutankhamen.^ In it there was a broken box
containing several pieces of gold leaf stamped
with the names of Tutankhamen and his wife
Ankhsenamen, etc. In a pit some distance from this
tomb he discovered what he took to be the debris
from a tomb, such as dried wreaths of leaves and
flowers. The cover of a very large jar, which
had been broken, was wrapped up in a cloth on
which was inscribed the name of Tutankhamen.
One of the most beautiful objects found by Davis
was the little blue glazed funerary vase which
is figured on plate XCII of his book. It was
discovered in a sort of hiding place under a large
rock, and bears the inscription " Beautiful god,
Neb-kheperu Ra, giver of life " "1 1 f O ^ ' ^^=^ J
A ■¥■. These facts certainly suggest that Davis
found a tomb of Tutankhamen.
The objects in the British Museum that bear
the name of Tutankhamen are few, the largest
and most important being the granite lion which
he placed in the temple built by Amenhetep III
at Sulb (the " Soleb " of Lepsius), about half-way
up the Third Cataract on the left or west bank.
Several scarabs^ and a bead bearing his prenomen
or nomen are exhibited in Table-Case B. (Fourth
Egyptian Room), and also the fragment of a
model of a boomerang in blue glazed faience in
WaU-Case 225 (Fifth Egyptian Room), No. 54822.
Two fine porcelain tubes for stibium, or eye-paint,
are exhibited in Wall-Case 272 (Sixth Egyptian
Room). The one (No. 27376) has a dark bluish
green colour and i^ inscribed " Beautiful god.
Lord of the Two Lands, Lord of Crowns, Neb-
1 See Davis-Maspero-Daressy, The Tombs of Harmhahi
and Touat-dnkhamanou, London, 1912.
^ See Hall, H. R., Catalogtie of Egyptian Scarabs, London,
1913. Nos. 1968-1972, pp. 197, 198.
THE REIGN OF TUTANKHAMEN 13
kheperu-Ra, giver of life for ever " 1 1 ^3:^ ^^^^
^=^ S r O Q i ^^ A ■?" S ' ^"^ *^^ ^^^^^
(No. 2573), which is white in colour, is inscribed
with the names of his wife and himself : — 1 1
===== v___5^2J A T '^ "^ V 1 wsAw 1 — J
A writing palette bearing the king's prenomen^
was found at Kurnah during the time of the
French Expedition, and this and the other objects
mentioned above suggest that the royal tomb
was being plundered during the early years of the
XlXth century.
An interesting mention is made of Tutankh-
amen in one of the tablets from Boghaz Keui,
and it suggests that communications passed more
or less frequently between the kings of the Hittites
at that period and the kings of Egypt. The
document is written in cuneiform characters^ in
the Hittite language, and states that the Queen
of Egypt, called Da-kha-mu-un tr ^TT ??< »^ s=T??
wrote to the father of the reigning Hittite
king to tell him that her husband Bi-ib-khu-ru-
ri-ya-ash T C^ HI -R 1111 -TR ttV, *- was dead,
and that she had no son, and that she
wanted one, and she asked him to send to her
one of his many sons, and him she would make
her husband.^ Now Bibkhururiyaash is nothing
more nor less than a transcription of Neb-kheperu-
Ra, the prenomen of king Tutankhamen.
\\ ^S ^ ^ ' wf A 1 This is the legend as printed
in ChampoUion, Monuments, torn. II, pi. CXCI his No. 2.
2 For the text see Keilschrift aus Boghazkoi, Heft V, No. 6.
Rev. Ill, 11. 7-13.
3 See Dr. F. Hrosny, Die Ldsung des Hethitischen Problems,
in the Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, Decem-
ber, 1915, No. 56, p. 36.
TUTANKHAMEN AND THE CULT
OF AMEN.
The early history of the god Amen is somewhat
obscure, and his origin is unknown. The name
Amen (J means " hidden (one)," a title
which might be applied to many gods. A god
^
Ut
at.
Amen-Ra, King of the Gods, The goddess Amenit, a female
Great Lord of Thebes. counterpart of Amen, dweller in
the Northern Apt (Karnak).
Amen and his consort Ament or Amenit are
mentioned in the Pyramid Texts (Unas, line 558),
where they are grouped with Nau and Nen, and
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 15
with the two Lion gods Shu and Tefnut. This
Amen was regarded as an ancient nature-god
by the priests of HeHopoUs under the Vth dynasty,
and it is possible that many of his attributes
were transferred at a very early period to Amen,
the great god of Thebes. Though recent excava-
tions have shown that a cult of Amen existed at
Thebes under the Ancient Empire, it is doubtful
if it possessed any more than a local importance
until the JiLLtii dynasty. When the princes
of Thebes conquered their rivals in the north
and obtained the sovereignty of Egypt, their
god Amen and his priesthood became a great
power in the land, and an entirely new temple
was built by them, in his honour, at Karnak on
the right bank of the Nile. The temple was
quite small, and resembled in form and arrange-
ment some of the small Nubian temples ; it
consisted of a shrine, with a few small chambers
grouped about it, and a forecourt, with a
colonnade on two sides of it. Amen was not
the oldest god worshipped there, and his sanctuary
seems to have absorbed the shrine of the ancient
goddess Apit. The name of Thebes is derived
from T-Ape, the Coptic name of the shrine of
the goddess Apit, and the city was not known as
Nut Amen ®, (1 "^^ ^ (the No Amon of the
Bible, Nahum 3, 8), i.e., the " city of Amen," until
a very much later date.
Although the kings of the Xllth dynasty
were Thebans it is possible that they and many
of their finest warriors had Sudani blood in their
veins, and the attributes that they ascribed to
Amen were similar to those that the Nubian
peoples assigned to their indigenous gods. To
them Amen symbolized the hidden but irresistible
power that produces conception and growth in
i6 TUTANKHAMEN
human beings and in the animal and vegetable
worlds. And in some places in Eg5rpt, and Nubia
and the Oases, the symbol of the god Amen was
either the umbilicus^ or the gravid womb. The
symbol of Amen that was shown to Alexander the
Great, when he visited the temple of Jupiter
Ammon in the Oasis of Siwah, was an object
closely resembling the umbiUcus, and it was
inlaid with emeralds (turquoises ?) and other
precious stones — ^umbiHco maxime similis est
habitus, smaragdo et gemmis coagmentatus.^ The
name of Amen was carried into Nubia and the
Egyptian Sudan by the kings of the Xllth
dynasty when they made raids into those countries,
and his worship took root there readily and
flourished. The booty which was brought back
to Thebes was shared by them with Amen, and
many captives and slaves were set apart as the
property of the god. Soon Amen gained the
reputation of the god of successful warriors, and
his fame grew and spread abroad, and little by
little the attributes and powers of the older gods
of Heliopohs, Memphis and Abydos were united
to his own in the minds of his priests and followers.
Under the rule of the kings of the XVIIIth
d5niasty the glory and power of Amen waxed
greater and greater, and his fame spread through
the Eastern Desert and Syria. As he gave victory
to the kings of the Xllth dynasty in Nubia, so
he now gave undreamed of success to Egyptian
arms in Western Asia ; and the Pharaohs returned
to Thebes laden with spoil of every kind and with
rich gifts from the non-combatant peoples in
1 See Daressy, Une Nouvelle Forme d' Anton in Annates
du Service des AntiquiUs de I'Egypte, tome IX, p. 64 ff.
2 Quintus Curtius, lib. IV, §7. See also Naville, Le Dieu
de r Oasis de Jupiter-Amon in Comptes Rendus de I'Acadtmie,
1906, p. 25.
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 17
Phoenicia and Syria. And Amen might well be
declared to be the " god of the worid," especially
during the reign of Thothmes III. Never before
had such wealth flowed into the treasury of the
temple of Amen, or Amen-Ra, as he began to be
called, and never before had the power of his
priests been so great. Amenhetep I, the second
king of the dynasty, had been a strong supporter
of the cult of Amen, and he seems to have been
the founder of the order of the priests of Amen,
and certainly endowed the temple in the Northern
Apt with great wealth. His prenomen and nomen
are often seen occupying prominent places on the
coffins of the priests of Amen. The work of
establishing the order begun by Amenhetep I was
consolidated and extended by Thothmes HI, who
set the priesthood in order, appointed a high priest,
and provided them with rich revenues and gave
them large estates for their maintenance. The
gifts that the temple of Amen received as a result
of the seventeen expeditions made by Thothmes III
into Phoenicia and Syria, and into the country in
the neighbourhood of the waters of the Upper
Euphrates, and the share of the tribute received
from Cyprus and the Sudan must have been well-
nigh incalculable. The treasury of Amen was so
well supplied by Thothmes III, and the affairs
of his priesthood so well regulated by him, that
his two immediate successors, Amenhetep II and
Thothmes IV, were not called upon to make
extraordinary raids into Western Asia for the
purpose of collecting spoil.
Amenhetep II, about B.C. 1500, devoted his
energies to the conquest of the southern portion
of the Egyptian Sudan, which he penetrated
as far as Wad Ba-Nagaa, a district lying about
80 miles to the north of the modern city of
Khartum. But it is doubtful if he possessed any
B
i8 TUTANKHAMEN
effective hold on the Sudan beyond Napata
(Jabal Baikal), at the foot of the Fourth
Cataract. During one of his wars, or raids, into
Syria, he slew a rebel chief and sent his body to
Napata to be hung upon the city walls, so that
the natives might see it and tremble. We may
be sure that the priesthood of Amen at Thebes
took great care to inform their colleagues at
Napata that it was their god Amen who had given
the king the victory. Amenhetep II was a loyal
servant of Amen, for on the stele which he set up
after his return from Upper Rethennu he says that
he came back " with a heart expanded with joy
to Father Amen because he had overthrown all
his enemies, and enlarged the frontiers of Egypt,
and had slain seven chiefs with his own club whilst
they were living in Thekhsi, and had hung their
bodies up head downwards on the bows of his
boat as he sailed up the Nile to Thebes."
Amenhetep II was succeeded about B.C. 1450 by
his son Thothmes IV, who seems to have owed his
accession to the throne, not to the priests of Amen,
i>ut to the priests of Hehopolis. His mother was
not of royal rank, and it is probable that her
religious sympathies were with the old solar^ods
of Heliopolis rather than with Amen, ^rAjnenrSlT
of Thebes. On a huge red granite stele, which
stands between the paws of the Sphinx at Gizah
immediately in front of its breast, is cut an impor-
tant inscription which throws Hght on the subject
of the accession to the throne of Thothmes IV.
According to the text, the young prince Thothmes
was hunting at Gizah and sat down to rest himself
under the shadow of the Sphinx. Whilst there he
fell asleep, and thef ourfold Sun-god, Heraakhuti-
Khepera-Ra-Tem, appeared to him in a dream
and promised him the crowns of Egypt if he would
clear away from the Sphinx and his temple the
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 19
desert sand, which had swallowed them up. Now
the Sphinx was believed to be the image and
dwelling-place of Temu-Heraakhuti, a solar god in
whom were united the attributes and powers of
Tem, the oldest sun-god of Heliopolis, and Heraa-
khuti, a still older sun-god. Thothmes did as the
god wished, that is to say, as the priests of Helio-
polis wished, and b}/ so doing forwarded their
Heraakhuti, i.e., Horus of the Temu, Lord of the Two Lands,
Two Horizons, the Great God. Ra, of Anu (On) Great God, Governor
the mid-day form of the Sun-god, of the Nine Gods. He was pro-
is often depicted in this form. bably the oldest man-headed god in
Egypt.
political aspirations and secured their assistance
in obtaining the throne. During his short reign
of about nine years Thothmes IV made raids into
Syria and the Egyptian Sudan, and the temple of
Amen no doubt obtained a share in the spoil
which he brought back — ^in fact, an inscription
at Karnak contains a list of the gifts that he
B 2
20 TUTANKHAMEN
made to Amen on his return from a very successful
raid. We may note in passing that although the
name of Amen forms part of his personal name,
his Nebti name was " Stablished in sovereignty
like Tem."
The opening up of Western Asia by the victorious
arms of Amasis I and his successors was followed
by a great increase in the communications that
passed between Egypt and the peoples of Syria,
Mitanni, Assyria and Babylonia. The trade between
these countries increased, and the merchant cara-
vans carried not only the wares and products of
one country into the other, but also information
about the manners and customs and reUgions of the
various peoples with whom they came in contact.
Thothmes IV appears to have been the first
Egyptian king who entered into friendly relations
with the kings of Karaduniyash (Babylonia) and
Mitanni. Tushratta, king of Mitanni, tells us, in
a letter^ which he sent to Amenhetep IV, that the
father of his father, Amenhetep III, sent to his
grandfather, Artatama, and asked for his daughter
to wife ; in other words, Thothmes IV wanted to
marry a princess of Mitanni. Six times did
Thothmes IV make his request in vain, and it was
only after the seventh asking that the king of
Mitanni gave his daughter to the king of Egypt.
As Queen of Egypt she was styled " Hereditary
Princess, Great Lady, President of the South and
the North, Great Royal Mother,i;MuT-EM-uSA."
GSE^-
The princess would naturally come to Egypt
escorted by a number of her people, and it is very
probable that she and her followers introduced into
1 Preserved in Berlin ; see Winckler, Die Thontafeln von
Tdl-el-Amarna, No. 24, p. 51.
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 21
Egypt religious views that were more in harmony
with those of the priests of HeUopoUs than of the
votaries of Amen.
Little is known of the kingdom of Mitanni and
its people. There is one letter in Berlin written
in the language of Mitanni, and the Assyriologists
who have made a special study of it assign to
the language a place among the " Caspian group,"
and are inclined to compare it with Georgian ;
and they give it an Aryan origin.^ The names of
four of their gods are mentioned in the text of a
Treaty found at Boghaz Keui, and the Mitannians
swore by them to observe this Treaty.* These
gods are : —
1. ^j^ y^^ <tt ^^y ^yy ^ <y. -<vyy
2. .4- y^^ tyric: im 4- ^ - <T- i^m
4. .>f- y>.^ ^H -gyy i:^y ..y< s^y| .4- >-i'
Omitting the determinatives,^ these names may
be transUterated thus : — i, Mi-it-ra-ash-shi-il.
2, U-ru-wa-na-ash-shi-il. 3, In-tar. 4, Na-sha-at-
ti-ya-an-na. And their identifications with the
Indian gods Mitra (Mithras), Varuna, Indra and
Nasatiya seem to be certain. The solar and celes-
tial character of these Indian gods has much in
common with that of the solar gods of Heliopolis,
and if the princess of Mitanni who married
Thothmes IV carried her worship of them into
Egypt, it is easy to beUeve that her religious
sympathy and support would be given to Tem
and his cognate gods, and not to Amen. With
her arrival at Thebes there came an influence
1 Bork, Die Mitanni Sprache, Berlin, 1909.
3 Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazkoi. Heft I, p. 7. No. 1,
1.55.
' »->f- and »->f- y»*«- are detenninatives of " god " and
" gods."
22 TUTANKHAMEN
which was hostile to Amen, but her husband's
reign was too short for it to produce any great
material effect.
Thothmes IV was succeeded by his son by
Queen Mutemuaa, who ascended the throne under
the name of Amenhetep (III) ; thus the name of
the god Amen once again formed part of the
personal name of the reigning king. The meaning
of this name, " Amen is content, or satisfied," is
significant. He reigned for about thirty-six years,
probably in the latter half of the fifteenth
century B.C. A legend^ was current in Egypt under
the Ancient Empire in which it was asserted that
the god Ra came to earth and, assuming the form
of a priest of Ra, the husband of one Ruttet,
appeared to his wife and, companying with her,
begot three sons, each of whom became King of
all Egypt. From that time every king prefixed
to his personal name the title Sa Ra,
" son of Ra." Nearly two thousand years later
the great Queen Hatshepsut decorated her temple
at Der al-Bahari with bas-reUefs, on which were
sculptured scenes connected with her conception
and birth. In these the god Amen, in the human
form of her father Thothmes I, is seen companying
with Queen Aahmes, and the inscriptions prove
that Hatshepsut believed that she was of the god's
seed and that his divine blood flowed in her veins.^
As Amen had in the XVIIIth dynasty assumed
all the powers and attributes of Ra of Heliopolis,
the father of the kings who ruled from Memphis,
it was only fitting that he should assume human
form and become the physical father of the kings
who ruled from his city of Thebes. The same
1 See Ennan, Die Marchen des Papyrus Westcar, Berlin,
1890.
2 See Naville's edition of the texts, Vol. II, pi. 46-55.
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 23
24 TUTANKHAMEN
fiction was promulgated by the priests of Amen
in respect of their god and Amenhetep III. Accord-
ing to the bas-relief in the sanctuary of the
temple which he built in the Northern Apt in
honour of Amen, Mut and Khensu, Amen came
to Queen Mutemuaa in the human form of
Thothmes IV, and begot by her the son who
reigned as Amenhetep III. Both scenes and texts
were copied from the bas-reliefs in Hatshepsut's
temple, which in turn were probably copied from
some popular document compiled by the priests
of Amen at the beginning of the XVIIIth dynasty,
perhaps with special reference to Amenhetep I.
Whatever views Amenhetep III held concerning
Amen and his worship, he did not allow them to
interfere with or obstruct his public allegiance to
that god. This fact is proved by his building
operations at Luxor and the gifts which he made
to the temples and priesthood of Amen throughout
the country. But he honoured other Egyptian
gods besides Amen, for he built a temple at
Elephantine to Khnemu, a very ancient god of
the region of the First Cataract. To commemo-
rate his victory over the Nubians in the fifth year
of his reign, he built the great temple called
Het Kha-em-Maat |^ Q p ^ ^ at Sulb, in the
Egyptian Sudan. He dedicated it to Father Amen,
Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands, to Khnemu
and to " his own Image living upon earth, Neb-
maat-Ra.^" On a bas-reUef published by Lepsius^
we see him worshipping himself, as Lord of Ta-
Kenset. In several of the scenes sculptured on
the walls he is represented making offerings to
Amen-Ra, Khnemu and other gods, and he is
* Neb-maat-Ra is the prenomen of Amenhetep III.
3 Denkmdler, III. 85.
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 25
26
TUTANKHAMEN
frequently accompanied by his wife Ti. At Sad-
denga he built a temple to Ti as the goddess of
the Sudan.
In Egypt, at all events, the people were not
prohibited from worshipping the old gods of
Amenhetep III worshipping himself as a member of the Triad in the
Temple of Sulb.
the country, and that his own high officials did
so openly is evident from the grey granite stele
of the architects Her and Suti in the British
Museum.^ The stele is in the form of the door
of a tomb and has a plain cornice and a raised
1 No. 475, Bay 9. Old No. 826. See A Guide to the
Egyptian Galleries, p. 134.
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 27
border. In the upper part of the central panel
are the two utchats, or eyes of the Sun and Moon
^?^S ' ^^^ *^^ winged disk, and below these
are figures of Osiris and Anubis ; the figures of
the architects and their wives are obliterated. In
the inscriptions above the panel Her beseeches :
I, Hathor of Thebes, the mistress of the goddesses,
Hathor of Thebes, who was
incarnate in the forms of a cow
and a woman.
Mut, Lady of Asher, a female
counterpart of Amen-Ra.
to grant to him a coming forth into the presence
[of the god] ; 2, Khensu to give him all good,
sweet and pleasant things ; and 3, Hathor of
Thebes to receive them in the temples. Suti
beseeches : i, Amen-Ra to give him sepulchral
meals in Hermonthis ; 2, Mut to give him all
good things ; and 3, Hathor of the cemetery to
give him beautiful life and pleasure upon earth.
28 TUTANKHAMEN
On the right-hand side of the panel Her be-
seeches : I, Ra-Heraakhuti, lord of heaven, to let
him see Aten and to look at the Moon as he did
upon earth ; 2, Anpu (Anubis) to give him a
beautiful funeral after old age and a burial in the
western part of Thebes ; and 3, the divine Queen
Nefertari to give him the sweet breath of the
north wind, coolness and wine, and a coming
forth into the presence [of the God].
On the left-hand side of the panel Suti beseeches :
I, Osiris, Governor of eternity, to give him cakes
and offerings in the presence of Un-Nefer ; 2,
Seker, lord of the coffin chamber, to let him go
in and out of the underworld, without obstruction
to his soul, at pleasure ; and 3, Isis, the mother
of the god, to grant him power to move freely
about in the Peqa (at Abydos) under a decree of
the great god.
Here, then, we have these two high officials, the
one overseer of the works in the temple of Karnak,
and the other overseer of the works in the temple
of Luxor, men of learning and culture, praying
for the goodwill, help and favour of Hathor of
the city, of Hathor of the cemetery, of Mut, the
consort of Amen, of Khensu, son of Amen and
Mut, of the old Sun-god Ra-Heraakhuti, of
Anpu, god of the tomb, of Nefertari, the deified
Queen of Amasis I, of Osiris, god and judge of
the dead, of Isis, his consort, and of Seker, the old
god of the Underworld of Memphis. Amen is
not mentioned with these old gods, into whose
hands Her and Suti were content to commit their
souls after death. But Amen was the great god
of their city, and to him they owed their occupation
and daily bread, and they acknowledged his power
in the hymn which they caused to be cut on the
panel of their funerary stele. The importance of
this h3m[in is considerable, for the stele is dated, in
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 29
line 15, by the mention of the name of the king they
served, Amenhetep III. It is quite short, consisting
of less than eight lines, and it tells us little about
Amen. The opening words say that it is a hymn
to Amen when he rises as Heraakhuti ; that is
to say, it is addressed to Amen in his character of
a solar god. It might equally weU be addressed
Khensu, a Moon-god, third
member of the great Theban Triad
Amen-Ra, Mut and Khensu.
Anpu, or Anubis, son of Set and
Nephthys.
to Ra or Horns or any solar god. The writer calls
the god a " daily beauty that never fails to rise,"
and identifies him with Khepera, an ancient god
of creation, who is mighty in works. His rays
which strike the face cannot be known (or esti-
mated), and the brilhantly bright and shining
30
TUTANKHAMEN
metal called tchdm cannot be compared for splen-
dour with his beautiful appearance. The caps on
the pyramidions of obeHsks were made of tchdm
metal, and the brightness of them could be seen
many leagues away. In hne 3 Amen is said to
have been ptaA-tu ° | ^ ^ . ^-^^ he was " designed,"
just as an object is designed, or plotted out, by
a draughtsman, and the correct meaning of the
N
T
Sebak, an ancient Crocodile-god.
Net (Neith), the female counter-
part of Sebak, or Sebek.
word may be that Amen designed his own form.
Next the god " plated his Umbs," i.e., he made
them to have the appearance of plates made of
tchdm metal. This statement is followed by the
words, " [He] gives birth, but was not himself
bom : Only One in his characteristics, quaUties,
powers and operations."
Thus we learn that Amen was, like Khepera, self-
designed, self-created, self-existent in a form that
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 31
was never born as ordinary creatures are, and that
he was One and Alone without equal, or fellow, or
counterpart. The writer next refers to the duration
of the god's existence, as the traverser of eternity,
and the passer over the roads of miUions of years
with his form. His splendour is the splendour of
heaven, and though " all men see his passage, he is
Her-Semsu, or Horns the Aged.
Her-pa-khart (Harpokrates), or
Horus the Child.
hidden from their faces " (in his character of the
*' hidden ' ' god) . He travels over the celestial waters
vast distances in a moment of time every day. There
is no cessation in his work, and every one sees him,
never ceasing to do so. When he sets he rises-^
upon the denizens of the Tuat, and his rays force
their way into the eyes [of the dead] (?) When he
sets in the western horizon men fall asleep and
32 TUTANKHAMEN
become motionless like the dead. With these
words the Hymn to Amen comes to an end.
But during the lifetime of these twin brothers,
lier and Suti, the cult of At en must have made
considerable progress at Thebes, for, in spite of
their loyalty to Amen, and to the old solar gods of
the country, and to Osiris and Isis being manifest,
they caused a Hymn to Aten to be engraved on
their funerary stele. It has no title, and follows
the Hymn to Amen immediately, beginning with
the words, " Homage to thee, Aten of the day ! "
He is called " creator of men and women, maker
of their lives," and is identified with the " Great
Hawk of many-coloured plumage." He performed
the act of creation which " raised " lumself up
[out of the primeval watery abyss] . " The creator of
himself he was not bom." He is next identified
with the " Aged Horus," the dweller in Nut, the
oldest solar god or sky-god in Egypt, and is
acclaimed joyfully at rising and setting. He
created the earth (?). The next words, Khnem
Amen Nenmemit, are difficult. If the writer of
the hymn meant to identify Aten with Khnem-
Amen, a god of the region of the First Cataract,
that is understandable, but how, then, is Hen-
memit, if that be the correct reading, to be fitted
in ? ^ Aten is next called " Conqueror of the Two
Lands from the greatest to the least." Another
difficulty meets us in the words " glorious mother of
gods and men," and the words that follow,
" gracious artificer, most great, prospering in
her work," seem to apply to this mother. Perhaps
the writer of the hymn wished to compare Aten
to such a mother, or he may have regarded Aten
• 1 The true reading may be hememit and so be connected
with the word to "roar" — Khnem Amen of the roarings.
Amenhetep IV dedicated a scarab to a god of roarings
(British Museum, No. 51084).
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 33
as father-mother. After another Mne containing
obscure allusions we read, " How marvellous is
production of him who raises up his beauty from
the womb of Nut, and who illumines the Two
Lands with his Aten (Disk) ! He the Pautti
(the primeval matter out of which the world and
all in it were made) created himself. He is the
Lord One. He made the Seasons out of the
Her-netch-tef-f, or Horus the
Avenger of his Father.
Her-aakhuti as Ment, or Menthu,
the War-god of Hermonthis.
months, Summer because he loves heat, and
Winter because he loves the cold ; [during the
former] he makes men's bodies to become ex-
hausted. The apes sing hymns to him when he
rises daily." What follows on the stele concerns
the lives of Her and Suti, and the text is translated
on pp. 46-68.
Judging by what is said in the Hymn to Aten,
c
34 TUTANKHAMEN
the origin, nature and attributes of Aten closely
resemble those of Amen. Both gods are identified
with the oldest gods in Egypt. Each is declared
to be self-created and not to have been born,
therefore not begotten, and to each is appUed the
epithet " One." It is interesting to note that
Aten is identified with Pautti, the oldest of all
the gods, and with the Aged Horus, or Horus
the Elder. As Aten is said to be the maker of
Summer and Winter and the months, it is clear
that a tradition, probably going back to pre-
dynastic times, associated him with- the primitive
Year-god. This Hymn shows that our two archi-
tects regarded Aten as a thoroughly Egyptian god,
and as one who could be and ought to be worshipped
side by side with Amen, who had condescended to
become the begetter of their lord and master,
Amenhetep HI.
Notwithstanding the influence of his mother,
the Mitannian princess, and of his wives, some of
whom also came from Mitanni, Amenhetep strongly
supported the cult of Amen throughout the country,
and kept on good terms with the priesthood of
Amen. The consolidation of that order by Thoth-
mes HI has already been mentioned, and it
would seem that this king instituted, or, at all
events, sanctioned the daily performance of a
very important service in the sanctuary of Amen
in the temple of Karnak. In the sanctuary there
was placed a naos, or shrine, containing a gold or
gilded wooden figure of Amen, with moveable
head, arms and legs ; sometimes a boat took
the place of the shrine, and in such cases the
figure of the god was set inside the cabin. The
figure might represent the god standing upright
or seated on a throne. During the service the
king, or his deputy, purified the sanctuary and
himself by burning incense and pouring out
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 35
libations of fresh water. He then advanced to the
naos, broke the seal which closed its doors, and
made obeisance to the figure of the god. Having
performed further rites of purification on the
figure, he advanced and embraced it, in order
that the soul of the god might enter into his body.
The naos was closed, and the king left the
sanctuary, but he returned immediately, when the
naos was reopened, and he performed further
acts of obeisance, and made offerings which
included a figure of the goddess Maat %S, or
Truth. Next the king dressed the figure in
symbolic garments, and purified it, and anointed
it with scented unguents and perfumes, and
placed on it a necklace, amulets, rings, etc. By
these acts the king intended to imply that he,
the son of a god, was adoring his father, just as
children in general adore their fathers and mothers
in the tomb. During some of these ceremonies the
god laid his hands on the body of the king, and
by so doing transmitted to him the fluid of Hfe,
which enabled the king to live day by day, and to
rule over his people with wisdom and justice.
Now the king himself might well perform his part
in this great, solemn service at Thebes, but he could
not be at the same time at Abydos or elsewhere
in Egypt. Therefore in Thebes and other cities
deputies were chosen to represent the king, and
they were everywhere regarded with the reverence
that was due to the performers of such exalted
duties. During the performance of these rites
and ceremonies hymns were chanted to Amen
or Amen-Ra, and of these the following are
specimens '} —
1 A hieroglyphic transcript of the hieratic text «dll be
found in Moret, Le Rituel du Culte Divin Journalier en
j^gypte, Paris, 1902, p. 69.
C 2
36 TUTANKHAMEN
I. " Homage to thee, O Amen-Ra, Lord of Thebes,
Thou Boy, the ornament of the gods !
All men lift up their faces to gaze upon him.
Thou art the Lord, inspiring awe, crushing
those who would revolt [against thee].
Thou art the King of all the gods.
Thou art the great god, the Living One.
Menu Ka-mut-f, or Menu, Bull of his mother, a
god of new birth and virility, with whom Amen
and Amen-Ra were identified.
Thou art beloved for thy words,
[Which are] the satisfaction of the gods.
Thou art the King of heaven, thou didst
make the stars.
Thou art the tchdm metal (gold) of the
gods (i.e., the gold out of which the gods
are made).
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 37
Thou art the Maker of heaven, thou didst
open the horizon and make the gods to
come into being according to thy behests.
[O] Amen-Ra, Lord of the Throne of the Two
Lands, President of the Apit, Amen-Ra,
Bull of his mother, who art upon thy great
throne, Lord of rays. Maker of multitudes,
god of the lofty plumes, thou art the King
of the gods, the Great Hawk, who makest
the breast to rejoice. Thou art praised by
all rational beings [because] they have
life."
IL " Watch, being at peace ! Thou watchest in
peace. Watch, Amen-Ra, Lord of the
Throne of the Two Lands, in peace.
Watch, being at peace ! Thou watchest in
peace. Watch, Chief in On, Great One in
Thebes, in peace.
Watch, being at peace ! Thou watchest in
peace. Watch, Creator of the Two Lands
(Egypt), in peace.
Watch, being at peace ! Thou watchest in
peace. Watch, thou who didst build up
thyself, in peace.
Watch, being at peace ! Thou watchest in
peace. Watch, Creator of heaven and the
hidden things of the two horizons, in peace.
Watch, being at peace ! Thou watchest in
peace. Watch, O thou to whom the gods
come with bowings. Lord who art feared,
Mighty One whom the hearts of all rational
beings hold in awe, in peace." (Ibid.,
p. 122.)
III. " Image of the Eldest Son, Heir of the earth
before thy father the Earth [Geb and]
thy mother Nut, Divine Image, who
camest into being in primeval time, ^ «, t^, »
38 TUTANKHAMEN
when a god did not exist, and when the
name of nothing whatsoever had been
recorded, when thou didst open thy two
eyes and didst look out of them Hght
appeared unto every man. When shadow is
pleasing to thy two eyes, day exists no
longer.
Thou openest thy mouth, thy word is therein.
Geb, the Earth-god, Father of
the Gods, Great God, Lord of
Eternity.
Nut, the Sky-goddess, the Lady
of Heaven, who gave birth to Osiris
and Isis and Set and Nephthys.
Thou stabhshest heaven with thy two arms,
and the West (^ment) in thy nsime of
Amen.
Thou art the Image of the Ka (or Double) of
all the gods. Image of Amen, Image of
Atem, Image of Khepera, Image of the
Lord of all the earth, Image of the Lord
who is crowned King of the South and
North in the North and South, Image who
gavest birth to the gods, who gavest birth
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 39
to men, who gavest birth to everything,
the Lord of Hfe, thou Living One, who
possessest power greater than that of all
the gods. Thou hast conquered the Nine
Gods, thou hast presented to them their
offering. Thou hast bound them together,
thou hast made them to live. O thou Image
who hast created their doubles (?), thou hast
Ptah, lord of Maat, king of the Sekhmit, the great lady, the lady
Two Lands (Egypt), the great of heaven, the mistress of the Two
Man-god of Memphis. Lands (Egypt). She was a female
counterpart of Ptah.
given that which Horus has obtained for
himself from the Company of the gods.
Thou art Uke a god who designs with thy
fingers, hke a god who designs with thy
toes. Thou hast become the Lord of every-
thing, Aten who came into being in primeval
time, god of the two high plumes. Thou
Begetter, thou hast created more than all
the gods." {Ibid., p. 129.)
40 TUTANKHAMEN
A papyrus at Leyden contains a series of very
interesting hymns to Amen, and the following
extracts are quoted from it.
IV. '" Thou sailest, Heraakhuti, and each
day thou dost fulfil the behest of yesterday.
Thou art the maker of the years and
captain of the months ; days and nights
and hours are according to his stride.
Thou makest thyself new to-day for yester-
day ; though going in as the night thou
art the day. The One Watcher, he hates
slumber. Men sleep on their beds, but
his eyes watch. (Chap. VI.)
Fashioning hin^elf none knows his forms.
(Chap. VIII.)
Mingling his seed with his body to make
his egg to come into being withm himself.
(Chap. VIIL)
The Aten (Disk) of heaven, his rays are
on thy face.
He drove out the Nile from his cavern
for thy Pautti. The earth is made thy
statue N^ (p ^ cjj • Thy name is victorious,
thy souls (or Will) are weighty.
Hawk destroj/ing his attacker straightway.
Hidden (or secret) Lion roaring loudly,
driving his claws into what is under has
paws. Bull for his town, Lion for his
people. The earth shakes when he sends
forth his voice. Every being is in awe
of him, mighty in power there is none like
him. He is the Beneficent Power of the
births of the Nine gods. (Chap. IX.)
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 41
Loosing evils, driving away sicknesses. A
physician healing the eye without medicines;
Opener of the eye, destroyer of the cast
in it. Being in the Tuat he releases him
whom he loves. Removing from Destiny
according to his heart's desire. Possessing
eyes and ears he is on every path of him
that loves him.
He hears the petitions of him that invokes
him. Being afar off he comes in a moment
to him that calls him.
He adds to the term of life and he shortens it.
To him whom he loves he gives more than
Fate has allotted to him.
To the man who sets him in his heart he
is more than millions.
With his name one man is stronger than
hundreds of thousands. (Chap. XL)
Thou didst exist first in the forms of the
Eight Gods [of Hermopolis], and then
thou didst complete them and become
One, ^%»]y.
Thy body is hidden in the Chiefs, thou art
hidden as Amen at the head of the gods.
Thy form was that of Tanen in order to give
birth to the Pautti gods in thy primeval
matter. Thou dost enter fathers making
their sons. Thou didst first come into being
when there was no being in existence.
All the gods came into being after thee.
(Chap. XIII.)
Amen came into being in primeval time,
none knows the form in which he appeared.
No god existed before him, there was no
other god with him to declare his form.
42 TUTANKHAMEN
He had no mother for whom his name was
made. He had no father who begot him,
saying, It is even myself. He shaped his
own egg ; the divine god, becoming of
himself; all the gods were created after
he came into being. (Chap. XIV.)
One is Amen, he hides himself from them,
he conceals himself from the gods.
The man who utters his secret (or mystery)
name, which cannot be known, falls down
upon his face straightway and dies a violent
death. No god knows how to call upon
him." (Chap. XV.)i
The extracts given in the last section sie taken
from a work on Amen which was not intended to
be sung in the temples. It is, more or less, a
philosopliical treatise on the origin, nature, and
powers of the god, showing that he is the source of
all Hfe, animate and inanimate. The existence
of other gods is admitted, but they are merely
forms of him, the great god whose three chciracters
or persons were called Amen (of Thebes), Ra (of
Heliopolis) and Ptah (of Memphis). His Oneness,
or Unity, was absolute. We may now give an
extract from the famous Hymn to Amen which
is preserved in a papyrus in the Egyptian Museum,
Cairo,^ and was undoubtedly sung by men and
women to the accompaniment of music in the
temples.
^ For transcripts of the hieratic texts, translations, etc., see
Gardiner in Aegyptische Zeitschrift, Bd. 42 (1905), p. 12 ff.
2 A complete transcript of the hieratic text into hiero-
gl5^hs, with a French translation, has been published by
Grebaut, Hymne a Ammon-Ra, Paris, 1875.
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 43
A Hymn to Amen-Ra.
§1. Bull, dwelling in On, President of all the
gods.
Beautiful god, Meriti (he who is loved).
Giving all life of warmth
To all beautiful cattle.
§11. Hail to thee, Amen-Ra, Lord of the
Throne of the Two Lands !
First One in the Apts (i.e., Karnak),
Bull of his mother, first one of his pasture.
Extended of stride, first one of the
Land of the South,
Lord of the Matchaiu (Nubians), Gover-
nor of Punt,
Prince of Heaven, Eldest one of Earth,
Lord of things which are, stablisher of
\ creation, stablisher of all creation.
§IIL One, through his unrivalled powers among
the gods. Chief of all the gods.
Lord of Truth, Father of the gods,
Maker of men, creator of beasts.
Lord of the things that are, creator of
the plant of life (wheat).
Maker of green plants, making to live
the cattle..
§IV. Power, produced by Ptah,
Beautiful Boy of love,
The gods ascribe praises to him,
Maker of things below and of things
above, illumining Egypt,
Sailing over the heavens in peace.
King of the South and North f Ra
Whose word is true. Chief of the Two
Lands (Egypt),
44 TUTANKHAMEN
Great of power, Lord of awe,
Chief, making the earth like his form.
Dispenser of destinies (or plans) more
than any god.
§IX. Casting down his enemy into the flame.
His eye overthroweth the Sebau fiends.
It maketh her spear stab Nun (the
abyss of heaven).
It maketh the serpent fiend Nak vomit
what he hath swallowed.
§X. Hail to thee, Ra, Lord of Truth !
Hidden one in his shrine, Lord of the
gods,
Khepera in his boat.
He sent out the Word, the gods came
into being,
Temu, maker of men,
Making different their characters and
forms, making their life.
Distinguishing by their skins one from
the other.
§XI. He hearkeneth to the groan of the
afflicted,
Being gracious to him that crieth to
him.
Delivering the timid man from the
bully.
Judging between the oppressor and the
helpless one.
§XV. Image One; ^ ^ || ^ <^> maker of
everything that is.
One Alone, "^ ^ ^^~n^ '^' maker of
things that are.
TUTANKHAMEN AND CULT OF AMEN 45
Men proceed from his eyes,
The gods come into being by his
utterance ;
Maker of green herbs, Vivifier of the
cattle,
The staff of hfe of the Henmemet beings.
Making the fish to hve in the river.
And the geese in the sky.
Giving air to the creature in the egg,
Making to Hve feathered fowl.
Making khennur birds to live.
And creeping things and insects likewise,
Providing food for the mice in their holes.
And making the birds to live on every
branch.
§XIX. Chief of the Great Nine Gods,
One Alone, without a second ^^
w
A HYMN TO AMEN AND ATEN
BY
Her and Suti, Overseers of Works at Thebes,
IN the Reign of Amenhetep III.
[British Museum, Stele No. 475.^]
2. ^
<o
?J^
•fl
1. A Hymn of Praise to Amen when he riseth as
Horus of the Two Horizons by Suti, the
Overseer of the Works of Amen, [and by]
Her (Horns), the Overseer of the Works of
Amen. They say : — Homage to thee, Ra,
Beautiful (or Beneficent) One of every
day ! Thou shootest up
2. at sunrise (or dawn) without fail,^ Khepera,^
^ This monument has been published by Pierret, Recueil,
tome I., p. 20 and by Birch, Trans. Soc. Bihl. Arch., Vol. VIII,
p. 143 ff.
2 Literally, " he maketh not cessation."
3 Or " Creator." Here Amen is identified with the ancient
god of Creation.
A HYMN TO AMEN AND ATEN 47
o w
4
III f) A Q '^'^
. .m ^, <^\^^^i
I AAAAAA III 1 AAAAAA U Ulb (Jjl
:^g£c
I III I '^^i^ -'■' 1 o Jr^ [III]
great one of works. Thy radiance is in thy
face, [thou] Unknown. [As for] shining
metaP it doth not resemble thy splendours.
3. Being designed^ thou didst mould into form
thy members ; giving birth, but he was not
born ; One by himself by reason of his power
(or abilities), Traverser of Eternity, He who
is over (or Chief of) the ways of millions
of years, maintaining his Divine Form.
4. As are the beauties of the celestial regions
even so are thy beauties. More brilliant is
thy complexion than that of heaven. Thou
sailest across the heavens, all faces (i.e.,
mankind) look at thee as thou goest, though
thou thyself art hidden from their faces.
^ Tchdm, perhaps gilded copper, or even gold itself. The
caps of the obelisks were covered with it.
2 Meaning perhaps, " thou didst design thine own form."
48 TUTANKHAMEN
»• t: ^ -^ *^¥ I,?,
r:^ "v « a
6. o^ ra
<www o III <r>A ^ %c^
<2>.
O I
17 <^^ /www n '' — »i— t
III I '"^ * ^VW\A ^
5. Thou showest thyself at break of day in
beams of light, strong is thy Seqet Boat
under Thy Majesty. In a little day thou
journeyest over a road of millions and
hundreds of thousands
6. of minutes (or moments). Thy (?) day with
thee passeth, [thou] sett est.
The hours of the night likewise thou dost
make to fulfil themselves. No interruption
taketh place in thy toil. All eyes (i.e.,
mankind, or aU peoples)
7. direct their gaze upon thee, they cease not to
do so. When Thy Majesty setteth, thou
makest haste (?) to rise up early in the
morning,! thy sparkling rays flash in the
eyes (or penetrate the eyes).
1 The text is probably corrupt here ; the writer meant to
say " When Thy Majesty setteth, thou shinest and risest
upon the Tuat " (the Underworld).
A HYMN TO AMEN AND ATEN 49
8.
000
[VAy]
O
I I I
O O
1f^ z. \
o
I I I
9.
PHP
I I I
1
o II
h\
10.
9.
^2k
^[^
L^
31^ ^^^^ sk^ ^^ I
^^
L-il
^
8. Thou settest in Manu, whereupon [men]
sleep after the manner of the dead.
Hail to thee, O Aten of the day, thou
Creator of mortals [and] Maker of their
life {j,.e., that on which they live) ! [Hail]
9. thou Great Hawk whose feathers are many-
coloured, thou god Kheprer, who didst
raise thyself up [from non-existence] ! He
, created himself, he was not born, Horus
! the Elder (or the Old Hawk), dweller in
Nut (the sky). [Men] cry out joyfully at
10. his rising [and] at his setting likewise. [He is]
the fashioner [of what] the ground produceth,
Khnem Amen of the Henmemet,^ conqueror
of the Two Lands, from the great one to
the little one. [Thou] Mother splendid of
1 A class of celestial beings. D
50 TUTANKHAMEN
^I^^ ]\k'^ U"r7:tr
/\ w
"•frr: ±1 ^^ °f^ 11^^
f PI^ z^ fl^- ^
^^ ^
11. Gods and men, artificer, gracious one, exceed-
ingly great, progressing (or flourishing) in
her work. The cattle (?) cannot be
counted. The strong herdsman, driving
his strong beasts, thou art their byre. He
12. provideth their life (i.e., sustenance), springing
up, traversing the course (?) of Khepera,
planning (?) his birth, raising up his
beautiful [form] in the womb of Nut.
He illumineth the Two Lands (Egypt) with
his Aten (or Disk), Pie is] the primeval
substance (or plasma) of the Two Lands.
He made himself.
A HYMN TO AMEN AND ATEN 51
13. ^^K ^ 1; 1- S S ^
S
-^^_ »S^A/\AA
/^ <§>
I I I
Pill ^= I ^^ <=>^] III
(*/v)
14. ^
i^iii ra'l
i 1 1
13. He looketh on what he hath made, the
Lord One, bringing along into captivity
countless lands every day, observing those
who walk about upon the earth ; shining
(or shooting up) in the sky [he performeth]
transformations by day (or, as Ra). He
maketh the seasons from the months. He
loveth the heat of summer.
14. He loveth the cold of winter. He maketh
every member of the body to droop. He
embraceth every land. The ape[s cry out]
in adoration of him when he riseth daily.
D 2
52
16.
TUTANKHAMEN
^
O
L-J
n
crzi
o II
11
At ^'i
I I I
•^ZllJt
M
0
1****^
ODD
(?)
16.
)(?)
P
^
f^"^ DOD
«VVV\ 1^ yl
\P I s
15.
Suti, overseer of works, [and] Her, overseer
of works, [each] saith, " I was the director
of thy throne [and] overseer of works
in thy sanctuary [which], as was right,
thy beloved son, the Lord of the Two
Lands, Nebmaatra, the giver of hfe,
made for thee. My Lord appointed me to
be the officer in charge of thy monuments.
16. I kept watch diligently, I served the office
of director of thy monuments strenuously,
performing the laws of thy heart. I knew
how to make thee to rest upon Truth,
making thee great to do it upon the earth.
A HYMN TO AMEN AND ATEN
17 <2>. — ~^ii — %vi§, l^
18.
53
I I I §1 Is
IP-!
Cilll
I I I
^^1
ra
w
^
ra w
v^ |v ra o D
17. I was performing it [and] thou didst make me
great. Thou didst set the favours [or
praises] of me on the earth in the Apts
(Kamak). I was among thy followers when
thou didst ascend the throne. I am truth
who abominateth false words and deeds.
18. I never took pleasure in any conversation
wherein were words of exaggeration and
lies. My brother was like myself. I took
pleasure in his affairs ; he came forth from
the womb with me on this (i.e., the same)
day.
54 TUTANKHAMEN
I Y .r »» V f] AAAAAA <r ^
AA/WV\
^ ¥ ^ I !: Z] s
L-fl
ps^rn ^? - ^ ^s
19. Suti, the overseer of the works of Amen
in the Southern Apt {i.e., Luxor), and Her
[the overseer of works], say : — I was
director over the western side, and he was
director over the eastern side ; we two
were directors of the great monuments
20. in the Apt, more particularly those of
Thebes, the City of Amen. Grant thou
to me an old age in thy city, and in thy
beneficence make me a burial in Amentt,
that place of rest of heart.
21. Let me be placed among thy favoured ones,
departing in peace. Grant thou to me
sweet air when .... [and] the wear-
ing (or bearing) of bandlets on the day of
the festival of Ug.
THE CULT OF ATEN, THE GOD AND DISK
OF THE SUN, ITS ORIGIN, DEVELOP-
MENT AND DECLINE.
Amongst all the mass of the religious literature
of Ancient Egypt, there is no document that
may be considered to contain a reasoned and
connected account of the ideas and beliefs which
the Egyptians associated with the god Aten.
The causes of his rise into favour towards the close
of the XVIIlth dynasty can be siumised, and the
principal dogmas which the foujider of his cult
and his followers promulgated are discoverable in
the Hymns that are found on the walls of the
rock-hewn tombs of Tall al-'Amamah ; but the
true history of the rise, development and fall of
the cult can never be completely known. The
word dten, (1 ^^ or dthen fl ^^ , is a very
old word for the " disk " or " face of the sun,"
and Atenism was beyond doubt an old form of
worship of the sun. But there were many forms of
sun-worship older than the cult of Aten, and
several solar gods were worshipped in Egypt
many, many centuries before Aten was regarded
as a special form of the great solar god at all.
One of the oldest forms of the Sun-god worshipped
in Egypt was PIer (Horus), who in the earliest
times seems to have represented the " height "
or " face " of heaven by day. He was symbolized
by the sparrowhawk ^^, the right eye of the
bird representing the sun and his left the moon.
56
TUTANKHAMEN
In later times he was called " Her-ur " or ** Her-
sems," the " older Horus," and it was he who
fought daily against Set, the darkness of night and
the night sky, and triumphed over him.
The oldest seat of the cult of the Sun-god was
the famous city of Anu | 5 , the On of the Bible,
and the Heliopolis of Greek and Latin writers.
Horus, hawk-headed, and Set,
his twin brother ; the former was
god of the day, and the latter god
of the night.
The goddess Nephthys who, ac-
cording to Heliopolitan Theology,
was a female counterpart of Set.
Here, from time immemorial, existed a temple
dedicated to the Sun-god, and attached to it was
a college of his priests, who from a very remote
period were renowned for their wisdom and learn-
ing. They called their god Tem or Atem J^ ^ ,
(] ^^ ^v 3 , and in later times, at least, he
CULT OF ATEN
57
was depicted in the form of a man wearing the
Crowns of the South and North, and holding in
his right hand dnkh -9- (" Hfe ") and in his left
a sceptre. He was king of heaven and also of
Eg57pt. He was a solar god and, like every other
ancient god in Egypt, had absorbed the attributes
of several indigenous gods whose names even
Shu, son of Ra, source of heat
and light.
Tefnut, daughter of Ra, source of
moisture and water. She was a.
female counterpart of Shu.
are now not known. The Pyramid Texts show
that he was all-powerful in heaven, and that his
priests proclaimed him to be the greatest of all
the gods. The supremacy of Tem is asserted in
the various versions of the Book of the Dead, and
all the other solar gods are regarded as forms of
him in the various recensions of this work. Thus
58 TUTANKHAMEN
in the XVIIth Chapter he says : " I am Tern in his
rising. I was the Only One [when] I came into
existence in Nenu (or Nu). I am Ra when he rose
for the first time. I am the Great God who created
himself [from] Nenu, and who made his names
to become the gods of his company. I am he
who is irresistible among the gods. I am Tem,
the dweller in his Disk (] ^^ , or Ra in his rising
in the eastern horizon of the sky. I am Yesterday ;
I know To-day. I am the Bennu {i.e., Phoenix)
which is in Anu (Heliopolis), and I keep the
register of the things which are created and of
those which are not yet in existence." The Com-
pany of the gods over whom " Father Tem "
presided consisted of Shu and Tefnut, Geb and
Nut, Osiris and Isis, and Set and Nephthys.
According to one tradition, Tem produced Shu
and Tefnut from his own body, and these three
gods formed the first Triad, or Trinity, Tem
sajdng, " From [being] god one I became three."
^ In the extract from the XVIIth Chapter given
above, we must note that i. Tem originally
existed in Nenu, or Nu, the great mass of primeval
waters. 2. He was the Only One in existence
when he had come into being. 3. He created
himself the Great God. 4. He possessed various
names, and these he turned into the gods who
formed his Pest or Ennead, merely by uttering
their names. 5. He was irresistible among the
gods, i.e., he was the Over-lord of the gods. 6. He
comprehended time past and time to come. 7. He
dwelt in the Solar Disk (Aten). 8. He rose in the
sky for the first time under the form of Ra, and
he was himself the Bennu, i.e., the Soul of Ra.
9. He kept the Registers of things created and
uncreated. Though the papyrus from which we
get these facts is not older than the XVIIIth
CULT OF ATEN
59
dynasty, each of the statements which are here
grouped exists in the various rehgious texts that
were written under the Ancient Empire, say,
two thousand years earlier.
Of the style and nature of the worship of Tem
we know nothing, but, from the fact that he was
depicted in the form of a man, we appear to be
justified in assuming that it was of a character
Osiris, Lord of Eternity, Bull
of Amentt.
Isis, female counterpart of Osiris,
and mother of Horus.
superior to that of the cults of sacred animals,
birds and reptiles, which were general in Egypt
under the earlier dynasties. Tem, the man-god,
absorbed the attributes of Her-ur, the old Sky-god,
and of Khepera, the Beetle-god, who represented
one or more of the forms of an ancient Sun-god
between sunset and sunrise, and of Her-aakhuti
("Horus of the two horizons"). Khepera was
6o TUTANKHAMEN
the sun during the hour that precedes the dawn,
tier was the sun by day, and Tern was the setting
sun ; the names of these gods are of native
origin. We may conclude that the priests of Tem
incorporated into their forms of worship as many
as possible of the rites and ceremonies to which
the people had been accustomed in their worship
of the older gods. For there was nothing strange
in the absorption of one god by another to the
Egyptian, the god absorbed being regarded by him
merely as a phase or character of the absorbing
god. The Egyptians, like many other Orientals,
were exceedingly tolerant in such matters.
The monuments prove that, quite early in the
Dynastic Period, there was known and worshipped
in Lower Egypt another form of the Sun-god who
was called Ra ^^9 ^- Of his origin and
early history nothing is known, and the meaning of
his name has not yet been satisfactorily explained.
It does not seem to be Egyptian, but it may be
that of some Asiatic sun-god, whose cult was
introduced into Egypt at a very remote period.
His character and attributes closely resemble those
of the Babylonian god Marduk, and both Ra and
Marduk may be only different names of one and
the same ancestor. The centre of the cult of Ra
in Egypt was Anu, or Heliopolis, and the city
must have been inhabited by a cosmopolitan
population (who were chiefly worshippers of the
sun) from time immemorial. All the caravans
from Arabia and Syria halted there, whether
outward or homeward bound, and men of many
nations and tongues must have exchanged ideas
there as well as commodities. The control of
the water drawn from the famous Well of the
Sun, the 'Ain ash-Shams' of Arab writers, was,
no doubt, in the hands of the priests of Anu,
CULT OF ATEN 6i
and the pa57ments made by grateful travellers for
the watering of their beasts, together with other
offerings, made them rich and powerful. The
waters of the well were believed to spring from the
celestial waters of Nenu, or Nu, and the Nubian
King Piankhi tells us that when he went toAnu
he bathed his face in the water in which Ra
was wont to bathe his face.^ We may note in
passing that the Virgin Mary drew water from this
well when the Holy Family halted at Anu.
Under the IVth dynasty the priests of Anu
obtained very considerable power, and they suc-
ceeded in acquiring pre-eminence for their god
Ra among the other gods of Lower Egypt. Whether
or not they chose the kings cannot be said, but it
is certain that they caused the name of Ra to
form a part of the Nesu bat names of the builders
of the second and third pyramids at Gizah. Thus
we have Khaf-Ra (Khephren) and Menkau-Ra
(Mycerinus). Not satisfied with this, they rejected
the descendants of the great pyramid builders, and
set upon the throne a number of kings whom they
declared to be the sons of their god Ra by the wife
of one of his priests. The first of these adopted
as his fifth, or personal name, the title of " Sa
Ra," i.e., son of Ra. This title, which was certainly
adopted by the kings of the Vth dynasty, was
borne by every king of Egypt afterwards, and
the Nubian, Persian, Macedonian, or Roman who
became king of Egypt saw no absurdity in styling
himself " son of Ra." Thanks to the excavations
made by Borchardt and Schafer, under the direc-
tion of F. von Bissing, several important facts
dealing with the worship of Ra have been brought
to light. The sun temples built by the later
kings of the Vth dynasty were usually buildings
1 Stele of Piankhi, 1. 102.
62 TUTANKHAMEN
about 325 feet long and 245 feet broad. At the
west end stood a truncated, or " blunted," pyramid
/A), and on the top of it was an obelisk made of
yy. stone (B) . In front of the east side
B
of the pyramid stood an alabaster
altar, and on the north side of the
altar were channels along which
- the blood of the victims, both
/^ A \ animal and human, ran into
alabaster bowls which were placed
to receive it. On the north side of the rectangular
walled enclosure was a row of store rooms, and
on the east and south sides were passages, the
walls of which were decorated with reliefs. Oppo-
site the altar, on the east side, was a gateway ; from
this ran a path, which led by an inclined cause-
way to another gate, which formed the entrance
to another large enclosure, about 1,000 feet square.
The priests lived in this enclosure, and in special
chambers were kept the sacred objects which were
carried in procession on days of festival.
The principal object of the cult of Ra and his
special symbol was the obelisk, but it has been
suggested that the earliest worshippers of the sun
believed that their god dwelt in a pcirticular stone of
P5n:amidal shape. At stated seasons, or for special
purposes, the Spirit of the Sun was induced by the
priests to inhabit the stone, and it was believed to be
present when gifts were offered up to the god, and
when human victims, who were generally prisoners
of war, were sacrificed. The exact signification of
this sun symbol is not known. Some think that
the obelisk represented the axis of earth and
heaven, but the Egyptians can hardly have evolved
such an idea ; others assign to it a phallic significa-
tion, and others associate it with an object that
produced fire and heat. That it symbolized Ra
is certain, and there w£ls in every sanctuary a
CULT OF ATEN
63
shrine in which, behind sealed doors, was a model
of an obelisk. The cult of the standing stone,
or pillar, was probably older than the cult of Ra,
and the old name of Heliopolis is Anu, |^, i.e.,
the city of the pillar. The Spirit of the Sun
Osiris Khenti Amentt, god and
judge of the dead and lord of the
Other World.
The triune god of the Osirian
Resurrection. The three members
of his triad were Seker, an old
Death-god of Memphis ; Ptah, a
Creation-god of Memphis ; and
Osiris, the vivifier of the dead.
visited the temple of the sun from time to time
in the form of a Bennu bird, and alighted " on
the Ben-stone,^ in the house of the Bennu in
Anu " ; in later times the Bennu-bird, which
"^J
11 ftAA^AA I I
_2* _^ I © ' Pyramid Texts, II. N. 663, p. 372.
O
64 TUTANKHAMEN
the Egyptians regarded as the " soul of Ra,"
was known as the Phoinix, or Phoenix.
Under the Vlth dynasty the priests of Ra
succeeded in thrusting their god into the position
of over-lord of all the gods, and as we see from
the names Ra-Khepera, Ra-Atem, Ra-Her-
aakhuti and the like, all the old solar gods of the
north of Egypt were regarded as forms of Ra.
He was king of heaven and judge of gods and men,
and the attempt was also made to make the people
accept him as the over-lord of Osiris and king
of the Tuat, or Underworld. But in this last
matter the priests failed, and Osiris maintained
his position as the god and judge of the dead.
The priests had assigned to Ra in the funerary
compositions, which are now known as the *' P3^a-
mid Texts," great powers over the dead, and,
in fact, over all the gods and demons and denizens
of the underworld, but before a century had
passed, Osiris had established absolute sovereignty
over his realm of Amentt.
From what has been said above it is evident
that, before the close of the Vlth dynasty, the
priests of the various solar gods of Lower Egypt
had assigned to each of them all the essential
powers and characteristics which Amenhetep
claimed for his god Aten. But before we consider
these powers in detail we must summarize briefly
the principal historical facts relating to the rise
and development of the Aten cult. Wherever a
solar god was worshipped in Egypt the habitat
of this god was believed to be the solar Disk
{aten u^^ or dthen fl'^)- But the oldest
solar god who was associated with the Disk was
Tem, or Atmu, who is frequently referred to
in religious texts as " Tem in his Disk " ; when
Ra usurped the attributes of Tem he became the
CULT OF ATEN 65
" dweller in his Disk." Heraakhuti was the " god
of the two horizons," i.e., the Sun-god by day,
from sunrise to sunset, and in the hieroglyphs
with which his name is written v^ ^ , we see
the Disk resting upon the horizon of the east
and the horizon of the west. Thothmes IV,
who owed his throne to the priesthoods of Tern
and Ra at Heliopolis, incorporated the name of
Tem in his Nebti title, and styled himself " made
of Ra," " chosen of Ra," and " beloved of Ra."
As the name of Amen is wanting in every one of
his titles, it seems reasonable to assume that his
personal sympathies lay with the cult of the
solar gods of the North and not with the cult of
Amen of Thebes. But he maintained good rela-
tions with the priests of Amen, and made gifts
to their god, who through the victories of
Thothmes III was recognized in the Egyptian
Sudan, Egypt, and Syria as the god of all the
world.
Thothmes IV was succeeded by his son Amen-
hetep, the third king to bear the name, and the
priesthood of Thebes asserted that he was the
veritable son of their god Amen, whose blood ran
in his veins. According to this fiction the god
assumed the form of Thothmes IV, and Queen
Mutemuaa became with child by him. How much
or how little religious instruction the child received
cannot be said, but it is probable that any teaching
which he received from his mother, the princess
of Mitanni, would make his mind to incline towards
the religion of her native land. From the titles
which Ainenhetep assumed when he became king
it is clear that he was content to be " the chosen
of Ra," " the chosen of Tem," or " the chosen
of Amen," and it seems to have mattered little
to him whether he was the " beloved " and
66 TUTANKHAMEN
" emanation of Ra " or the " beloved " and
" emanation of Amen." His predecessors on the
throne of Egypt believed in all seriousness that
they had divine blood in their veins, and they
acted as they thought gods would act ; they had
themselves hedged round with elaborate cere-
monial procedure, which made men believe that
their king was a god. To Amenhetep all the gods
of Eg3^t were alike, and we see from the bas-
reliefs in the temple at Sulb, some fifty miles
above the head of the Second Cataract, that he
was as willing to worship himself and to offer
sacrifices to himself as to Amen, in whose honour
he had rebuilt the temple. It is impossible to
think of his performing daily the rites and cere-
monies which the king of Egypt was expected to
perform in the shrine of Amen-Ra at Kamak, in
order to obtain from the god the power and know-
ledge necessary for governing his people.
One of the most important events in his life,
and one fraught with very far-reaching conse-
quences, was his marriage with the lady Ti (or
Tei) fl\\i](]^« a private individual, apparently
of no high rank or social position.^ In the Tall
al-'Amamah letters her name is transcribed Tei
"1^ "^y t:^ c:^. Her father was called luau
^(| ^ (] ^ j^ and her mother Thuau s=^ () ^(^ •
Their tomb was discovered in 1905,^ and it
is clear that before the marriage of their
daughter to Amenhetep III they were humble
folk. According to a consensus of modem Egypto-
logical opinion they were natives of Egypt, not
foreigners as the older Egyptologists supposed.
Be this as it may, there is no doubt that Ti was
1 See Davis, The Tomb of Queen Tiyi, London, 1910.
' See Davis, Tomb of louiya and Touiyou, London, 1907.
CULT OF ATEN 67
a very remarkable woman and that her influence
over her husband was very great. Her name
appears in the inscriptions side by side with that
of her husband, a fact which proves that he
acknowledged her authority as co-ruler with
himself ; and she assisted at public functions and
in acts of ceremonial worship in a manner unknown
to queens in Egypt before her time. Her power
inside the palace and in the country generally
was very great, and there is evidence that the
king's orders, both private and public, were only
issued after she had sanctioned them. In the
Sudan the king was worshipped as a god, and as
the son and equal and counterpart of Amen-Ra,
and in the temple which Amenhetep built for her
at Saddenga, some twenty or thirty miles south
of Koshah, Ti was worshipped as a goddess. When
Amenhetep married her, or perhaps when he
became king, he caused a number of unusually
large steatite scarabs to be made, with his names
and titles and those of Ti cut side by side on their
bases.^ On another group of large scarabs he
caused his own names and titles, and the names
of Ti and her father luau and mother Thuau, to
be cut, and these are followed by the statement,
" [She is] the wife of the victorious king whose
territory in the South reaches to Karei {i.e.,
Napata, at the foot of the Fourth Cataract) and in
the North to Naharn " {i.e. the country of the
head waters of the Euphrates).^ Perhaps this is
another way of saying the great and mighty king
Amenhetep was proud to marry the daughter of
parents of humble birth and to give her a position
equal to his own. And it is possible, as Maspero
suggested long ago, that some romantic episode
1 For an example see No. 4094 in the British Museum
(Table Case B. Fourth Egjrptian Room).
2 See Nos. 4096 and 16988.
E 2
6B TUTANKHAMEN
is here referred to, similar to that in the old story
where the king marries a shepherdess for love.
What Ti's religious views were, or what gods she
worshipped, we have no means of knowing, but
the inscription which is found repeated on several
large steatite scarabs suggests that she favoured
the cult of Aten, and that in the later years of
her life she was a zealous and devoted follower
of that god. To please her Amenhetep caused
a great lake to be made on her estate called
Tcharukha ^^ ^ I © ^ Western Thebes. This
lake was about ij mile (3,700 cubits) long and
more than f th of a mile (700 cubits) wide, and its
modem representative is probably Birkat Habu.
On the sixteenth day of the third month of the
season Akhet (October), in the nth year of his
reign. His Majesty sailed over the lake in the
barge called Athen-tehen (1 ^^ 1^^, i.e. " Aten
sparkles." And in following years this day was
celebrated as a festival. Both lake and barge
were made to give the Queen pleasure, and the
fact that the name of Aten formed part of the name
of the latter, instead of Amen, has been taken to
show that both the King and Queen wished to pay
honour to this solar god. In fact, it was definitely
stated by Maspero that this water procession of
the King marked the inauguration of the cult of
Aten at Thebes, and he is probably correct.
Amenhetep's children by Ti consisted of four
daughters and one son ; his daughters were called
Ast, Henttaneb, Satamen and Baktenaten, and
her son was Amenhetep IV, the famous Aakhunaten.
Ti lived in Western Thebes during her husband's
lifetime, and she continued to do so after his
death. She visited Tall al-'Amarnah from time to
time, and was present there in the twelfth year of
CULT OF ATEN 69
her son's reign. What appears to be an excellent
portrait of her is reproduced on Plate XXXIII
of Mr. Davis's book on her tomb.
But his respect for Ti and the honour in which
he held her did not prevent Amenhetep from marry-
ing other wives, and we know from the Tall al-
'Amarnah tablets that he married a sister and a
daughter of Tushratta, the King of Mitanni. His
marriage with Gilukhipa, the daughter of Shutama
and sister of Tushratta, took place in the tenth
year of his reign. And he commemorated the
event by making a group of large scarabs inscribed
on their bases with the statement that in the tenth
year of his reign Gilukhipa w ^ ^^ J) , the
daughter of Shutama, prince of Nehema, arrived
in Egypt with her ladies and escort of 317 persons.^
Exactly when Amenhetep married Tushratta's
daughter Tatumkhipa is not known, but that he
received many gifts with her from her father is
certain, for a tablet at Berlin (No. 296) contains a
long list of her wedding gifts from her father. In
marrying princesses of Mitanni Amenhetep followed
the example of his father, Thothmes IV, whose
wife, whom the Egyptians called Mutemuaa, was
a native of that country. It follows as a matter of
course that the influence of these foreign princesses
on the King must have been very considerable at
the Theban Court, and they and the high officials
and ladies who came to Egypt with them would
undoubtedly prefer the cult of their native gods to
that of Amen of Thebes. Ti's son, Amenhetep IV,
and his sisters would soon learn their religious views,
and the prince's hatred of Amen and of his arrogant
priesthood probably dates from the time when he
came in contact with the princesses of Mitanni,
and learned to know Mithras, Indra, Varuna and
* See No. 49707 in the British Museum.
70 TUTANKHAMEN
other Aryan gods, whose cults in many respects
resembled those of Horus, Ra, Tem and other
Egyptian solar gods.
JDuring the early years of his reign Amenhetep
spent a great deal of his time in hunting, and to
commemorate his exploits in the desert he caused
two groups of large scarabs to be made. On the
bases of these were cut details of his hunts and the
numbers of the beasts he slew. One group of them,
the " Hunt Scarabs," tells us that a message came
to him saying that a herd of wild cattle had been
sighted in Lower Egypt. Without delay he set
ofl in a boat, and having sailed all night arrived
in the morning near the place where they were.
All the people turned out and made an enclosure
with stakes and ropes, and then, in true African
fashion, surrounded the herd and with cries and
shouts drove the terrified beasts into it. On the
occasion which the scarabs commemorate 170 wild
cattle were forced into the enclosure, and then the
King in his chariot drove in among them and
killed 56 of them. A few days later he slew 20
more. This hattue took place in the second year
of Amenhetep's reign. ^
The other group of " Hunt Scarabs " was made in
the tenth year of his reign, and after enumerating the
names and titles of Amenhetep and his wife Ti, the
inscription states that from the first to the tenth
year of his reign he shot with his own hand 102 fierce
lions.^ No other King of Egypt used the scarab as
a vehicle for advertising his personal exploits and
private affairs. That Amenhetep had some reason
for so doing seems clear, but unless it was to
secularize the sacred symbol of Khepera, or to cast
^ For a fine example of this group of scarabs, see No. 55585
in the British Museum.
2 Fine examples in the British Museum are Nos. 4095,
12520, 24169 and 29438.
CULT OF ATEN 71
good-natured ridicule on some phase of native
Egyptian belief which he thought lightly of, this
use of the scarab seems inexplicable.
The reign of Amenhetep III stands alone in
Egyptian History. When he ascended the throne
he found himself absolute lord of Syria, Phoenicia,
Egypt and the Egyptian Sudan as far south as
Napata. His great ancestor Thothmes III had
conquered the world, as known to the Egyptians,
for him. Save in the " war " which he waged in
Nubia in the fifth year of his reign he never needed
to strike a blow to keep what Thothmes III had
won. And this " war " was relatively an unim-
portant affair. It was provoked by the revolt
of a few tribes who lived near the foot of the
Second Cataract, and according to the evidence
of the sandstone stele, which was set up by Amen-
hetep to commemorate his victory, he only took
740 prisoners and killed 312 rebels.^ In the Sudan
he made a royal progress through the country,
and the princes and nobles not only acclaimed him
as their over-lord but worshipped him as their
god. And year by year, under the direction of the
Egyptian Viceroy of Kash, they dispatched to him
in Thebes untold quantities of gold, precious stones,
valuable woods, skins of beasts, and slaves. When
he visited Phoenicia, Syria, and the countries round
about he was welcomed and acknowledged by the
shekhs and their tribes as their king, and they
paid their tribute unhesitatingly. The great inde-
pendent chiefs of Babylonia, Assyria, and Mitanni
vied with each other in seeking his friendship,
and probably the happiest times of his pleasure-
1 The stele was made by Merimes, Viceroy of the Northern
Sudan, and set up by him at Samnah, some 30 miles south of
Wad^ IJalfah. It is now in the British Museum. (Northern
Egyptian Gallery, No. 411, Bay 6.) An illustration of it
will be found in the Guide, p. 115.
72 TUTANKHAMEN
loving life were the periods which he spent among
his Mesopotamian friends and allies. His joy in
hunting the lion in the desert south of Sinjar and
in the thickets by the river Khabiir can be easily
imagined, and his love for the chase would gain him
many friends among the shekhs of Mesopotamia.
His visits to Western Asia stimulated trade, for
caravans could travel to and from Egypt without
let or hindrance, and in those days merchants and
traders from the islands and coasts of the Mediter-
ranean flocked to Egypt, where gold was as dust
for abundance.
Amenhetep devoted a large portion of the
wealth which he had inherited, and the revenues
which he received annually from tributary peoples,
to enlarging and beautifying the temples of
Thebes. He had large ideas, and loved great
and splendid effects, and he spared neither labour
nor expense in creating them. He employed the
greatest architects and engineers and the best
workmen, and he gave them a " free hand,"
much as Hatshepsut did to her architect Senmut.
On the east bank he made great additions to the
temple of Karnak, and built an avenue from the
river to the temple, and set up obelisks and
statues of himself. He completed the temple of
Mut and made a sacred lake on which religious
processions in boats might take place. He joined
the temples of Karnak and Luxor by an avenue
of kriosphinxes, each holding a figure of himself
between the paws, and at Luxor he built the
famous colonnade, which is to this day one of
the finest objects of its kind in Egypt. On the
west bank he built a magnificent funerary temple,
and before its pylon he set up a pair of obelisks
and the two colossal statues of himself which
are now known as the " Colossi of Memnon."
A road led from the river to the temple, and each
CULT OF ATEN 73
side of it was lined with stone figures of jackals.
He also built on the Island of Elephantine a
temple in honour of Khnemu, the great god of
the First Cataract, and, as already said, he rebuilt
and added largely to the temple which had been
founded by Thothmes III at Sulb. All these
temples were provided with metal-plated doors,
parts of which seem to have been decorated with
rich inlays, and colour was used freely in the
scheme of decoration. The means at the king's
disposal enabled him to employ unlimited labour,
and most of his subjects must have gained their
livelihood by working for Amen and the king.
Under such patrons as these the Arts and Crafts
flourished, and artificers in stone, wood, brass, and
faience produced works the like of which had
never before been seen in Egypt. Throughout his
reign Amenhetep corresponded with his friends
in Babylonia, Mitanni, and Syria, and the arrival
and departure of the royal envoys gave oppor-
tunity for dispensing lavish hospitality, and for
the display of wealth and all that it produces.
The receptions in his beautifully decorated palace
on the west bank of the river must have been
splendid functions, such as the Oriental loves.
The king spent his wealth royally ; and in many
ways, probably as a result of the Mitannian
blood which flowed in his veins, his character
was more that of a rich, luxury-loving, easy-
going and benevolently despotic Mesopotamia!!
Shekh than that of a king of Egypt. Very aptly
has Hall styled^ him " Amenhetep the Magnifi-
cent." He died after a reign of about thirty-six
years, and was buried in his tomb in the Western
Valley at Thebes. On the walls of the chambers
there are scenes representing the king worshipping
the gods of the IJnderworld, and on the ceiling
are some very interesting astronomical paintings.
v
74 TUTANKHAMEN
The tomb was unfinished when the king was buried
in it. It was pillaged by the professional robbers
of tombs, and the Government of the day removed
his mummy to the tomb of Amenhetep II, where
it was found by Loret in 1899. Thus whatever
views Amenhetep III may have held about At en,
he was buried in Western Thebes, with all the
pomp and ceremony befitting an orthodox Pharaoh.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CULT
OF aten under AMENHETEP IV.
Amenhetep III was succeeded by his son by
his beloved wife Ti, who came to the throne
under the name of Amenhetep IV. He reigned
about seventeen years, and died probably before
he was thirty. The accuracy of the latter part
of this statement depends upon the evidence
derived from the mummy of a young man which
was found in the Tomb of Queen Ti, and is generally
believed to be that of Amenhetep IV. It is thought
that this mummy was taken from a royal tomb
at Tall al-*Amarnah in mistake for that of Ti,
and transported to Thebes, where it was buried
as her mummy. Dr. Elliot Smith examined the
skeleton, and decided that it was that of a man
25 or 26 years of age, " without excluding the
possibility that he may have been several years
older." His evidence^ is very important, for he
adds, " The cranium, however, exhibits in an
unmistakable manner the distortion characteristic
of a condition of hydrocephalus." So then if
the skeleton be that of Amenhetep IV, the king
suffered from water on the brain ; and if he was
26 years old when he died he must have begun
to reign at the age of nine or ten. But there is
the possibility that he did not begin to reign
until he was a few years older.
Even had his father Uved, he was not the
kind of man to teach his son to emulate the
deeds of warrior Pharaohs like Thothmes III,
1 See Davis, The Tomb of Queen Tiyi, London, 1910.
76 TUTANKHAMEN
and there was no great official to instruct
him in the arts of war, for the long peaceful
reign of Amenhetep III made the Egyptians
forget that the ease and luxury which they
then enjoyed had been purchased by the arduous
raids and wars of their forefathers. To all intents
and purposes, Ti ruled Egypt for several years
after her husband's death, and the boy-king
did for a time at least what his mother told him.
His wife, Nefertiti, who was his father's daughter
probably by a Mesopotamian woman, was no
doubt chosen for him by his mother, and it is
quite clear from the wall-paintings at Tall al-
'Amamah that he was very much under their
influence. His nurse's husband, Ai, was a priest
of Aten, and during his early years he absorbed
from this group of persons the fundamentals of
the cult of Aten and much knowledge of the
religious beliefs of the Mitannian ladies at the
Egyptian Court. These sank into his mind and
fructified, with the result that he began to
abominate not only Amen, the great god of Thebes,
but all the old gods and goddesses of Egypt,
with the exception of the solar gods of Heliopolis.
In many respects these gods resembled the
Aryan gods worshipped by his grandmother's
people, especially Varuna, to whom, as to Ra,
human sacrifices were sometimes offered, and to
them his sympathy inclined. But besides this he
saw, as no doubt many others saw, that the priests
of Amen were usurping royal prerogatives, and
by their wealth and astuteness were becoming the
dominant power in the land. Even at that time
the revenues of Amen could hardly be told,
and the power of his priests pervaded the kingdom
from Napata in the South to Syria in the North.
During the first five or six years of his reign
Amenhetep IV,^probably as the -result of the
X
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV yy
skilful giiidanjgg_f>f his^mother, made little or no
rhatigf>--tFrTFT^grYyprrirnf>rif nf t>ip_rnvinfry But
his actions in the sixth and f ollowmg~y5aTs of his
reign prove that whilst he was still a mere boy he
was studying religious problems with zeal, and
with more than the usual amount of boyish under-
standing. He must have been precocious and
clever, with a mind that worked swiftly ; and he
possessed a determined will and very definite
rehgious convictions and a fearless nature. It
is edso clear that he did not lightly brook opposi-
tion, and that he believed sincerely in the truth
and honesty of his motives and actions. But with
all these gifts he lacked a practical knowledge
of men and things. He never realized the true
nature of the duties which as king he owed to
his country and people, and he never understood
the realities of life. He never learnt the kingcraft
of the Pharaohs, and he failed to see that only
a warrior could hold what warriors had won for
him. Instead of associating himself with men
of action, he sat at the feet of Ai the priest, and
occupied his mind with religious speculations ; and
so, helped by his adoring mother and kinswomen, he
gradually became the courageous fanatic that the
tombs and monimients of Egypt show him to
have been. His physical constitution and the
circumstances of his surroundings made him
what he was. In recent years he has been de-
scribed by such names as " great idealist/' " great
reformer," the " world's first revolutionist," the
" first individual in human history," etc. But, in
view of the known facts of history, and Dr. Elliot
Smith's remarks quoted above on the distortion
of the skull of Amenhetep IV, we are fully justified
in wondering with Dr. Hall if the king " was not
really half insane."^ None but a man half insane
^ Ancient History of the Near East, p. 298.
78
TUTANKHAMEN
would have been so blind to facts as to attempt
to overthrow Amen and his worship, round which
the whole of the social life of the country centred. He
Aten, the great god, lord of heaven, from whom proceeds " life " T ir "r J
beneath is Amenhetep IV who is here represented conventionally as a Pharaoh.
suffered from religious madness at least, and spiritual
arrogance and self- sufficiency made him oblivious to
everything except his own feelings and emotions.
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMEN HETEP IV 79
Once having made up his mind that Amen
and all the other " gods " of Egypt must be
swept away, Amenhetep IV determined to under-
take this work without delay. After years of
thought he had come to the conclusion that only
the solar gods, Tem, Ra and Horus of the Two
Horizons were worthy of veneration, and that
some form of their worship must take the place
of that of Amen. The form of the Sun-god which
he chose for worship was Aten, i.e., the solar
Disk, which was the abode of Tem and later of Ra
of Heliopolis. But to him the Disk was not only
the abode of the Sun-god, it was the god himself,
who, by means of the heat and light which
emanated from his own body, gave life to every-
thing on the earth. To Aten Amenhetep ascribed
the attributes of the old gods, Tem, Ra, Horus,
Ptah, and even of Amen, and he proclaimed that
/\ten was " One " and " Alone." But this had also
been proclaimed by all the priesthoods of the old
gods, Tem, Khepera, Khnem, Ra, and, later, of
Amen. The worshippers of every great god in
Egypt had from time immemorial declared that
their god was "One." " Oneness " was an attribute,
it would seem, of everything that was worshipped
in Egypt, just as it is in some parts of India.
It is inconceivable that Amenhetep IV knew of
the existence of other suns besides the sun he
saw, and it was obvious that Aten, the solar disk,
was one alone, and without counterpart or equal.
Some light is thrown upon Amenhetep's views
as to the nature of his god by the title which he
gave him. This title is written within two car-
touches and reads : —
" The Living Horus of the two horizons,
exalted in the Eastern Horizon in his
name of Shu-who-is-in-the-Disk."
8o TUTANKHAMEN
It is followed by the words, " ever-living,
eternal, great living Disk, he who is in the Set
Festival,^ lord of the Circle (i.e., everything which
the Disk shines on in every direction), lord of
the Disk, lord of heaven, lord of the earth."
Amenhetep IV worshipped Horus of the two
horizons as the " Shu who was in the disk." If
we are to regard " Shu " as an ordinary noun,
we must translate it by " heat," or " heat and
light," for the word has these meanings. In
this case Amenhetep worshipped the solar heat,
or the heat and light which were inherent in the
Disk. Now, we know from the Pyramid Texts
that Tem or Tem-Ra created a god and a goddess
from the emanations or substance of his own
body, and that they were called " Shu " and
" Tefnut," the former being the heat radiated
from the body of the god, and the latter the mois-
ture. Shu and Tefnut created Geb (the earth)
and Nut (the sky), and they in turn produced
Osiris, the god of the river Nile, Set, the god of
natural decay and death, and their shadowy
counterparts, Isis and Nephthys. But, if we
regard " Shu " as a proper name in the title of
Amenhetep's god, we get the same result, and can
only assiune that the king deified the heat of the
sun and worshipped it as the one, eternal, creative,
fructifying and life-sustaining force. The old
Heliopolitan tradition made Tem or Tem-R5, or
Khepera, the creator of Aten the Disk, but this
view Amenhetep IV rejected, and he asserted
that the Disk was self-created and self-subsistent.
The common symbol of the solar gods was a
1 The object of this festival seems to have been to prolong
the life of the king, who dressed himself as Osiris, and assumed
the attributes of Osiris, and by means of the rites and cere-
monies performed became absorbed into the god. In thit
way the king renewed his life and divinity.
To face p. 80.
Plate VIII,
65 [13366]
Portion of a head of a portrait figure of Amenhetep IV.
British Museum, No. 13366.
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV 8i
disk encircled by a serpent, but when Amenhetep
adopted the disk as the symbol of his god, he
abolished the serpent and treated the disk in a
new and original fashion. From the disk, the
circumference of which is sometimes hung round
with symbols of " life," •?• , he made a series
of rays to descend, and at the end of each ray was
The frog-headed goddess Heqit, one of the Eight
Members of the Ogdoad of Thoth.
a hand, as if the ray was an arm, bestowing
" life " on the earth. This symbol never became
popular in the country, and the nation as a whole
preferred to believe that the Sun-god travelled
across the sky in two boats, the Sektet and the
Atet. The form of the old Heliopolitan cult of the
Sun-god that was evolved by Amenhetep could
never have appealed to the Egyptians, for it was
F
82 TUTANKHAMEN
too philosophical in character and was probably
based upon esoteric doctrines that were of foreign
origin. Her and Suti, the two great overseers of
the temples of Amen at Thebes, were content to
follow the example of their king Amenhetep III,
and bow the knee to Aten and, like other officials,
to sing a hymn in his praise. But they knew the
tolerant character of their master's religious views,
and that outwardly at least he was a loyal follower
of Amen, whose blood, according to the dogma
of his priests, flowed in the king's veins. To
Amenhetep III a god more or less made no
difference, and he considered it quite natural that
every priesthood should extol and magnify the
power of its god. He was content to be a counter-
part of Amen, and to receive the official worship
due to him as such. But with his son it was
different. The heat of Aten gave him life and
maintained it in him, and whilst that was in him
Aten was in him. The life of Aten was his life,
and his life was Aten's life, and therefore he was
Aten ; his spiritual arrogance made him believe
that he was an incarnation of Aten, i.e., that he
was God — not a mere " god " or one of the " gods "
of Egypt — and that his acts were divine. He felt
therefore that he had no need to go to the temple
of Amen to receive the daily supply of the " fluid
of life," which not only maintained the physical
powers of kings, but gave them wisdom and under-
standing to rule their country. Still less would
he allow the high priest of Amen to act as his
vicar. Finally he determined that Amen and the
gods must be done away and all the dogmas and
doctrines of their priesthoods abolished, and
that Aten must be proclaimed the One, self-
created, self-subsisting, self-existing god, whose
son and deputy he was.
Without, apparently, considering the probable
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV 83
effect of his decision when translated into action,
he began to build the temple of Gem-Aten in
Per-Aten, '^^()'^ ^^"S"' ^* Thebes.
In it was a chamber or shrine, in which the ben,
or benben, i.e., the " Sun-stone," was placed, and
in doing this he followed the example of the priests
of Heliopolis. The site he selected for this temple
was a piece of ground about half way between
the Temple of Karnak and the Temple of Luxor.
He decided that this temple should be the centre
of the worship of Aten, which should henceforward
be the one religion of his country. The effect
of the king's action on the priests of Amen and
the people of Thebes can be easily imagined when
we remember that with the downfall of Amen
their means of livelihood disappeared. But Amen-
hetep was the king, the blood of the Sun-god
was in his veins, and Pharaoh was the master and
owner of all Egypt, and of every person and thing
in it. Priests and people were alike unable to
resist his will, and, though they cursed Aten and
his fanatical devotee, they could not prevent the
confiscation of the revenues of Amen and the
abolition of his services. Not content with this,
Amenhetep caused the name of Amen to be
obliterated on the monuments, and in some cases
even his father's name, and the word for " gods "
jl |-jj I was frequently cut out. Not only was
there to be no Amen, but there were to be no
gods ; Aten was the only god that was to be
worshipped.
The result of the promulgation of this decree
can be easily imagined. Thebes became filled with
the murmurings of all classes of the followers of
Amen, and when the temple of Aten was finished,
and the worship of the new god was inaugurated,
F 2
84 TUTANKHAMEN
these murmurings were changed to threats and
curses, and disputes between the Amenites and
Atenites filled the city. What exactly happened
is not known and never will be known, but the
result of the confusion and uproar was that
Amenhetep IV found residence in Thebes im-
possible, and he determined to leave it, and to
remove the Court elsewhere. Whether he was
driven to take this step through fear for the
personal safety of himself and his family, or
whether he wished still further to insult and
injure Amen and his priesthood, cannot be said,
but the reason that induced him to abandon his
capital city and to destroy its importance as
such must have been very strong and urgent.
Having decided to leave Thebes he sought for a
site for his new capital, which he intended to
make a City of God, and found it in the north,
at a place which is about i6o miles to the south
of Cairo and 50 miles to the north of Asyut.
At this point the hills on the east bank of the
Nile enclose a sort of plain which is covered with
fine yellow sand. The soil was virgin, and had
never been defiled with temples or other buildings
connected with the gods of Egypt whom Amen-
hetep IV hated, and the plain itself was eminently
suitable for the site of a town, for its surface was
unbroken by hills or reefs of limestone or sand-
stone. This plain is nearly three miles from the
Nile in its widest part and is about five miles
in length. The plain on the other side of the river,
which extended from the Nile to the western
hills, was very much larger than that on the
east bank, and was also included by the king in
the area of his new capital. He set up large
stelae on the borders of it to mark the limits of
the territory of Aten, and had inscriptions cut
upon them stating this fact.
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENFIETEP IV 85
We have already seen that Amenhetep IV had,
whenever possible, caused the name of Amen
to be chiselled out from stelae, statues, and other
monuments, and even from his father's cartouches,
whilst at the same time the name of Amen formed
•part of his name as the son of Ra. It was easy
to remedy this inconsistency, and he did so
by changing his name from Amenhetep, which
means " Amen is content," to Aakhunaten,
( ( ~^ '^^ ^ J, a name which by analogy
should mean something like " At en is content."
This meaning has already been suggested by more
than one Egyptologist, but there is still a good
deal to be said for keeping the old translation,
" Spirit of Aten." I transcribe the new name of
Amenhetep IV, Aakhunaten, not with any wish
to add another to the many transliterations that
have been proposed for it, but because it repre-
sents with considerable accuracy the hieroglyphs.
The Pyramid Texts show that the phonetic value
of ^ was (] ^® or (j^^^- The first sign
represents a short vowel, a, e or t; the second
«, like the Hebrew aleph, the third kh, and the
fourth u : therefore the phonetic value of "^
in Pyramid times was dakh, or dakhu, but in later
times the a (1 was probably dropped, and then
the value of "^ would be akh, as Birch read it
sixty years ago. If this were so, the name will
be correctly transliterated by " Akhenaten." How
the name was pronounced we do not know and
never shall know, but there is no good ground for
thinking that " Ikhnaton " or " Ikh-en-aton "
represents the correct pronunciation. In passing
86
TUTANKHAMEN
we may note that Aten has nothing to do with
the Semitic 'adhSn, " lord."
At this time Amenhetep IV adopted two titles
in connection with his new name, i.e., " Ankh-
em-Ma5t " and " Aa-em-ah5-f," the former mean-
ing, " Living in Truth " and the latter " great
in his life period." What is meant exactly by
Thoth, lord of the writing of the
god, ?.«., hieroglyphs. He was the
mind of the primeval God, and
translated into speech the will ot
this God.
Maat, the goddess of truth,
reality, law, both physical and
spiritual, order, rectitude, upright-
ness, integrity, etc.
*' living in truth " is not clear. Madf means
what is straight, true, real, law, both physical
and moral, the truth, reality, etc. He can hardly
have meant " living in or by the law," for he was
a law to himself, but he may have meant that in
Atenism he had found the truth or the " real "
thing, and that all else in religion was a phantom.
CULTOF ATEN UNDER AMEN HETEP IV 87
a sham. Aten lived in madt, or in truth and reality,
and the king, having the essence of Aten in him,
did the same. The exact meaning which Amen-
hetep IV attached to the other title, " great in
his life-period," is also not clear. He, as was
every Pharaoh who preceded him, was a " son
of Ra," but he did not claim, as they did, to
" live like Ra for ever," and only asserted that
his life-period was great. Amenhetep IV called
his new capital Aakhutaten, c^ n -v^, i.e.,
" the Horizon of Aten," and he and his
followers regarded it as the one place in which
Aten was to be found. It was to them the visible
symbol of the splendour and benevolence and
love of the god, the sight of it rejoiced the hearts
of all beholders, and its loveliness, they declared,
was beyond compare. It was to them what
Babylon was to the Babylonians, Jerusalem to
the Hebrews, and Makkah to the Arabs ; to live
there and to behold the king, who was Aten's
own son, bathed, in the many-handed, life-giving
rays of Aten, was to enjoy a foretaste of heaven,
though none of the writers of the hymns to Aten
deign to tell us what the heaven to which they
refer so glibly was like. Having taken up his
abode in this city, Amenhetep set to work to
organize the cult of Aten, and to promulgate his
doctrine, which, like all writers of moral and
religious aphorisms, he called his " Teaching,"
, Sbait.
*J
Having appointed himself High Priest, he,
curiously enough, adopted the old title of the
High Priest of Hehopolis and called himself
"Ur-maa," ^!>'^. ie., the "Great Seer."
But he did not at the same time institute the old
88
TUTANKHAMEN
Ls^^s V ^p^gpi.j<aerff ^^?Kgi(g« A m
i ^"^r*':! ipr^i'-mt^.^n^y^u-iPi's^
Amenhetep IV, accompanied by his queen and family, making offerings to Aten.
CULTOF ATEN UNDER AMEN HETEP IV 89
semi-magical rites and ceremonies which the
holders of the title in Heliopolis performed. He
did not hold the office very long, but transferred
it to Merira, one of his loyal followers.
When still a mere boy, probably before he
ascended the throne and rejected his name of
Amenhetep, he seems to have dreamed of building
temples to Aten, and so when he took up his
residence in his new city he at once set to work
to build a sanctuary for that god. Among his
devoted followers was one Bek, an architect and
master builder, who claims to have been a pupil
of the king, and who was undoubtedly a man of
great skill and taste. Him the king sent to Sun, the
Syene of the Greek writers, to obtain stone for
the temple of Aten, and there is reason to think
that, when the building was finished, its walls
were most beautifully decorated with sculptures
and pictures painted in bright colours. A second
temple to Aten was built for the Queen-mother
Ti, and a third for the princess Baktenaten, one
of her daughters ; and we should expect that one
or more temples were built in the western half
of the city across the Nile. With the revenues
filched from Amen Aakhunaten built several
temples to Aten in the course of his reign. Thus he
founded Per-gem-Aten in Nubia at a place in the
Third Cataract ; Gem-pa-Aten em Per-Aten at
Thebes ; Aakhutaten in Southern Anu (Her-
monthis) ; the House of Aten ^ ^^ [1 ^ ^^
(j ^ in Memphis; and Res - Ra - em - Anu,
il 2=z i § * ^^ ^^^ ^^ noticed that no men-
tion is made of Aten in the name of this last
temple of Aten. He also built a temple to Aten
in Syria, which is mentioned on one of the Tall
90
TUTANKHAMEN
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV 91
al-*Amimah tablets in the British Museum under
the form Hi-na-tu-na -^TT -4 -4 "^^T -4 <M ^
As the buildings increased in Aakhutaten and
the cult of Aten developed, the king's love for his
new city grew, and he devoted all his time to the
worship of his god. Surrounded by his wife and
family and their friends, and his obedient officials,
who seem to have been handsomely rewarded for
Amenhetep IV and his Queen Nefertiti bestowing gold collars upon
favourite courtiers. Between the king and queen is the princess Ankh-s-en-pa-
Aten, who married Tutankhamen, and behind the queen are two of her
other daughters.
their devotion, the king had neither wish nor
thought for the welfare of his kingdom, which
he allowed to manage itself. His religion and his
domestic happiness filled his life, and the inclina-
tions and wishes of the ladies of his court had more
weight with him than the counsels and advice of
his ablest officials. We know nothing of the forms
and ceremonies of the Aten worship, but hymns
1 Babylonian Room, Table-Case F. No. 72 (29855).
92 TUTANKHAMEN
and songs and choruses must have filled the temple
daily. And the stele of Tutankhamen proves
(see p. 9) that a considerable number of dancing-,
men and acrobats were maintained by the king
in connection with the service of Aten. Not only
was the king no warrior, he was not even a
lover of the chase. As he had no son to train in
manly sports and to teach the arts of government
and war, for his offspring consisted of seven
daughters,^ his officers must have wondered how
long the state in which they were then living would
last. The life in the City of Aten was no doubt
pleasant enough for the Court and the official
classes, for the king was generous to the officers
of his government in the City, and, like the
Pharaohs of old, he gave them when they died
tombs in the hills in which to be buried. The names
of many of these officers are well known, e.g.,
Merira I, Merira II, Pa-nehsi (the Negro), Hui,
Aahmes, Penthu, Mahu, Api, Rames, Suti, Nefer-
kheperu-her-sekheper, Parennefer, Tutu, Ai, Mai,
Ani, etc.^
^ The names of the seven daughters of Aakhunaten were : —
1. Aten-merit, \\ '^ ''^r. (1(1 Ci J , 2. Maket-Aten, f^ ^
()"f»|, 3. Ankh-s-en-pa-Aten, f"^^ ^(l"f-|.
4. Nefer-neferu-Aten the little, (] '^ \ III ^"^
^^O, 5. Nefer-nefeni-Ra, Ol in J, 6. Setep-en-
Ra, O "^ ^, 7. Bakt-Aten, (j '^ ^^5"
The first daughter married her fathec^^cctregent, Sakara.
The second died young and was""t5uried in a~^tomB in the
eastern hills. The third married Tutankhaten (Amen).
2 The tombs of all these have been admirably published
by Davies, The Rock Tombs of El-Amarna. Six vols. London,
1903-08.
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV
93
nm(m^-
>|l(itli®jS
■r-
94 TUTANKHAMEN
The tombs of these men are different from all
others of the same class in Egypt. The walls are
decorated with pictures representing (i) the
worship of Aten by the king and his mother ;
(2) the bestowal of gifts on officials by the king ;
(3) the houses, gardens and estates of the nobles ;
(4) domestic life, etc. The hierogl5^hic texts on
the walls of the tombs contain the names of those
buried in them, the names of the ofi&ces which
they held under the king, and fulsome adulation
of the king, and of his goodness, generosity and
knowledge. Then there are prayers for funerary
offerings, and also Hymns to Aten. The long
Hymn in the tomb of Ai is not by the king, as
was commonly supposed ; it is the best of all the
texts of the kind in these tombs, and many
extracts from it are found in the tombs of his
fellow ofi&cials. A shorter Hymn occurs in some
of the tombs, and of this it is probable that
Aakhunaten was the author. We look in vain for
the figures of the old gods of Egypt, Ra, Horus,
Ptah, Osiris, Isis, Anubis, and the cycles of the
gods of the dead and of the Tuat (Underworld),
and not a single ancient text, whether hymn,
prayer, spell, incantation, litany, from the Book
of the Dead in any of its Recensions is to be found
there. To the Atenites the tomb was a mere
hiding place for the dead body, not a model of
the Tuat, as their ancestors thought. Their
royal leader rejected all the old funerary Liturgies
like the " Book of Opening the Mouth," and the
" Liturgy of funerary offerings," and he treated
with silent contempt such works as the " Book
of the Two Ways," the "Book of the Dweller
in the Tuat," and the " Book of Gates." Thus
it would appear that he rejected en bloc all funerary
rites and ceremonies, and disapproved of all services
of commemoration of the dead, which were so
CULTOF ATEN UNDER AMEN HETEP IV 95
dear to the hearts of all Egyptians. The absence
of figures of Osiris in the tombs of his officials
and all mention of this god in the inscriptions
found in them suggests that he disbelieved in the
Last Judgment, and in the dogma of rewards for
the righteous and punishments for evil doers.
If this were so, the Field of Reeds, the Field of
the Grasshoppers, the Field of Offerings in the
QEBHSINU-F, I TUAMDTEF, SOD I HEPI, SOn of
son of Osiris. | of Seker. I Osiris.
MestA.
The four grandsons of Horus the Aged. They were the gods of the four
cardinal points, and later, as the sons of Osiris, protected the viscera of the dead.
Elysian Fields, and the Block of Slaughter with
the headsman Shesrnu, the five pits of the Tuat,
and the burning of the wicked were all ridiculous
fictions to him. Perhaps they were, but they
were ineradicably fixed in the minds of his subjects,
and he gave them nothing to put in the place of
these fictions. The cult of Aten did not satisfy
them, as history shows, for right or wrong, the
96 TUTANKHAMEN
Egyptian, being of African origin, never understood
or cared for philosophical abstractions. Another
question arises : did the Atenites mummify their
dead ? It is clear from the existence of the
tombs in the hills about Aakhutaten that important
of&cials were buried ; but what became of the
bodies of the working class folk and the poor ?
Were they thrown to the jackals " in the bush " ?
All this suggests that the Atenites adored and
enjoyed the heat and light which their god poured
upon them, and that they sang and danced and
praised his beneficence, and lived wholly in the
present. And they worshipped the triad of life,
beauty and colour. They abolished the con-
ventionality and rigidity in Egyptian painting
and sculptures and introduced new colours into
their designs and crafts, and, freed from the
control of the priesthoods, artists and workmen
produced extraordinarily beautiful results. The
love of art went hand in hand with their religion
and was an integral part of it. We may trace its
influence in the funerary objects, even of those
who believed in Osiris and were buried with the
ancient rites and ceremonies especially in figiures,
vases, etc., made of pottery. Perhaps the brightly
coloured vignettes, which are found in the great
rolls of the Book of the Dead that were produced
at this period, were painted by artists who copied
the work of Atenite masters.
Now whilst Aakhunaten was organizing and
developing the cult of Aten, and he and his Court
and followers were passing their days and years
in worshipping their god and in beautifying their
houses, what was happening to the rest of Egypt ?
Tutankhamen tells us that the revenues of the
gods were diverted to the service of Aten, that the
figures of the gods had disappeared from their
thrones, that the temples were deserted, and that
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV 97
the Egyptians generally were living in a state
of social chaos. For the first twelve years or
so of Aakhunaten's reign the tribute of the Nubians
was paid, for the Viceroy of Nubia had at hand
means for making the tribes bring gold, wood,
slaves, etc., to him. In the north of Egypt General
Amenhctep IV seated on his portable lion-throne beneath the rays of Aten ;
he holds in his hands the old Pharaonic symbols of sovereignty T and
dominion J\-
Heremheb, the Commander-in-Chief, managed to
maintain his lord's authority, but there is no
doubt, as events showed when he became king
of Egypt, that he was not a whoUy sincere
worshipper of Aten, and that his sympathies lay
with the priesthoods of Ptah of Memphis and
98 TUTANKHAMEN
Ra of Heliopolis. The Memphites and the Helio-
pohtans must have resented bitterly the building
of temples to At en in their cities, and there can
be little doubt that that astute soldier soon came
to an understanding with them. Moreover, he
knew better than his king what was happening in
Syria, and how the Khabiru were threatening
Phoenicia from the south, and how the Hittites
were consolidating their position in Northern
Syria, and increasing their power in all directions.
He, and every one in Egypt who was watching the
course of events, must have been convinced that
no power which the king could employ could
stop the spread of the revolt in Western Asia, and
that the rule of the Egyptians there was practically
at an end.
When the king as Amenhetep IV ascended
the throne, all his father's friends in Baby-
lonia, Assyria, Mitanni, the lands of the
Kheta and Cyprus hastened to congratulate
him, and all were anxious to gain and keep the
friendship of the new king of Egypt. Burra-
buriyash, king of Karduniash, hoped that the
new king and he would always exchange presents,
and that the old friendship between his country
and Egypt would be maintained. Ashuruballit
sent him gifts and asked for 20 talents of gold
in return. Tushratta, king of Mitanni, addressed
him as " my son-in-law," sent greetings to Queen
Ti, and spoke with pride of the old friendship
between Mitanni and Egypt. He also wrote to
Queen Ti, and again refers to the old friendship.
But Aakhunaten did not respond in the manner
they expected, and letters sent by them to him
later show that the gifts which he sent were mean
and poor. Clearly he lacked the open-handedness
and generosity of his father Amenhetep UL
As years went on, the governors of the towns and
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV 99
cities that were tributaries of Egypt wrote to the
king protesting their devotion, fideHty and loyalty,
many of them referring to favours received and
asking for new ones. Very soon these protesta-
tions of loyalty were coupled with requests for
The rays of Aten giving " life " >+• to Amenhetep IV whilst he is bestowing
gifts on his favourite courtiers.
Egyptian soldiers to be sent to protect the king's
possessions. Thus one Shuwardata writes : To
the king, my lord, my gods and my Sun. Thus
saith Shuwardata, the slave : Seven times and
seven times did I fall down at the feet of the king
G 2
100 TUTANKHAMEN
my lord, both upon my belly and upon my back.
Let the king, my lord, know that I am alone, and
let the king, my lord, send troops in great multi-
tudes, let the king, my lord, know this.^
The people of Tunip, who were vassals of
Thothmes III, wrote and told the king that
Aziru had plundered an Egyptian caravan, and
that if help were not sent Tunip would fall as Ni
had already done. Rib- Adda of Byblos writes :
We have no food to eat and my fields yield no
harvest because I cannot sow com. All my
villages are in the hands of the Khabiru. I am
shut up like a bird in a cage, and there is none to
dehver me. I have written to the king, but no
one heeds. Why wilt thou not attend to the
affairs of thy country ? That " dog," Abd-
Ashratum, dnd the Khabiri have taken Shigata
and Ambi and Simyra. Send soldiers and an
able officer. 1 beseech the king not to neglect
this matter. Wliy is there no answer to my
letters ? Send chariots and I will try to hold
out, else in two months' time Abd-Ashratum
will be master of the whole country. Gebal
(Byblos) will fall, and all the country as far as
^ All these letters and reports are written in cuneiform
upon clay tablets, of which over three hundred were foimd
by a native woman at Tall al-'Amirnah in 1887-8 Summaries
of the contents of those in the British Museum were published
by Bezold and Budge in Tell el-AmarnaTablets, London, 1892,
and by Bezold in Oriental Diplomacy , London, 1893. The texts
of all the letters in London, Berlin, and Cairo were published,
together with a German translation of them, by Winckler ;
another German translation was published by Knudtzon.
The texts, with translations by Thureau-Dangin, of the six
letters acquired by the Louvre in 1918, are published in
Revue d' Assy riologie, Vol. XIX, Paris, 1921. Three of the
letters are from Palestinian governors and two from S5nnan
chiefs ; the third is by the King of Egypt and is addressed
to Intaruda, governor of Aksaph.
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV loi
Egypt will be in the hands of the Khabiri. We
have n® grain ; send grain. I have sent my
possessions to Tyre, and also my sister's daughters
for safety. I have sent my own son' to thee,
hearken to him. Do as thou wilt with me, but do
not forsake thy city Gebal. In former times when
Egypt neglected our city we paid no tribute ;
do not thou neglect it. I have sold my sons and
daughters for food and have nothing left. Thou
sayest, " Defend thyself," but how can I do it ?
When I sent my son to the^ he was kept three
months waiting for an audieilce. ' Though my
kinsmen urge me to join the rebels, I will not
do it.
Abi-Milki of Tyre writes : To the king, my
lord, my gods, my Sun. Thus saith Abi-Milki,
thy slave. Seven times and seven times do I fall
down at the feet of the king my lord. I am the
dust under the sandals of the king my lord. My
lord is the sun that riseth over the earth day by
day, . according to the bidding of the Sun, his
gracious Father. It is he in whose moist breath
I live, and at whose setting I make my moan. He
maketh all the lands to dwell in peace by the
might of his hand ; he thundereth in the heavens
like the Storm-god, so that the whole earth
trembleth at his thunder. . . . Behold, now, •
I said to the Sun, the Father of the king my Lord,
When shall I see the face of the king my Lord ?
And now behold also I am guarding Tyre, the
great city, for the king my lord until the king's
mighty hand shall come forth unto me to give me
water to drink and wood to warm myself withal.
Moreover, Zimrida, the king of Sidon, sendeth
word day by day unto the traitor Aziru, the son
of Abd-Ashratum, concerning all that he hath
heard from Egypt. Now behold, I have written
unto my lord, for it is well that he should know this.
102 TUTANKHAMEN
In a letter from Lapaya the writer says : If
the king were to write to me for my wife I would
not refuse to send her, and if he were to order
me to stab myself with a bronzed dagger I would
certainly do so. Among the writers of the Letters
is a lady who reports the raiding of Ajalon and
Sarha by the Khabiri. All the letters tell the
same story of successful revolt on the part of the
subjects of Egypt and the capture and plundering
and burning of towns and villages by the Khabiri,
and the robbery of caravans on all the trade
routes. And whilst all this was going on the
king of Eg5^t remained unmoved and only occupied
himself with the cult of his god ! The general
testimony of the Tall al-'Amarnah Letters proves
that he took no trouble to maintain the friendly
relations that had existed between the kings of
Babylonia and Mitanni and his father. He seems
to have been glad enough to receive embassies
and gifts from Mesopotamia, and to welcome
flattering letters full of expressions of loyalty
and devotion to himself, but the gifts which he
sent back did not satisfy his correspondents. He
sent little or no gold to be used in decorating
temples in Mesopotamia and for making figures
of gods, and some of the letters seem to afford
instances of double-dealing on the part of the
king of Egypt. At all events, he waged no wars
in Mesopotamia, and when one city after another
failed to send tribute he made no attempt to force
them to do so. It is uncertain how much he
' really knew of what was happening in Western
Asia, but when Tushratta and others sent him
dispatches demanding compensation for attacks
/ made upon their caravans, when passing through
his territory, he must have realized that the power
/ ^iif Egypt in that country had greatly weakened.
/ As the years went on he must have known that
i i- —
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV 103
the Egyptians hated his god and loathed his rule, and
such knowledge must have, more or less, affected
the health of a man of his physique and character.
During the earlier years of his reign painters
and sculptors gave him the conventional form
of an Egyptian king, but later he is represented
in an entirely different manner. He had naturally
a long nose and chin and thick, protruding lips,
and he was somewhat round-shouldered, and
had a long slim body, and he must have had
some deformity of knees and thighs. On the
bas-reliefs and in the paintings all these physical
characteristics are exaggerated, and the figures of
the king are undignified caricatures.^ But these
must have been made with the king's knowledge
and approval, and must be faithful representations
of him as he appeared to those who made them.
In other words, they are examples of the realism
in art (which he so strongly inculcated in the
sculptors and artists who claimed to be his pupils)
applied to himself. History is silent as to the
last years of his reign, but the facts now known
suggest that, overwhelmed by troubles at home
and abroad, and knowing that he had no son to
succeed him, and that he had failed to make the
cult of Aten the national religion, his proud and
ardent spirit collapsed, and with it his health, and
that he became a man of sorrow. Feeling his
end to be near, he appointed as co-regent Sakara
tcheser-kheperu,^ who had married his eldest
1 Some interesting remarks by Dr. H. Asselbergs on the old
and new style of bas-relief work in the reign of Amenhetep IV,
with a photographic reproduction of a block published by Prisse
in his Monuments, plate lo, No. i, will be found in Aegyptische
Zeitschrift, Band 58 (1923), p. 36 ff.
2 His full titles are
MCSID^SKSIT]
104 TUTANKHAMEN
daughter Merit-Aten, and died probably soon after-
wards. He was buried in a rock-hewn tomb,
which he had prepared in the hills five miles
away on the eastern bank of the Nile instead of
in the western hills, where all the kings of the
XVIIIth dynasty were buried. Even in the
matter of the position of his tomb he would not
follow the custom of the country. This tomb
was found in 1887-8 by native diggers, who
cut out the cartouches of the king and sold them
to travellers.
Under the section dealing with Amenhetep III
reference has been made to the series of large
steatite scarabs on which this king commemorated
in writing noteworthy events in his life. Up to
the present nothing has been found at Tall al-
'Amarnah or in Egypt which would lead us to
suppose that his son Amenhetep IV copied his
example, but a very interesting scarab found at
Sadenga in the Egyptian Sudan^ proves that
he did, at least on one occasion. This scarab
is now in the British Museum (No. 51084). On
one side of the body of the scarab is the king's
prenomen ( Olwi,<i- ] and on the other is
his nomen ( !\ ^^_^ IT f 1 • ^^ *^^ base, which
is mutilated at the sides, are seven lines of text
which read : —
fU
ra ni ^1
■ — / I I I j;>'i;
P^ ^3:7 (7) czzn \-^
^ It was first published by Hall, Catalogue of Scarabs,
p. 302.
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV 105
V 0 W /wvwv J{ lA LI J
This inscription shows that the scarab was made
for Amenhetep IV before he adopted his new name
of Aakhunaten. The last three Unes give names
and titles of the king and his queen, and the
first four contain an address or prayer concerning
some god. The breaks at the beginnings and ends
of the lines do not permit a connected translation
to be made, but the general meaning of the inscrip-
tion is as follows : —
" The king of the South and of the North,
Nefer-kheperu-Ra-ua-en-Ra, giver of life, son of
Ra, loving him, Amenhetep, God, Governor of
Thebes, great in the duration of his life, [and]
the great royal wife Nefertiti, living and young,
say : Long live the Beautiful God, the great
one of roarings (thunders ?) . . .in the
great and holy name of . . . Dweller in
the Set Festival like Ta-Thunen, the lord of
. . . the Aten (Disk) in heaven, stablished of
face, gracious (or pleasant) in Anu (On)." This
address or prayer seems to have been made to
some Thunder-god, whose name was great and
holy : _ the ordinary god of the thunder in Egypt
was Aapep, who in this character is called
" Hemhem-ti." The mention of Tathunen is
io6 TUTANKHAMEN
interesting, for he was, of course, one of the " gods "
whom Amenhetep IV at a later period of his Hfe
wished to aboUsh. Can this inscription represent
an attempt to assimilate an indigenous Sudani
Thunder-god with Aten ? The writer of one of
the Tall al-'Amamah Letters quoted above (p. loi)
speaks of the Thundering of Amenhetep IV, and
says that when he thunders all the people quake
with fear. From this it seems that some phase
of Aten was associated in the minds of foreigners
with the Thunder-god, but there is no evidence to
show who that god was.
N The facts known about the life and reign of
Aakhunaten seem to me to prove that from first
to last he was a religious fanatic, intolerant,
arrogant and obstinate, but earnest and sincere
in his seeking after God and in his attempts to
make Aten the national god of Egypt, Modern
writers describe him as a " reformer," but he
reformed nothing. He tried to force the worship
of " Horns of the Two Horizons in his name of
Shu {i.e., Heat) who is in the Aten " upon his
people and failed. When he found that his
subjects refused to accept his personal views
about an old, perhaps the oldest, solar god, whose
cult had been dead for centuries, he abandoned
the capital of his great and warlike ancestors
in disgust, and like a spoilt child, which no doubt
he was, he withdrew to a new city of his own
making. Like all such religious megalomaniacs,
so long as he could satisfy his own peculiar aspira-
tions and gratify his wishes, no matter at what
cost, he was content. Usually the harm which
such men do is limited in character and extent,
but he, being a king, was able to inflict untold
misery on his country during the seventeen years
of his reign. He spent the revenues of his
country on the cult of his god, and in satisfying
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV 107
his craving for beauty in shape and form, and
for ecstatic reHgious emotion. Though lavish
in the rewards in good gold and silver to all
those who ministered to this craving, he was
mean and niggardly when it came to spending
money for the benefit of his country. The
Tall al-*Amarnah Letters make this fact quite
clear. The peoples of Western Asia might think
and say that the King of Egypt had " turned
Fakir," but there was little asceticism in his
life. His boast of " living in reality," or " living
in truth," which suggests that he lived a perfectly
natural and simple life, seeing things as they
really were, on the face of it seems to be ludicrous.
Aakhunaten had much in common with Al-
Hakim, the Fatimid Khalifah of Egypt (a.d.
996-1021)- Each was the son of a wealthy,
pleasure-loving, luxurious father, and each suc-
ceeded to the throne when he was a boy. Each
had a strange face, each was moved to break
with tradition and introduce new ideas, but the
spirit in which each made changes was that of
a mad reformer. Christians and Jews were to
Al-Hakim what the Amenites were to Aakhunaten.
Both king and Khalifah were pious in an intolerant
and arrogant fashion, and each was a builder
of places for worship. Each thought that he
was the incarnation of God, and each usurped
the attributes of the Deity, and prescribed rules
for worship. Each was a patron of the arts, but
there is no evidence that the Pharaoh encouraged
learned men to flock to his Court as did the
Khalifah. Al-Hakim frequently had his enemies
murdered, and in his fits of rage had people
killed wholesale. Though we have no know-
ledge that such atrocities were committed at
Aakhutaten, yet it would be rash to assume
that persons who incurred the king's displeasure
io8 TUTANKHAMEN
in a serious degree were not removed by the
methods that have been well known at Oriental
Courts from time immemorial.
Aakhunaten was succeeded by his co-regent
Sakara, whose reign was probably very short
and unimportant. He was the son-in-law of
the king and a devoted worshipper of Aten,
whose cult he wished to make permanent. Nothing
is known of his acts or whether deposition or
death removed him from the throne. He was
succeeded by Tutankhamen, whose reign has
been already described. The short reign of Ai,
who had married the nurse of Amenhetep IV,
and was Master of the Horse, followed, and he
was succeeded by Her-em-heb, a military officer
who served in the north of Egypt during the
reign of Aakhunaten. The restoration of the
cult of Amen begun by Tutankhamen was finally
confirmed by him, and the triumph of Amen was
complete. The immediate result of this was
the decline and fall of the cult of Aten, and the
city " Horizon of Aten " lost all its importance
and fell into decay. The artisan classes, finding
no work, migrated to Thebes and other places
where they could ply their crafts in the service
of Amen, and many of the Atenites abandoned
their god and transferred their worship to Amen.
It is probable that the temples and houses of the
officials were plundered by the mob, who treated
them in the way that the property of an overthrown
religious faction has always been treated in the East.
The forsaken city soon fell into ruins and was
never rebuilt or again inhabited. A Uberal
estimate for the life of the city is 50 years.
The remains of Aakhutaten are marked to-day
by the ruins and rock-hewn tombs which lie
near the Arab villages of Hagg Kandil and
At-Tall, and are commonly known as " Tall
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV 109
al-' Amarnah." In 1887 this name was in common
use among the Egyptians of Upper Egypt, and
I asked Mustafa Agha, H.B.M/s Vice-Consul
at Luxor, to explain it. He said that the Bani
'Amran Arabs settled at At-Tall (ordinarily pro-
nounced At-Tell, or even At-Till), and that for
many years the village was known as " Tall Bani
'Amran." When most of the Bani 'Amran left
the place and returned to the desert, the village
was called " Tall al-' Amarnah " (pronounced Tellel-
*Am£Lrnah). The site, which is a very large one,
needs careful excavation from one end to the
other, for only here can possibly be found material
for the real history of Amenhetep IV and his
reign. The discoveries already made there prove
this, for over three hundred Letters and Des-
patches written in cuneiform from kings and
governors in Western Asia were found on the site
by a woman in 1887/ and she sold them to
a neighbour for 10 piastres (2s.). As a result of
the woman's discovery Petrie made excavations
at Tall al-' Amarnah and succeeded in finding
several small fragments and chips of lists of signs
and words, etc., and some beautifully painted
pavements.^ The Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft
began to excavate there in 1913, and in the year
following they discovered a number of very
important objects, among which may be specially
mentioned a cuneiform tablet and a marvellously
beautiful head of Queen Nefertiti, which is now
in the Museum at Berlin. This head is the finest
example known of the painted sculpture work
from Tall al-' Amarnah, and should have been
^ This discovery has been attributed to Petrie by Mr.
Garvin in the Observer, February 25, 1923. I have told the
true story of the " find " in my Nile and Tigris, Vol. 1, p. 140 ff.
2 He dug there from November, 1891, to the end of March,
1892. See his Tell el Amarna, London, 1894, 4to.
no TUTANKHAMEN
kept in Egypt and placed in the Egyptian Museum
at Cairo. This oversight on the part of the
officials of the Cairo Museum seems to require
an explanation. Among the cuneiform fragments
discovered by the German excavators at Tall al-
'Amamah in 1913 was one which was inscribed
with a legend describing the expedition of Sargon
of Akkad to Asia Minor. The original text of the
legend of the " King of the Battle " is published
by Schroeder in V order asiatische Schriftdenkmdler ,
xii, pp. 2-4, and it has been translated by Weidner
under the title of Der Zug S argons von Akkad
nach Kleinasien.
In the winter of 1920-21 the Egypt Exploration
Society sent out an expedition to Tall al-'Amamah,
under the direction of Prof. T. E. Peet, to carry
on the work of excavation from the point where
the Germans left it in 1914. During the course
of the work a considerable number of very
interesting objects were found, including a frag-
ment of a cuneiform tablet, inscribed with a
list of signs, and some fine examples of variegated
glass vessels and pottery. The data he collected^
answered a number of questions and settled
some difficulties, and the Society determined to
continue their excavation of the site. In 1922
Mr. Woolley succeeded Prof. Peet as Director of
the Expedition, and continued the work as long
as funds permitted. The discovery made by
Lord Carnarvon and Mr. Howard Carter in
December, 1922, has stirred up public interest
in all that concerns the reigns of Tutankhamen
and his predecessor Amenhetep IV, the notorious
" Heretic King." It is more necessary now than
ever that excavations should be carried on until
' See his preliminary Report in the Journal of Egyptian
Archaology, Vol. VII (1921), p. 169 ff.
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV iii
the ruins at Tall al-'Amarnahhave been thoroughly
cleared and examined. In order to do this the
Egypt Exploration Society must be liberally
supported, and everyone who is interested in the
History and Religion of the ancient Egyptians
should subscribe to this work. Like everything
else, the cost of excavating sites has increased
in recent years, and subscriptions to the Society
have not increased in proportion to the expenses.
The President of the Society is the Right Hon.
General J. Grenfell Maxwell, G.C.B., who is
himself an ardent collector of Egyptian antiquities,
and the Hon. Secretary is Dr. H. R. Hall, Deputy
Keeper of the Department of Egyptian and
Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum.
The excavations and other operations of the
Society are conducted with strict regard to
efficient economy, and all the objects obtained
from the excavations are distributed gratis among
Museums.
Hymns to Aten.
The first Hymn (A) is put into the mouth of
Aakhunaten, and is known as the " Shorter
Hymn to Aten." Several copies of it have been
found in the tombs at Tall al-'Amarnah. Texts
of it have been published by Bouriant, Daressy,
Piehl and others, but the most correct version
is that copied from the tomb of Api and published
by Mr. N. de G. Davies.^ The second Hymn (B)
is found in the tomb of Ai, and is known as the
" Longer Hymn to Aten." The text was first
published by Bouriant in Mission Archdologique,
tom. I, p. 2, but badly, and he revised it in his
Monuments du Culte d'Atonou, I., pi. xvi. A good
^ For the published literature see his Rock Tombs, Vol. IV,
p. 28.
112 TUTANKHAMEN
text with a Latin translation was published by
Breasted in his De Hymnis in Solent sub rege
Amenophide IV conceptis, Berlin, 1894, and
English versions of most of it were given by
him in his History of Egypt, p. 315, and in other
publications. Other versions and extracts have
been published by Griffith, World's Literature,
p. 5225 ; Wiedemann, Religion, pp. 40-42 ; Hall,
Ancient History, p. 306 ; Erman, Religion, p. 64,
etc. The best text yet published is that of
Davies^ and that, with a few trivial alterations,
is reproduced in the following pages. In recent years
this Hymn has been extoUed as a marvellously
beautiful religious composition, and parts of
it have been compared with some of the Hebrew
Psalms. In consequence it has been regarded
as an expression of sublime human aspirations,
and the outcome of a firm belief in a God who
was a counterpart of the Yahweh of the Hebrews
and identical with God Almighty. But if we
examine the Hymn, line by line, and compare
it with the H3mins to Ra, Amen and other gods,
we find that there is hardly an idea in it which
is not borrowed from the older Egyptian religious
books. Aten is called the eternal, almighty,
self-produced, living, or self-subsisting, creator
of heaven and earth and all that is in them,
and " one god alone." His heat and light are
the sources of all life, and only for these and the
material benefits that they confer on man and
beast is Aten praised in these hymns. There is
nothing spiritual in them, nothing to appeal to
man's higher nature. The language in which
they are written is simple and clear, but there is
nothing remarkable about the phraseology, unless
the statements are dogmatic declarations like
1 Ibid., Vol. VI, pi. xxvii.
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV 113
the articles of a creed. A very interesting
characteristic of the hymns to Aten is the writer's
insistence on the beauty and power of light, and
it may be permitted to wonder if this is not due
to Mitannian influence, and the penetration into
Egypt of Aryan ideas concerning Mitra, Varuna,
and Surya or Savitri, the Sun-god. Aten, or
Horus of the Two Horizons, corresponds closely
to Surya, the rising and setting sun, Ra to
Savitri, the sun shining in full strength, " the
golden-eyed, the golden-handed, and golden
tongued." " As the Vivifier and Quickener,
he raises his long arms of gold in the morning,
rouses all beings from their slumber, infuses
energy into them, and buries them in sleep in
the evening."^ Surya, the rising and setting
sun, like Aten, was the great source of light and
heat, and therefore Lord of life itself. He is
the Dyaus Pitar, the " Heaven-Father." Aten,
like Surya, was the " fountain of living Light, "^
with the all-seeing eye, whose beams revealed
his presence, and " gleaming like brilliant flames "^
went to nation after nation. Aten was not only the
light of the sun, which seems to give new life
to man and to all creation, but the giver of light
and all life in general. The bringer of light and
life to-day, he is the same who brought light and
life on the first of days, therefore Aten is eternal.
Light begins the day, so it was the beginning
of creation ; therefore Aten is the creator, neither
made with hands nor begotten, and is the
Governor of the world. The earth was fertilized
by Aten, therefore he is the Father-Mother of all
creatures. His eye saw everything and knew
everything. The hymns to Aten suggest that
1 Wilkins, Hindu Mythology, p. 33.
2 See Martin, Gods of India, p. 35.
2 Monier-Williams, Indian Wisdom, p. 19.
H
114 TUTANKHAMEN
Amenhetep IV and his followers conceived an
image of him in their minds and worshipped
him inwardly. But the abstract conception of
thinking was wholly inconceivable to the average
Egyp±iaQx_who_only__ understood things, in a
concrete form. It was probably some conception
"" of this kind that made the cult of Aten so unpopular
with the Egyptians, and caused its downfall.
Aten, like Varuna, possessed a mysterious presence,
a mysterious power, and a mysterious knowledge.
He made the sun to shine, the winds were his
breath, he made the sea, and caused the rivers
to flow. He was omniscient, and though he lived
remote in the heavens he was everywhere present
on earth. And a passage in the Rig- Veda would
form an admirable description of him.
Light-giving Varuna ! Thy piercing glance
doth scan
In quick succession all this stirring active
world.
And penetrateth, too, the broad ethereal
space.
Measuring our days and nights and spying out
all creatures.^
But Varuna possessed one attribute, which,
so far as we know, was wanting in Aten ; he
^ied-Qut^su3^an4-f»Jdged the-^sinner. The early
Aryan prayed to him, saying, " Be gracious, O
Mighty God, be gracious. I have sinned through
want of power ; be gracious. What great sin is
it, Varuna, for which thou seekest in thy
worshipper and friend ? Tell me, O unassailable
and self-dependent god ; and, freed from sin,
I shall speedily come to thee for adoration."'^
1 Monier-Williams' translation.
3 Rig-Veda. VII, 86, 3-6.
CULT OF ATEN UNDER AMENHETEP IV 115
And Varuna was a constant witness of men's
truth and falsehood. The early Aryan also prayed
to Surya, and addressed to him the Gayatri, a
formula which is the mother of the Vedas and of
the Brahmans. He said to the god, " May we
attain the excellent ' glory of the divine Vivifier :
so may he enlighten or stimulate our under-
standing." The words secured salvation for a
man.^ No consciousness of sin is expressed ^in
^ny- Aten text now known, and the Hymns to
Aten contain no petition for spiritual enlighten-
ment, understanding or wisdom. For what then
did the follower of Aten pray ? An answer to
this question is given in the Teaching of Amen-
emapt, the son of Kanekht, who says : —
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" Make the prayer which is due from thee to the
Aten, when he is rising.
Say, Grant to me, I beseech, strength [and]
health.
He will give thy provision for the life.
And thou shalt be safe from that which would
terrify [thee]."^
1 Martin, The Gods of India, p. 39.
2 Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum, ed. Budge, 2nd
Series, London, 1923, pi. 5.
H 2
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A.-A HYMN TO ATEN BY THE KING.'
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A Hymn of Praise to the living Horus of the
Two Horizons, who rejoiceth in the
HORIZON in his NAME OF " ShU, WHO IS IN THE
Aten " {i.e., Disk), the giver of life for
EVER AND EVER, BY THE KiNG WHO LIVETH
IN TRUTH, THE LORD OF THE TwO LANDS,
Nefer-kheperu-Ra Ua-en-Ra, Son of Ra,
WHO LIVETH IN TrUTH, LoRD OF THE CrOWNS,
Aakhunaten, great in the duration OF
HIS LIFE, GIVER OF LIFE FOR EVER AND EVER.
1 See N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna,
Vol. IV, pi. xxxii, xxxiii. The text is from the Tomb of Api at
Tall al-'Amamah, with an addition from the tomb of Tutu.
A.— HYMN TO ATEN BY THE KING 117
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Thou risest gloriously, O thou Living Aten,
Lord of Eternity ! Thou art sparkling (or coruscat-
ing), beautiful, [and] mighty. Thy love is mighty
and great . . . thy light, of diverse colours,
leadeth captive (or, bewitcheth) all faces. Thy
skin shineth brightly to make all hearts to live.
Thou fillest the Two Lands with thy love, O
thou god, who did[st] build [thyjself. Maker of
every land. Creator of whatsoever there is upon it,
[viz.] men and women, cattle, beasts of every kind,
and trees of every kind that grow on the land.
ii8 TUTANKHAMEN
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They live when thou shinest upon them. Thou
art the mother [and] father of what thou hast
made ; their eyes, when thou risest, turn their
gaze upon thee. Thy rays at dawn hght up the
whole earth. Every heart beateth high at the
sight of thee, [for] thou risest as their Lord.
Thou settest in the western horizon of heaven,
they lie down in the same way as those who are
dead. Their heads are wrapped up in cloth, their
nostrils are blocked, until thy rising taketh place
at dawn in the eastern horizon of heaven. Their
hands then are lifted up in adoration of thy
A/VV>Aft
A.— HYMN TO ATEN BY THE KING 119
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Ka (or person) ; thou vivifiest hearts with thy
beauties (or, beneficent acts), which are hfe.
Thou sendest forth thy beams, [and] every land
is in festival. Singing men, singing women, [and]
chorus men make joyful noises in the Hall of the
House of the Benben Obelisk, [and] in every
temple in [the city of] Aakhut-Aten, the Seat of
Truth, wherewith thy heart is satisfied. Within
it are dedicated offerings of rich food (?).
Thy son is sanctified (or, ceremonially pure) to
perform the things which thou wiliest, O thou
Aten, when he showeth himself in the appointed
processions.
120
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TUTANKHAMEN
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Every creature that thou hast made skippeth
towards thee, thy honoured son [rejoiceth], his
heart is glad, O thou Living At en, who [appearest]
in heaven every day. He hath brought forth his
honoured son, Ua-en-Ra, hke his own form, never
ceasing so to do. The son of Ra supporteth his
beauties (or beneficent acts).
Nefer-kheperu-Ra Ua-en-Ra [saith] : —
I am thy son, satisfying thee, exalting thy
name. Thy strength [and] thy power are estab-
lished in my heart. Thou art the Living Disk,
eternity is thine emanation (or, attribute). Thou
hast made the heavens to be remote so that thou
A.— HYMN TO ATEN BY THE KING 121
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mightest shine therein and gaze upon everything
that thou hast made. Thou thyself art Alone, but
there are millions of [powers of] life in thee to
make them {i.e., thy creatures) live. Breath of
life is it to [their] nostrils to see thy beams. Buds
burst into flower (?), [and] the plants which grow
on the waste lands send up shoots at thy rising ;
they drink themselves drunk before thy face.
All the beasts frisk about on their feet ; all the
feathered fowl rise up from their nests and flap
their wings with joy, and circle round in praise
of the Living Aten. ...
1 The passage in brackets is added from another copy of the
Hymn, viz., that of Tutu.
B.-HYMN TO ATEN^
BY
al, overseer of the horse of
Aakhunaten.
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I. A Hymn of praise of Her-aakhuti, the living
one, exalted in the Eastern Horizon in his
name of Shu who is in the Aten, who
liveth for ever and ever, the living and
great Aten, he who is in the Set-Festival,
the lord of the Circle, the Lord of the
Disk, the Lord of heaven, the Lord of earth,
the lord of the House of the Aten in
Aakhut-Aten, [of] the King of the South
and the North, who liveth in Truth, lord
of the Two Lands (i.e., Egypt), Nefer-
kheperu-Ra Ua-en-Ra, the son of R5,
^ See N. de G. Davies, op. cit., Vol. VI, pi. xxvii.
o Qll
B.— HYMN TO ATEN BY Al 123
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who liveth in Truth, Lord of Crowns,
Aakhun-Aten, great in the period of his
Ufe, [and of] the great royal woman (or
wife) whom he loveth. Lady of the Two
Lands, Nefer - neferu - Aten Nefertiti,
who Uveth in health and youth for ever and
ever.
2. He (i.e., Ai, a Fan-bearer and the Master of
the King's Horse) saith : —
Thy rising [is] beautiful in the horizon
of heaven, O Aten, ordainer of life. Thou
dost shoot up in the horizon of the East,
thou fillest every land with thy beneficence.
Thou art beautiful and great and sparkling,
and exalted above every land. Thy arrows
124 TUTANKHAMEN
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{i.e., rays) envelop (^'.e., penetrate) every-
where all the lands which thou hast made.
3. Thou art as Ra. Thou bringest [them] accord-
ing to their number, thou subduest them for
th}^ beloved son. Thou thyself art afar
off, but thy beams are upon the earth ;
thou art in their faces, they [admire] thy
goings.
Thou settest in the horizon of the west,
the earth is in darkness, in the form of
death. Men lie down in a booth wrapped
up in cloths, one eye cannot see its fellow.
B.— HYMN TO ATEN BY Al 125
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If all their possessions, which are under
their heads, be carried away they perceive
it not.
4. Every lion emergeth from his lair, all the creep-
ing things bite, darkness [is] a warm
retreat (?). The land is in silence. He who
made them hath set in his horizon.
The earth becometh light, thou shoot est
up in the horizon, shining in the Aten in
the day, thou scatterest the darkness.
Thou sendest out thine arrows {i.e., rays).
126 TUTANKHAMEN
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the Two Lands make festival, [men] wake
up, stand upon their feet, it is thou who
raisest them up. [They] wash their mem-
bers, they take [their apparel]
and array themselves therein, their hands are
[stretched out] in praise at thy rising,
throughout the land they do their works.
Beasts and cattle of all kinds settle down
upon the pastures, shrubs and vegetables
flourish, the feathered fowl fly about over
their marshes, their feathers praising thy
Ka (person). All the cattle rise up on
their legs, creatures that fly and insects of
all kinds
B.— HYMN TO ATEN BY Al 127
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v\^"^ * I <z:> /wwsA 3^=r
JI I I I 1 1 (E -WWNA
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/ AA^VWV V\ I I ^
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6. spring into life, when thou risest up on them.
The boats drop down and sail up the river,
likewise every road openeth (or showeth
itself) at thy rising, the fish in the river
swim towards thy face, thy beams are in
the depths of the Great Green i^.e., the
Mediterranean and Red Seas).
Thou makest offspring to take form in
women, creating seed in men. Thou makest
the son to live in the womb of his mother,
making him to be quiet that he crieth not ;
thou art a nurse
128
TUTANKHAMEN
7.
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in the womb, giving breath to vivify that
which he hath made. [When] he droppeth
from the womb ... on the day of his
birth Pie] openeth his mouth in the
[ordinary] manner, thou providest his
sustenance.
The young bird in the egg speaketh in the
shell, thou givest breath to him inside it
to make him to live. Thou makest for
him his mature form so that he can crack
the shell [being] inside the egg. He cometh
forth from the egg, he chirpeth with all
B.— HYMN TO ATEN BY AI 129
ffr "^P --11- 1^1 - - '
I rvn X I
I o 0 c:i±3 I
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I I I AAMWN A I I I III
/v^/v^A^
his might, when he hath come forth from
it (the egg), he walketh on his two feet.
O how many are the things which thou
hast made !
They are hidden from the face, O thou
One God, Uke whom there is no other. Thou
didst create the earth by thy heart (or
will), thou alone existing, men and women,
cattle, beasts of every kind that are upon
the earth, and that move upon feet (or
legs), all the creatures that are in the sky
and that fly with their wings, [and] the
deserts of Syria and Kesh (Nubia), and the
Land of Egypt.
130 TUTANKHAMEN
•^ ^ <^ j)
o n <2>-
ffi ^
I I I III
O
I /W\AAA
^1 TT "=■ A^TfT s^"^
W/V\AA
I I I
(VVW>A
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^ ^1 ^ ,■= ^ ^Jg
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Thou settest every person in his place.
Thou provides! their daily food, every man
having the portion allotted to him, [thou]
dost compute the duration of his life. Their
tongues are different in speech, their charac-
teristics (or forms), and
likewise their skins [in colour], giving dis-
tinguishing marks to the dwellers in foreign
lands.
Thou makest Hapi (the Nile) in the
Tuat (Underworld), thou bringest it when
thou wishest to make mortals to live,
inasmuch as thou hast made them for thy-
self, their Lord who dost support them to
I I I [/>^ 1 o
I I I I I I
B.— HYMN TO ATEN BY Al 131
rWQ V f\/\yi /^ O <2>- Q /vww\ — M —
Oil III "^^^ 0 I 5^:* ^:z^ T ® MM
A_fl ^"^ § " ^^ "^^^^ '^raflfl ^ '^'^^ —
^^ ^z:^ Xa 11 ww?^ F==q .^^il>u^ I I I
©1 1 1 1 I AA^wsA 0 _zr I I
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the uttermost, O thou Lord of every land,
thou shinest upon them, O Aten of the
day, thou great one of majesty.
Thou makest the hfe of all remote lands.
Thou settest a Nile in heaven, which cometh
down to them.
10. It maketh a flood on the mountains like the
Great Green Sea, it maketh to be watered
their fields in their villages. How bene-
ficent are thy plans, O Lord of Eternity 1
A Nile in heaven art thou for the dwellers
in the foreign lands (or deserts), and for
all the beasts of the desert that go upon
I 2
132 TUTANKHAMEN
>fl fr: ^ ^ ^Mli?
AAft/VV\
I
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feet (or legs). Hapi (the Nile) cometh from
the Tuat for the land of Eg3rpt. Thy
beams nourish every field ; thou risest up
[and] they live, they germinate for thee.
Thou makest the Seasons to develop
everything that thou hast made :
II The season of Pert (i.e., Nov. i6-March i6)
so that they may refresh themselves, and
the season Heh (i.e., March i6-Nov. i6) in
order to taste thee.^ Thou hast made the
heaven which is remote that thou mayest
shine therein and look upon everything
1 I.e., for men to feel the heart of Shu who is in the Aten.
B.— HYMN TO ATEN BY Al 133
21 III
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that thou hast made. Thy being is one,
thou shinest (or, shootest up) among thy
creatures as the Living Aten, rising, shining,
departing afar off, returning. Thou hast
made millions of creations (or, evolutions)
from thy one self (viz.) towns and cities,
villages, fields, roads and river. Every eye
(i.e., all men) beholdeth thee confronting
it. Thou art the Aten of the day at its
zenith.
12. At thy departure thine eye . . . thou
didst create their faces so that thou
mightest not see. . . . One thou didst
134
j^^
TUTANKHAMEN
amis
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make . . . Thou art in my heart.
There is no other who knoweth thee except
thy son Nefer-khepeni-Ra Ua-en-Ra. Thou
hast made him wise to understand thy
plans [and] thy power. The earth came
into being by thy hand, even as thou
hast created them (i.e., men). Thou risest,
they Hve ; thou settest, they die. As for
thee, there is duration of hfe in thy mem-
bers, life is in thee. [All] eyes [gaze upon]
thy beauties xmtil thou settest, [when] all
labours are relinquished. Thou settest in
the West, thou risest, making to flourish
. . . for the King. Every man who
/WVA/VV
B.— HYMN TO ATEN BY Al 135
I I I
= (3M2D^t
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OMIIIIIID ^11 ni
[standeth on his] foot, since thou didst
lay the foundation of the earth, thou
hast raised up for thy son who came
forth from thy body, the King of the South
and the North, Living in Truth, Lord of
Crowns, Aakhun-Aten, great in the duration
of his Ufe [and for] the Royal Wife, great
of majesty, Lady of the Two Lands,
Nefer-neferu-Aten Nefertiti, living [and]
young for ever and ever.
HYMNS TO THE SUN-GOD.
[From the Papyrus of Ani, Sheets i8 and 19.]
The following Hymns are good, typical examples
of the songs of praise and thanksgiving which
were addressed to the Smi-god by orthodox
Egyptians under the XVIIIth dynasty.
A Hymn to Ra when he rises on the Horizon
AND WHEN HE SETS IN THE LaND OF LiFE'.
Homage to thee, O Ra, who risest as Tem-
Heraakhuti.
Thou art adored. Thy beauties are before my
eyes, and thy splendour falleth upon my
body.
Thou goest to thy setting in the Seqtet Boat
with fair winds, and thy heart is glad. The
heart of the Matet Boat rejoices.
Thou strides! over the heavens in peace, all thy
foes being cast down.
The stars which never rest {i.e., the planets) hymn
thee, and the stars which never vanish {i.e.,
the circumpolar stars) glorify thee as thou
sinkest to rest in the horizon of Manu.
Thou art beautiful at mom and at eve, O thou
Living Lord, the Unchanging One, my
Lord.
Homage to thee who risest as Ra and settest as
Tem in beauty.
HYMNS TO THE SUN-GOD 137
Thou risest and shinest on the back of thy mother
[the Sky-goddess], O thou who art crowned
king of the gods.
Nut (the Sky-goddess) pays homage to thee, and.
Maat (the goddess of Law and Truth) em-
braces thee at mom and eve.
Joyfully thou stridest over the heavens and theLake
of Testes (a part of heaven) is content thereat.
Thine enemy Sebau is cast down headlong,
his arms and hands are cut off, and thy
dagger has severed the joints of his back-
bone.
Ra has a fair wind, the Seqtet Boat advances
and comes into port.
The gods of the South, the North, the West and
the East praise thee, O thou divine substance,
from whence all forms of life sprang.
Thou speakest — earth is flooded with silence,
O thou Only One, who didst dwell in heaven
before ever the earth and the mountain came
into being.
O Shepherd, O Lord, O Only One, Creator
of what is, thou didst make the tongue
of the Nine Gods. Thou hast made all
that sprang from the waters, and thou
shootest up from them over the land of
the pools of the Lake of Horus.
Let me breathe the air which comes from thy
nostrils and the north wind which is from
thy mother Nut. Glorify my spirit, O Osiris,
make divine my soul.
O Lord of the gods, thou art worshipped at
setting in peace, and art exalted because
of all thy wondrous works,
Shine thou upon my body each day.
\
138 TUTANKHAMEN
A Hymn to Ra when he rises in the East.
Hail, thou Aten, thou lord of rays, who risest
on the horizon day by day ! Shine thou with
thy beams of Ught upon the face of the Osiris
Ani, the truth-speaker, who sings hjmins to
thee at dawn, and adores thee at eventide.
Let his soul appear with thee in heaven.
Let him sail out in the Matet Boat and arrive
in port in the Seqtet Boat, and let him cleave
his way among the stars that never vanish.
Homage to thee, O Her-aakhuti, who art Khepera,
the self-created !
When thou risest and sendest forth thy beams
upon the lands of the South and the North,
thou art beautiful, yea beautiful, and all the
gods rejoice when they see thee, the King
of Heaven.
Nebt-Unnut (a goddess) is on thy head, her
serpents are on thy head, and she takes her
place before thee. Thoth stands in the
bows of thy boat to destroy thy foes.
The denizens of the Tuat (Underworld) come to
meet thee, they bow before thee in homage
at the sight of thy Beautiful Form.
I would come before thee daily to be with thee
and to behold thy Beautiful Aten (Disk). Let
me be neither prevented nor repulsed.
Grant that when I look upon thy beauties my
members may be made young again, even
as are the members of thy favoured ones.
I am one who worshipped thee on earth. Let me
enter the Eternal Land in the Everlasting
Country. O my Lord, I beseech thee to
decree this for me.
HYMNS TO THE SUN-GOD 139
Homage to thee who risest as Ra on thy horizon
and restest upon Maat !
Thou passest over the sky, every face watches
thy course, thou thyself being unseen. Thou
showest thyself at dawn and at eve daily.
The Seqtet Boat of thy Majesty goes forth
mightily, thy beams fall upon every face,
thy variegated lights and colours cannot
be numbered, and cannot be told . . .
One by thyself alone didst thou come into being
from the primeval waters of Nunu (or Nu).
May I go forward as thou dost advance without
pause, and dost in a moment pass over untold
leagues ; and as thou sinkest to rest even
so may I.
Thou art crowned with the majesty of thy
beauties, thou dost fashion thy members
as thou dost advance, and dost produce them
without the pangs of labour in the form of
Ra, and dost rise up into the heights.
Grant that I may come into the everlasting
heaven and the mountain where thy favoured
ones dwell. Let me join myself to those
who are holy and perfect in the divine Under-
world, and let me appear with them to behold
thy beauties at eventide. I lift my hands
to thee in adoration when thou the living One
dost set. Thou art the Eternal Creator
and art adored at thy setting in heaven.
I have given my heart to thee without wavering,
O thou who art the mightiest of the gods . . .
EGYPTIAN MONOTHEISM.
During the last eighty years the gods of Egypt
and the rehgion of the Ancient Egyptians have
been carefully studied by many Egyptologists,
but the difficulties which surround these subjects
have not yet been cleared away. The respon-
sibility for the existence of these difficulties
rests upon the Egyptians themselves, because
they did not write books on their religion or
explanations of what they believed. But a great
many hymns to their gods and legends of their
gods and goddesses have come down to us, and
from these, thanks to the publication of Egyptian
texts during the last thirty years, it is now possible
to arrive at a number of important conclusions
about the Egyptian religion and its general
character. The older Egyptologists debated the
question whether it was monotheistic, polytheistic,
or pantheistic, and the differences in the opinions
which they formed about it will illustrate its
difficulty. Champollion believed it to have been
" a pure monotheism, which manifested itself
externally by a symbolic polytheism."^ Tiele
thought that in the beginning it was polytheistic,
but that it developed in two opposite directions ;
in the one direction gods were multiplied, and
in the other it drew nearer and nearer to mono-
theism.^ Naville treated it as a " religion of
1 L'^gypte, Paris. 1839, p. 245.
2 Geschiedenis van den Godsdienst in de Oudheid, Amsterdam,
1893, p. 25.
EGYPTIAN MONOTHEISM 141
nature, inclining to pantheism."^ Maspero admitted
that the Eg5^tians appHed the epithets, "one
God " and " only God " to several gods, even
when the god was associated with a goddess
and a son, but he adds " ce dieu Un n'etait jamais
DiEU tout court " f the " only god " is the only
god Amen, or the only god Ptah, or the only
god Osiris, that is to say, a being determinate
possessing a personality, name, attributes, apparel,
members, a family, a man infinitely more perfect
than men. He is a likeness of the kings of
this earth, and his power, like that of all kings, is
limited by the power of neighbouring kings.
The conception of his unity is geographical and
political at least as much as it is religious. Ra,
only god of Heliopolis, is not the same as Amen,
only god of Thebes. The Egyptian of Thebes
proclaimed the unity of Amen to the exclusion of
Ra, the Egyptian of Heliopolis proclaimed the
unity of Ra to the exclusion of Amen. Each
one god, conceived of in this manner, is only the
one god of the nome or of the town, and not the
one god of the nation recognized as such through-
out the country.
On the other hand, de Rouge wrote in i860,
"The unity of a supreme and self -existent being,
his eternity, his almightiness, and eternal repro-
duction as God ; the attribution of the creation
of the world and of aU living beings to this
supreme God ; the immortality of the soul,
completed by the dogma of punishments and
rewards ; such is the sublime and persistent
base which, notwithstanding all deviations and
all mythological embellishments, must secure for
the beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians a most
1 La Religion, p. 92.
2 Histoire Ancienne, Paris, 1904, p. 33.
142 TUTANKHAMEN
honourable place among the religions of antiquity."^
And in his work on the Religion and Mythology
of the Ancient Egyptians" Brugsch expressed
his conviction that, from the earliest times, a
nameless, incomprehensible and eternal God was
worshipped by the inhabitants of the Valley of
the Nile. This conviction he based on many
passages in the religious and moral texts of
the Egyptians, in which reference is made to a
self-existent almighty Being who seems to be
none other than the God of modem nations.
From these documents we learn that the Egyptian
theologians believed that at one time, which was
even to them infinitely remote, nothing existed
except a boundless primeval mass of water which
was shrouded in darkness, but which contained
the ultimate sources of everything that now
exists in the universe. In late times this watery
mass, which was called Nunu, Wcis regarded as
the " Father of the Gods." A something in
this water, which formed an essential part of it,
felt the desire to create and, having imagined
in itself the forms of the beings and things that
it intended to create, became operative, and the
first creature produced was the god Tem or
Khepera, who was the personification of the
creative power in the primeval water. This god
sent forth from his body Shu {i.e., Heat) and
Tefnut (Moisture), and these produced Geb (Earth)
and Nut (Sky). Tem or Khepera fashioned the
form of everything in his mind and made known
his desires to create to his heart, which was
personified as Thoth. This god received the
creative impulse and invented in his mind a
1 Etudes sur le Rituel Funeraire (in Rev. Arch., Paris, 1860,
p. 12).
- Religion und Mythologie, Leipzig, 1885, p. 90.
EGYPTIAN MONOTHEISM 143
name for the object that was to be created, and
when he uttered that name the object came into
being. In the texts of the early Dynastic Period
Ptah and Khnemu were associated with the
god of the primeval water, Nunu or Nu, and they
were said to fashion the creatures and things
the names of which were pronounced by Thoth.
Moreover, they associated the goddess Maat with
Thoth, and the part she played at the creation
was very much like that which is attributed to
Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs.
What the earliest pictorial forms of Tem, Ptah
and Khnemu were is not known, but the first and
second appear as men at an early period, and the
third is represented by a special form of ram or
kudu. Ra, who usurped the attributes of Tem,
also appears as a man. But of the original
creative power which existed of and by itself in
the watery mass of Nunu no form is known. The
mind of man was incapable of imagining him, and
the hand of man was incapable of making a figure
that could be considered to be an image or likeness
of him. Under the XVIIIth dynasty an Egyptian
scribe composed a hymn to Hep (or Hap or Hapi),
the Nile-god, in which he traced his origin back
to the great watery mass of Nunu. He says of
him, " He cannot be sculptured in stone in figures
whereon is placed the White Crown. He cannot
be seen. Service cannot be rendered to him.
Gifts cannot be presented to him. He is not to
be approached in the sanctuaries. Where he is
is not known. He is not to be found in inscribed
shrines. No habitation can contain him. There
is none who acteth as guide to his heart." ^ The
1 See Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum,
Second Series, London, 1923, pi. LXXIII. (Introduction,
p. 31.)
144 TUTANKHAMEN
Nile-god is thus described only because he was the
direct emanation from the great unseen, imknown
and incomprehensible creative power, which had
existed for ever and was the source of all created
things. Statues of the Nile-god were made under
the last dynasties of the New Empire, but the
hymn quoted above was written many centuries
earlier.
The religious literature of Ancient Egypt of all
periods is abundant, yet in no class of it do we
find any prayer or petition addressed to this
unseen and imknown god. But in the Collec-
tions of Moral Aphorisms, or " Teachings,"
composed by ancient sages, we find several
allusions to a divine power to which no personal
name is given. The word used to indicate
this power is Neter^ ^ T or "1, or |Jj,
AAAAAA Q
or NETHER ^=* |- Many have tried to assign
a meaning to this word and to find its etymology,
but the original meaning of it is at present
unknown. The contexts of the passages in
which it occurs suggest that it means something
like " eternal God." The same word is often
used to describe an object, animate or inanimate,
which possesses some unusually remarkable power
or quality, and in the plural neteru, 1 1 , | fS | >
K^^' m^'' ^* represents the beings
and things to which adoration in one form or
another is paid. The great God referred to in the
Moral Aphorisms is also spoken of as pa neter,
^^ IsS' "*^^ ^°^'' ^^^^ ^^ *^^ ^^^^^
speak of Al-AUah, i.e., " the Allah." The follow-
ing examples drawn from the Precepts of Kagemna
EGYPTIAN MONOTHEISM 145
(IVth dynasty) and the Precepts of Ptah-hetep
(Vth d5^asty) will illustrate this use of Neter.^
1. The things which God, |i, doeth cannot be
known.
2. Terrify not men. God, |i, is opposed thereto.
3. The daily bread is under the dispensation of
God, ^1.
4. When thou ploughest, labour (?) in the field
God, p, hath given thee.
5. If thou wouldst be a perfect man make thy
son pleasing to God, 1 1 .
6. God, "1 1 , loveth obedience ; disobedience
is hateful to God, 1 1 .
7. Verily a good (or, beautiful) son is the gift of
God, "^1.
These extracts suggest that the writers of the
Precepts believed in a God whose plans were
inscrutable, who was the feeder of men, who
assigned to each a share of the goods of this
world, and who expected men to obey his behests
and to bring up their children in a way pleasing
to him. As time went on the ideas of the Egj^p-
tians about God changed, and imder the XVIIIth
dynasty he lost something of the aloofness with
^ They arc taken from the Prisse Pap5nnis which was written
under the Xlth or Xllth djmasty. See Virey, Atudes sur
le Papyrus Prisse, Paris, 1877, where a transcript of the
hieratic text and a French translation will be found.
146 TUTANKHAMEN
which they regarded him, and a fuller idea of his
personality existed in their minds. This is clear
from the following extracts taken from the
Precepts, or Teaching, of Khensu-hetep,^ more
generally known as the " Maxims of Ani."
1. The God, J^"^ Tr^» magnifies his name.
2. The house of God abominates overmuch
speaking. Pray with a loving heart, the
words of which are hidden. He will do
what is needful for thee, he will hear thy
petitions and will accept thine oblations.
3. It is thy God, 1 3 , who gives thee existence.
4. The God, ^^1|> is the judge of
the truth.
5. When thou makest an offering to thy God
beware of offering what he abominates.
The unknown God of the early dynasties has now
become a Being who gives men their lives and
means of subsistence, who can be approached in
a temple, or house, who is pleased with offerings,
and with prayers offered up silently to him, and
who wishes his name to be magnified. Another
extract reads : —
6. " Observe with thine eye his plans (or dis-
pensation). Devote thyself to singing
praises to his name. He gives souls to
hundreds of thousands of forms. He
magnifies him that magnifies him."
1 See Chabas, L'Egyptologie, Sirie I., Chalon-sur-Sadnc,
Paris, 1876-78; and Amllineau, La Morale Egyptienne,
Paris, 1892.
EGYPTIAN MONOTHEISM 147
The text continues : " Now the god of this
earth is Shu, C^^O^I, who is the President
of the Horizons. His similitudes are upon the
earth, and to them incense and offerings are
made daily." Shu in mythological language was
the light and heat that emanated from the self-
created, self-subsistent and self-existent primeval
god, Horus, or Tem, or Khepera. The being who is
referred to in the first part of extract No. 6 seems
to me to be different from Shu, the god of this
earth. And it will be remembered that Amen-
hetep IV, the " Disk- worshipper," adored " Horus
of the Two Horizons in his name of Shu {i.e..
Heat) who is in the Aten (Disk)."
The Teaching of Amenemapt, the son of
Kanekht, a work that was probably written under
the XVIIIth dynasty, proves quite plainly that
the writer distinguished very clearly between God
and the gods Ra, the Moon-god, Thoth, Khnem-
Ra, Aten, etc. In the following extracts he
clearly refers to God.
1. Leave the angry man in the hands of God
. . . God knows how to requite him
(Col. V).
2. Carry not away the servant of the God for the
benefit of another (Col. VI).
3. Take good heed to Nebertcher, ^^^ B« <S\
(Lord of the Universe) (Col. VIII). "^
4. Though a man's tongue steers the boat, it
is Nebertcher who is the pilot (Col. XIX).
5. Truth is the great porter (or bearer) of
God (Col. XXI).
6. Seat thyself in the hands of God (Col.
XXIII).
K 2
148 TUTANKHAMEN
7. A man prepares the straw for his building,
but God is his architect.
It is he who throws down, it is he who
builds up daily.
It is he who makes a man to arrive in
Amentt (the Other World) [where] he is
safe in the hand of God (Col. XXIV).
8. The love of God, praised and adored be he !
is more than the respect of the Chief (Col.
XXVI). 1
It will be noted that in none of these extracts
is any attempt made to describe God, Neter, and
that he is never called " One," or " Only One."
The truth is that the Egyptians felt that they
could not describe him and that they knew nothing
about him, except that he existed. This great
nameless, unseen and unknown God handed
over to a number of inferior beings the direction
and management of heaven and earth and
everything which was in them. Those that were
kind and considerate to the human race men
caUed gods, and those that were malevolent and
inimical they called devils. Each community
or village, however small, possessed its own
" god," whose power and importance depended
upon the wealth and social position of his wor-
shippers. But the Egyptian, whilst adoring the
" god," Neter, of his native city, was ready to
admit the existence of another Neter, who was
probably the Being whom we call God. Thus,
in Chapter CXXV of the Book of the Dead,
the deceased says in his declaration before the
Forty- two gods, " I have not cursed God,"
1 See Egyptian Hieratic Papyri, cd. Budge, Second Series,
London. 1923,
EGYPTIAN MONOTHEISM 149
'-WWX yg^Sf^ i^' ^"^ "^ hsLve not contemned
the god of my city, P "^"^^^ 1 ^ ^
® ^\ The distinction between " God " and
" god of the city " was quite clear in the
mind of the Egyptian.
It has been claimed by some that Amenhetep IV
was the first monotheist in Egypt, but the
acceptance of this statement depends upon what
meaning is given to the word monotheism, i.e.,
the doctrine of there being only one god. The
passages from the Moral Papyri quoted above
show that the Egyptian priests and learned men
were monotheistic, even though they do not
proclaim the oneness of the god to whom they
refer. The idea of oneness was well understood
under the Ancient Empire, but in the Pyramid
Texts the attribute is ascribed to the " gods "
and to kings as well as to God. Thus in Teta
(1. 237) the "lord one" ^^^^^ o-^^, is
mentioned ; in Merenra I the king is called
*' great god alone," | A -c=5- J (1. 127),^ and is
said to be stronger than every god ; and in
Pepi II (1. 952) the king is called the " one of
heaven," '^ ^^vwx ^. Now the monotheism
of Amenhetep IV was different from that of
the writers of the Moral Papyri, and the oneness
of Aten which he proclaimed resembled the oneness
of several other Egyptian solar gods and also
^ From the Papyrus of Nebseni. Early XVIIIth d3masty.
' And " Lord of the earth to its Umit " _ <ci> Bs ^^
(1. 128). "^"^
150 TUTANKHAMEN
gods to whom solar attributes had not been
originally ascribed. Tern, Horus of the Two
Horizons, and Ra, each of these is called "One,"
and " only one," whether mentioned singly or
together as a triad, smd the same title was given
to Amen after his fusion with Ra. And whilst
Amenhetep IV was proclaiming the oneness of
Aten in the city of Aten, the worshipper of Amen
was proclaiming the oneness of Amen in Thebes,
the worshipper of Ra or Tem was proclaiming
the oneness of his god in Heliopolis, and so on
throughout the country. And it is interesting to
note that votaries of Neith of Sais proclaimed
that their goddess was "One," '^^' that
she first created herself and then produced
Ra from her own body. The second portion of
a fine Hymn to the solar triad, which is preserved
in the Papyrus of Ani (sheet 19), and is addressed
to Ra-Tem-Heraakhuti the " only one," adds
Osiris to this " only one " thus : " Praise be to thee,
O Osiris, eternal Lord, Un-nefer, Heraakhuti,
whose forms are manifold and whose attributes
are majestic, Ptah-Seker-Tem in Anu, lord of
the hidden shrine and creator of Hetkaptah
(Memphis) . . . thou turnest thy face to
the Other World, thou makest the earth to shine
like tchdm (gilded copper ?). The dead rise up
to look at thee, they breathe the air and they
see thy face like that of the Aten (Disk) when
he rises on his horizon. Since they see thee their
hearts are content, O thou who art Eternity and
Everlastingness."
It is impossible for Amenhetep IV to have
indxilged in the philosophical speculations as to
the unity of God, with which he is sometimes
credited, but which were only evolved by the Greek
1 See Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, Vol. I, p. 458.
EGYPTIAN MONOTHEISM 151
philosophers a thousand years later. It is, how-
ever, very probable that he wished At en, as the
god of absolute truth and justice, to become the
national god of Egypt and divine ruler of all the
countries of the Sudan and Western Asia that
formed his dominions. If that be so, he was
bom too late to bring this about, even supposing
that he was physically and mentally fit to under-
take such a task. When he ascended the throne.
Amen, or Amen-Ra, the King of the Gods, the
Lord of the world, was actually what Amenhetep
wished At en to be. Amen had expelled the
Hyksos and set the first king of the XVIIIth
dynasty upon his throne, and he had given victory
to the successors of Aahmes I and filled Egypt with
the wealth of the Sudan and Western Asia. Amen
had become the overlord of the gods, and his fame
filled the greater part of the world that was known
to the Egyptians. It was impossible to overthrow
the great and wealthy priesthood of Amen, to
say nothing of the social institutions of which
Amen was the head. The monotheism of Amen-
hetep tcom ajneligious jppint . ol v.iew^was_notjiew,
Jbuj;, from a political poiatjOJ-view it was. It con-
sisted chiefly of the dogma that~Amen was unfit
to be the national god of Egypt, the Sudan and
Syria, and that Aten was more just, more
righteous, and more merciful than the upstart
god of Thebes, and that Aten alone was fitted to
be the national god of Eg3^t and her dominions.
When Amenhetep tried to give a practical form
to his views, his attempt was accompanied, as
has frequently been the case with religious " re-
formers," by the confiscation of sacrosanct property,
and by social confusion and misery. It was
fortunate for Egypt that she only produced one
I king who was an individuahst and idealist, a
i pacifist and a religious " reformer " all in one.
\
15* TUTANKHAMEN
Amenhetep IV attempted to estabUsh a positive
religion, and as a religious innovator he spoke and
acted as if he were divinely inspired and had a
divine revelation to give to men, and in every way
he tried to depart from the traditions of the past.
He never realised that if his religion was to take
root and flourish it must be in contact all along
the line with the older ideas and practices which
he found among his people. Religion did not
begin with him in Egypt. He failed in his self-
appointed task because his religion did not appeal
to the tradition and religious instincts and suscep-
tibilities that already existed among the Egyptians,
and because he would not tolerate the traditional
forms in which their spiritual feelings were em-
bodied.
INDEX.
Aa-em-aha-f, 86.
Aabmes I, 151 ; his tomb, 92.
Aakhunaten, 68, 85, 106.
Aakhut-Aten, 87, 96, 108 ff.,
119, 120, 121.
Aapep, 105.
Abd-Ashratum, 100, loi.
Abi-Milki, 10 1.
Abu (Elephantine), 5.
Abydos, 16, 28, 35.
Acrobats, 9, 92.
Ai, priest and king, 76, 77, 92,
108 ; Hymn of, to Aten, 94,
123.
'Ain-ash-Shams, 60,
Ajalon, 102.
Akhenaton, 85 ; and see Aak-
hunaten.
Aksaph, 100
Alexander the Great, 16.
Al-Hakim, 107.
Al-Klb, 10.
Allah, Al-Allih, 144.
Amasis I, 20, 28.
Ambi, loo.
Amelineau, E., 146.
Amen attacked by Amenhetep
IV, 79 ff. ; becomes incar-
nate, 2 2 ; City of, 15; daily
worship of, 34 ; his name
erased, 83 ; figures of, in
gold and silver, 6 ; history
of, 14 ff. ; Hymn to, 29 ; in
Nubia and Oases, 16 ; his
revenues seized, 96 ; his
temple at Karnak, The One,
31 ; as the World-god, 17 ;
his three characters, 42 ;
triumph of, 108 ; his jvealth,
. 76.
Amenemapt, Teaching of, 115,
147.
Amenhetep I, founder of the
priesthood of Amen, 9.
Amenhetep II, 17, 18, 7^.
Amenhetep III, son of Amen,
65 ; incarnation of Amen-
Ra, 24 ; his reign and works,
22 ff. ; god of Nubia, 24 ;
his temple at Sulb, 12 ; his
tomb, 73 ; his wives, 69.
Amenhetep IV, 4, 68 ; enemy
of Amen and the gods, 76 ;
founds a city, 84 ; changes
his name, 85 ; his titles, 86 ;
his Teaching, 87 ; becomes
high priest, 88 ; offerings to
Aten, 88 ; loses Syria, 98 ;
gifts, mean, 98 ; physical
form of, 103 ; death and
burial, 104 ; scarab of, 104 ;
character of, 106 ; had water
on the brain, 76 ; his Hymn
to Aten, 116 ff.
Amenit, figure of, 14.
Amenites, the, 84.
Amen-Mut-Khensu Triad, 24.
Amen-Ra, 4, 66, 151 ; figure
of, 14 ; acknowledges Amen-
hetep III, 23 ; Hymns to,
, 35 ff-
Amentt, 64, 148.
Ani, 92 ; Maxims of, 146 ;
Papyrus of, 150.
Ankh-em-Maat, 86.
Ankh-s-en-pa-Amen, princess,
Ankh - s - en - pa - Aten, princess,
2, 91, 92.
Anpu (Anubis), 28 ; figure of,
29.
Anqit, figure of, 25.
Anu (On), 4, 56, 150 ; the
pillar city, 63.
154
INDEX
Anu of the South, 3.
Anubis, 27.
Apes, the singing, 33.
Api, 92 ; tomb of, 116.
Apit, 15.
Apt, 52, 54.
Arabia, 60.
Artatama, 20.
Arts and crafts, 73.
Ashuruballit, 98.
Assalbergs, Dr., 103.
Assyria, 20.
Ast, daughter of Ti, 68.
Asyftt, 84.
Aten, the Solar Disk, 2, 28 ;
cult of, 55 ff. ; officially
recognised, 68 ; temples of,
92 ; development of cult of,
75 ; Hymns to, 32, in ff.,
ii3> "4. 131. 138 ; figure
of, 78, 79.
Aten, temple of, at Thebes, 2 ;
at Luxor, 83.
Aten, the One or Only One,.
33-
Atenism, 86.
Atenites, 84, 108 ; beliefs of,
96 ; ruin Egypt, 8.
Atenmerit, 2, 92.
Atet Boat, 81.
Athen-tehen, Boat of, 68.
Atmu, 64.
At- Tall, 108, 109.
At- Till, 109.
Aziru, 100, 10 1.
Babylon, 87.
Babylonia, 20, 71, 73.
Bakt - Aten (Baktenaten), 68,
89, 92. ^
Bani 'Amran, 109.
Beetle-god, 59.
Bek the architect, 89.
Benben Obehsk, 119,
Ben- (Benben-) Stone, 63, 83.
Bennu, 58 ; bird, 63.
Bezold, Dr., 100.
Bi-ib-khu-ru-ri-ya-ash, 1 3.
Birch, Dr. S., 46, 85.
Birkat Habu, 68.
Bissing, F. von, 61.
Block of Slaughter, 95.
Blood of Sun-god, 83.
Boghaz Keui, ai ; tablets of,
13.
Book of Gates, 94.
Book of Opening the Mouth,
94.
Book of the Dead rejected by
the Atenites, 94.
Book of the Dweller in the
Tuat, 94.
Book of the Two Ways, 94.
Boomerang of Tutankhamen,
12.
Borchart, Dr., 61.
Bork, Dr., quoted, 21.
Boundary Stelae of Amenhetep
IV, 84.
Bouriant, in.
Brahmans, 115.
Breasted, Prof., nz.
Brugsch, Dr. H., 142.
Buhen, 10.
Burraburiyash, 98.
Byblos, 100 ff.
Caravans, 20, 60, 72 ; pillage
of, 102.
Carnarvon Collection, 6.
Carter, Mr. Howard, no.
Caspian Group of Languages,
21.
Cataract, First, 24.
Cataract, Fourth, 10, 18, 67.
Chabas, F., 146.
Champollion quoted, 13, 140.
Christians, 107.
Circle, the, 80.
City of Amen, 54.
INDEX
155
City of God, 84.
Colossi of Amenhetep III, 72.
Country, the Everlasting, 138.
Cyprus, 98.
Da-kha-mu-un, Queen, 13,
Dancing men and women, 92.
Daressy quoted, 16, iii.
Davies, N. de G., 92, in, 116.
Davis, Mr. T., 11, 66.
Davis-Maspero-Daressy, 12.
Death-god, 63, 80.
Delta, 5.
Der-al-Bahari, 22.
de Rouge, 141.
Destiny, 41.
Devils, 148.
Disk, the Living, Eternal, 8b ;
see Aten.
Disk - worshippers, 147 ; see
Atenites.
Dyaus Pitar, 113.
Elephantine, 5, 10, 73.
Elysian Fields, 95.
Eternity = God, 150.
Euphrates, 67.
Everlastingness = God, 150.
Father Amen, 18.
Father-mother, 33.
Father of the Gods, 142,
Field of Grasshoppers, Offer-
ings and Reeds, 95.
Gardiner, Dr. A., 42.
Garvin, Mr., 109.
Geb, 37, 38 ; figure of, 80.
Gebal, 100 ff.
Gem -Aten, 83.
Gem-pa-Aten, 89.
Gilukhipa, 69.
Gizah, 61.
God, ideas of, 142 ff.
God, One, 129.
God, the city or village, 148,
149.
Gods, Aryan, 70.
Gods, erasure of names of, 83 ;
of the cardinal points, 137 ;
solar, 64, 79 ; the Eight of
Hermopolis, 41.
Gold, abundance of, 72.
Great Green [Sea], 127.
Great Hawk, 49.
Great Seer, 87.
Grebaut, E., 42.
Hagg Kandil, 108.
Hall, Dr. H. R., 12, 73, 77,
104.
Hap (Nile), 143.
Harmhabi, Tomb of, 12.
Harpokrates, 31.
Hathor of Thebes, figure of, 27.
Hatshepsut, 22.
Hawk, the Great, 37.
Heaven Father, 113.
Heh Season, 132.
Heka, 23.
Heliopolis, 4, 16, 60, 141 ; cult
of, 56 ; high priest of, 87 ;
priests of, 15, 21, 83.
Heliopolitans, 98.
Hemhemti, 105.
Henmemet, 45, 49.
Hentaneb, 68,
Hep (Nile), 143.
Hepi, son of Osiris, figure of,
' 95.
Heqit, figure of, 81.
Her (Horus), 55.
Her and Suti, architects, 26 ;
Hymn of, 46.
Heraakhuti, 59, 65, 138; figure
of, 19 ; Hymn to, 120.
Heremheb, 2, 97, 108.
Hermonthis, 3, 27, 89 ; War-
god of, 33.
Hermopohs, 4, 41.
Her-Sems, figure of, 31, 56.
156
INDEX
Her-ur, 56.
Hetkaptab, 150.
5et Kha-em-maat, 24.
Hinatuna, 91.
Hittites, 98.
Horus, 4, 147 ; lands of, 6 ;
of the Two Horizons, 19 ;
the Aged, figure of, 31 ;
Avenger of his father, figure
of, 33 ; the Child, 31.
Horus and Set, figures, 56.
Horus-name, 3.
House of Aten, 89.
Hrosny, Dr. F., 13.
Hui, II, 92 ; tomb of, 10.
Hunt Scarabs, 70.
Hyksos, 151.
Hymns to Aten, 94 ff.
Ikh-en-aten, 85.
Ikhnaton, 85.
Image, the One, 38, 39, 44.
Images of the gods, 7.
Indra, 21, 69.
Intar, 21.
Intaruda, 100.
Isis, 28, 80 ; figure of, 59.
luaa, 66 ff.
Jabal Barkal, 10, 18.
Jackal Avenue, 73.
Jerusalem, 87.
Jews, 107.
Judgment, the Last, 95.
Jupiter Ammon, 16.
Kagemna, Precepts of, 144.
Kamutf, 4.
Kanekht, 115, 147.
Kanekht-tut-mes, 3.
Karaduniyash, 20, 98.
Karei, 67.
Karnak, 4, 15, 19, 28, 34, 43,
52, 72.
Kesh, Prince of, 10.
Khabiri, Khabiru, 98, 100, 10 1.
Khabftr, 72.
KhartOm, 17.
Khensu, 27 ; figure of, 29.
Khensu-hetep, Precepts of, 146.
Khepera, 29, 30, 44, 46, 50, 60,
70, 138, 142, 147.
Khepera, the One, 31.
Khephren, 61.
Kheprer, 49.
Kheta, 98.
Khnemu, 73, 143 ; the One,
79-
Khnem, figure of, 25 ; temple
of, 24,
Khnem Amen, 32, 49.
Khnem-Ra, 147.
King of the Battle, no.
Kohl tubes of Tutankhamen,
12.
Koshah, 67.
Kriosphinxes, Avenue of, 72.
Kurnah, 13.
Lake of Horus, 137.
Lake of Mut, 72.
Lake of Testes, 137.
Land, the Eiemal, 138.
Lapaya, 102.
Law and Truth, 137.
Legrain, discoveries of, 3.
Lepsius, 10, 12.
Light, 113.
Lion hunts of Amenbetep III,
72.
Lion scarabs, 70.
Liturgy of Funerary Offerings,
94.
Lord, One, the, 149.
Loret, v., 74.
Luxor, 24, 28, 72.
Maam, 10.
Maat, 35i^^j7«f39' i4;^|figure
- G^^^jL^-f^mearmTg of, 87^ '
Mai792.
Maket-Aten, 92.
INDEX
i5r
Makkah, 87.
Man-god, 57, 143.
Manu, 49.
Marduk, 60.
Mary, the Virgin, 61,
Matchau, 43.
Matet Boat, 136, 138.
Maxwell, Sir J., in.
Mediterranean, 72, 127.
Memphis, 4, 6, 16, 150 ; under-
world of, 28.
Memphites, 98.
Menthu, figure of, 33.
Menu Kamutf, figure of, 36.
Merimes, stele of, 71.
Merira, high priest, 89.
Merira I, tomb of, 92.
Merira II, tomb of, 92.
Meritaten, Princess, 2, 104.
Meriti, 43.
Merit-Ra, i.
Mesopotamia, 102.
Mesta, figure of, 95.
Mi-it-ra-ash-shi-il, 21.
Mitanni, 20, 65, 69, 71, 73;
language of, 21 ; gods of, 21.
Mithras, 21, 69.
Mitra, 21, 113.
Monier Williams, 113.
Monotheism, 149 ; Egyptian,
140 ff.
Moon-god, 147.
Moret quoted, 35.
Mother = Aten, 49.
Mummification, 96.
Mustafa Aghi, 109.
Mut, figure of, 27 ; temple of,
72.
Mut-em-uaa, 20, 22, 24, 65.
Mycerinus, 61.
Naharn, 67.
Nak, 44.
Napata, 10, 18, 67, 71, 76;
Syxdan chief hung on walls of,
18.
Nasatiya, 21.
Nau and Nen, 14.
Naville, Prof. E., 16, 22, 140.
Nebertcher, 147.
Nebkheperura, 3, 12.
Nebmaatra, 24, 52.
Nebseni, Papyrus of, 149.
Nebt-Unnut, 138.
Nebti-name, 3, 20, 65.
Nefer-hapus-gerh-taui, 3,
Nefer - kheperu - her - sekheper,
92.
Nefer-neferu-Aten, 92.
Nefer-neferu-Ra, 92.
Nefertari, Queen, 28.
Nefertiti, Queen, 76, 91, 93,
105. 135; head of, 109.
Negau, 8.
Neherna, 69.
Neith, 30, 150.
Nekhen, 10.
Nen, 14.
Nenu, 58, 61.
Nephthys, 80 ; figure of, 56.
Nest-taui (Thebes), 10.
Nesubat-name, 3.
Net (Neith), figure of, 30.
Neter, God and "god," 144.
Ni, 100.
Nile, 130-32.
Nile-god, 23, 143, 144.
Nine Gods, 45.
No-Amon, 15.
Nu, 58, 139, 143-
Nubia, 10, 89; gold of, 11;
tribute of, 97.
Nun, 44.
Nunu, 139, 142, 143.
Nut, 33, 49. 50, 137 ; figure of, 38.
Nut- Amen, 15.
Obelisk, symbol of Ra, 62 ff.
Offerings, pure, 146.
Ogdoad of Thoth, 81.
Old Hawk, 40.
On, 43 ; see Anu.
158
INDEX
One, 148 ; title of Ra and other
gods, 31-33.
One Alone, 44, 45.
One God, 141.
One of Heaven, 149.
One Watcher, the, 49.
Oneness, 42, 79, 149, 150.
Only God, 141.
Only One, 58, 137, 148.
Osiris, 27, 64, 80, 95, 137, 141 ;
figures of, 59, 63.
Osiris Un-Nefer, 28.
Other World ; see Tuat, 150.
Palestine, 5.
Palette of Tutankhamen, X3.
Paneljsi, 92.
Pantheism, 141.
Parennefer, 92.
Pautti, 34, 40, 41-
Peet, Prof., no.
Penthu, 92.
Pepi II, 149.
Peqa at Abydos, 28.
Per-Aakheperkara, 6.
Per-Aten, 83, 89.
Per-gem-Aten, 89.
Pert Season, 132.
Pest (Ennead), 58.
Petrie, Prof., 109.
Phoenicia, 11, 17, 71,98,
Phoenix, 58, 64.
Phoinix, 61.
Piankhi, 61.
Piehl, K., III.
Pierret, P., 46.
Pillar, cult of the, 63.
Planets, 136.
Prayer, silent, X46.
Prayer to Aten, 115.
Prisse Papyrus, 145.
Ptati, 4, 97, 141, 143; figure
of, 7. 39-
Ptah-hetep, 145.
Ptab-Seker-Asar, 63.
Ptah-Seker-Tem, 150.
Punishment, 95.
Punt, 43.
Pyramid Texts, 14, 57, 63.
Qebhsenuf, son of Osiris, 95.
Quintus Curtius, 16.
Ra, 58, 98, 124, 143, 147 ;
becomes incarnate, 22 ;
Hymn to, 112, 136 ff. ; soul
of, 58 ; the Sun-god, 60 flf.
Ra-Atem, 64.
Ra-Aten, 138.
Ra-Heraakhuti, 4, 28, 64.
Ra-Khepera, 64.
Rames, 92,
Ra-Tem-Heraakhuti, 150.
Red Land, 6.
Red Sea, 127.
Register, the Celestial, 58.
Renp-khaus-hetep-neteru, 3.
Res-Ra-em-Anu, 89.
Resurrection, the Osirian, 63.
Retennu (Rethennu), Upper,
II, 18.
Retribution, 95.
Rib Adda, 100 ff.
Rig- Veda, 114.
Ruttet, 22.
Sacrifices, 62.
Sadenga, 67, 104.
Sakara, 92, 103, 108.
Samnah, 71.
Sargon of Akkad, no.
Sarha, 102.
Satamen, 68.
Sati, figure of, 25.
Savitri, 113.
Scarabs of Amenhetep III and
his son, 67, 104.
Schafer, Dr., 61.
Schroeder, Dr., no.
Seasons, the Two, 33, 132.
Sebak, figure of, 30
Sebau fiends, 44, 137.
INDEX
159
Seker, 28, 63.
Sekhmit, figure of, 39.
Septet-Boat, 81, 137, 138, 139.
Senmut, architect, 72.
Set, 80.
Set and Horus, figure of, 56.
Set Festival, 80, 105.
Setep-en-Ra, 92.
Shepherd (Ra), 137.
Shesmu, 95.
Shigata, 100.
Shu, 15, 142, 147 ; figure of, 57.
Shu and Tefnut, 80.
Shu in the Disk, 80, 116, 132.
Shutarna, 69.
Shuwardata, 99.
Sidon, loi.
Simyra, 100.
Sin, consciousness of, 114.
Singing men and women, 9.
Sin jar, 72.
Siwah, Oasis of, 16.
Sky-god, 59.
Sky-goddess, 137.
Smenkhkara, 2.
Smith, Dr. E., 75, 77.
Soleb, 12.
Son of Ra name, 3, 22, 6i.
Soul of Ra (Phoenix), 64.
Souls of Anu, 4.
Sphinx, the, 18.
Stars, circumpolar, 136.
Stibium tubes, 12.
Storm-god, 101.
Sddin, 19, 71, 104, 151 ; tribute
from, 71.
Sulb, 12, 66, 73; temple of,
1, 24.
Summer, 51.
Sun-god, the fourfold, 18 ;
hymn to, 136 ff.
Sun-Stone, the, 62.
Sun-temples, 61, 62.
Siirya, 113, 115.
Suti, 92.
Swamps of Delta, 5.
Syene, 89.
Syria, 5, II, 16, 17, 18, 20, 60,
71. 73. 98.
Ta-Kenset, 24.
Tall al-'Am^rnah, 11, 75, 76 ff,,
109 ff. ; tablets from, 100,
note I.
Tall Banu *Amr4n, 109.
Tanen, 41.
Ta-Thunen, 105.
Tatumkhipa, 69.
Tchah, 5.
Tcham metal, 30.
Tcharukha, 68.
Teaching of Amenemapt, 147.
Teaching of Ani, 146.
Teaching of Khensu - hetep,
146.
Teaching of Ptah-hetep, 146.
Tefnut, 15, 142 ; figure of, 57.
Tem, Temu, 4, 56, 137, 142,
147 ; Company or Nine of,
58; figure of, 19.
Tem-Heraakhuti, 19, 136.
Tem in his Disk, 64.
Tem, the One, 79.
Tem-Ra, 80.
Thebes, 141 ; beautified by
Amen-hetep III, 72 ; name
of, 15.
Thekhsi, 18.
Thoth, 4, 138, 142, 143, 147 ;
figure of, 86.
Thothmes III, 11, 17, 100;
establishes priests of Amen,
17.
Thothmes IV, 17, 20, 69 ;
favoured one of Heliopolis,
18 ; his Nebti-name, 65.
Thuau, 61.
Thunder-god, 105, 106.
Thureau-Dangin, 100.
Ti, Queen, 25, 66 ff., 75, 98;
Lake of, 68 ; temple of, to
Aten, 89 ; tomb of, 75.
i6o
INDEX
Tide, 140.
To-day, 58.
Tombs at Tall al-'Amirnah, 92.
Tombs of the Atenites, 94.
Tombs of the Kings, 11.
Trinity, the first, 58.
Truth, 35 ; the bearer of God,
147-
Tuamutef, figure of, 95.
Tuat, the, 31, 41, 64, 94, 95,
132, 138.
Tunip, 100.
Tushratta, 20, 69, 98, 102.
Tutankhamen, reign of, 1-12 ff.,
96, 108 ; the tomb discovered
by Davis, 1 2 ; restores wor-
ship of Amen, 14 ff.
Tutankhaten, 2.
Tutu, 92 ; tomb of, 116.
Tyre, loi.
Umbilicus, 16.
Unknown =Amen, 47.
Un-Nefer, 150.
Ur-maa, 89.
U-ru-un-na*-ash-shi-il, »i.
Varuna, 21, 69, 76, 113-15.
Vedas, 115.
Wdd Ba-Nagaa, 17.
Wadi Halfah, 10.
Weidner, Dr., no.
Well of the Sun, 60.
White Crown, 143.
Winckler, 20, 100.
Winter, 51.
Wisdom, 143.
WooUey, Mr., no.
Yahweh, 112.
Year-god, 34.
Yesterday, 58.
Zimrida, 101.
DT Budge, (Sir) Ernest Alfred
87 Thompson Wall is
. 5 Tutankhamen
B8
1923
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
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