Akhetaten

It is written, In the fifth year, on the thirteenth day of the eighth month of the reign of Amenophis IV - Akhenaten, the pharaoh, went with his queen, Neferatiti, to the banks of the great river, in the region near Hermopolis, the city of Thoth, the god of thought. Here, in the fifteenth nome of Upper Egypt, that of the lower sycamore and viper, at a point where the Arabic Chain curls round itself into a huge semi-circle, he dedicated his city of Akhetaten - the horizon of the globe. At the boundaries he placed fourteen majestic stele all hewn out of the solid rock; eleven of them on the right bank and three against the numulithic limestone of the mountains to the west. On these the king declared in stone that he would never travel beyond this place, neither to the north nor to the south, neither to the rising nor to the setting sun, and that nowhere could be found a more promising or more holy place to venerate the new lord of the world.

On one of these stele is inscribed, The Aten desires that there be made for him a great city as a monument with an eternal and everlasting name. Now, it is the Aten, my father, who advised me concerning it, so that it might be made for Him. Behold, it is Pharaoh who has discovered it. In this place I shall make the House of the Aten. I shall make the Mansion of the Aten. I shall make the Sun Temple of the Great King’s Wife, Neferatiti. I shall make the House of Rejoicing for the Aten, my father, in the Island of the Aten, Distinguished in Jubilees. And I shall make for myself the apartments of Pharaoh and of the Great King’s Wife. In Akhetaten, in this place, I shall do all these things. I shall make here a great city to live and pray in.

Here was a project for an imperium; for an imperial and messianic builder of new truths, a maker of new religions. This in a time of certainties handed down through the generations, for a ruler who could look to the four corners of the world and see no end to his dominions and his power and who was wealthy beyond knowing.

An army was prepared, an army of slaves with their weapons of many skills to strike against a valley of dead sands, manoeuvres carefully planned to trick that intransigent enemy. Planned by a vizier appointed to supervise and chiefs of work and skilled assistants and those trained to give orders and obey in their turn. All of these were set to work and nothing was spared.

And a new form of art was ordained to do away with the old in which the figures were drawn to a formula learned from books in the schools at Thebes and the figures shown as ideal with bodies that were perfect. And it would do away with the old writing also of old praises handed down unchanged for generations. Bek, the master sculptor of the city always told those who asked that he had been taught by the pharaoh himself and that his task was to portray only the truth illuminated by the Aten and nothing more and, if possible, nothing less. Pharaoh spoke and in his speaking demanded honesty of the sculpture of his city and his lands, sometimes, indeed, to much honesty. Thus were the images sometimes too close to the real, no longer perfect but included all faults and imperfections. so unlike those of Amun that the pilgrim was used to that he would never forget them. This was a new kind of imaging: naturalistic and drawn from the life. The pharaoh was presented like a giant but all of his features, his thin, effeminate body, present to the life. There were his thin limbs and his swollen thighs, his immaculate small hands and his weak chest. Above all, his long, thin face, high above, with its large dark eyes with their thick brows, high cheekbones and sunken cheeks below them the thin lips with their subtle smile, his feminine curves, heavy thighs and belly, half-closed eyes, full lips, and a long face and neck. And so it was ordered.

And down the great river from the old city came ship after ship low in the water, loaded with the riches of the old city; gold and silver and bronze and linens and all else needful. Also men, architects and overseers, masons and carpenters, weavers and metal-workers. Even priests and members of the old court with their sly smiles, they who saw which way the future might lie. The place was cleared of its drovers and cattle men who were given new land nearby across the river and pharaoh went here and there with his stick and marked out the plan of his new city; a palace here, a temple there; here a great house for one of his princes, there a store for grain; here a highway, there a quay and warehouses. The rich were given their houses and the poor theirs also.

No time to be lost. A town for the workers first. Made in plan like a barracks even thought there were to be no barracks in a city of the new god. It was a place of narrow streets planned like a military outpost or a hive of bees; long rows running one behind the other each with another row facing it across a narrow street. Each house the same as all its brothers with a reed roof and mud walls, each with a room for living and a room for sleeping. From afar it looked like any other place housing the poor but it was well proportioned and had spaces for relaxation and places to eat; thus the workers that were needful to the great pharaoh’s project were well housed and fed. The smell of braziers cooking broth and sometimes fish along with the burning of cheap oil. It soon attracted a horde of hangers-on; the loose woman and men who satisfied the needs of the tired for a pittance. Around the edge of the place, taverns loud with the sound of music and ribaldry. Men walking the narrow lanes selling weak beer with pieces of broken grain swimming on its surface and others with pots of even weaker teas. But at midnight the noise ended as the guard came to close the taverns and clear away the traders from the streets and thus it was possible to sleep in the dark hours before another day under the relentless sun of this new ruler.

A decision made to use hard stone only for a few of the inscribed monuments. For the other facades and altars and headstones small sandstone blocks could be easily cut and made ready. For the palaces there would be decoration in coloured tiles and images cut into limestone wash would suffice. For the rest and for the speed of it just mud taken straight from the earth with a little and straw and lime and placed to dry under that same sun for whose glory it was made; brick, unbaked, ready for use. Wooden columns would support the roofs of simple tiles.

And so the city rose; first the great highway of the king that ran from north to south and cut the site in two, a royal street is paved with stone that ran between trees for some forty thousand cubits. To the south and west of it rose royal palaces; the House of Rejoicing consisting of an open court surrounded by a colonnade of colossal statues of the king. An upper opening, the Window of Appearances, was built into one side of a bridge connecting the Great Palace to the King’s House, a smaller palace with a courtyard and magazines, on the opposite side of the road. This window opened onto a public square also paved and arranged so that great sheets of linen could be held aloft to protect the crowds. From here the royal family could appear in state and offer gifts of gold collars and other precious objects to their followers below.

Central to the plan were the two temples to Aten. To the south of the palace, on the eastern side of the road, was the small temple called the ‘Mansion of the Aten in Akhetaten’, a mortuary temple for the king as it contained a sanctuary which is oriented in line with the royal wadi.

To the north of this was the Gam-Aten, The House of the Aten, the Great Aten Temple. Its approach was an avenue of statues of the pharaoh in the new style. The temple itself was enclosed by huge walls, extending from to west away from the road for around two thousand cubits. The surrounding walls were quite unlike the fortifications of the temple of Amun that kept the pilgrim from entering. Here, between each pillar was an opening inviting entrance. Instead of the hidden dark corners of the priests of Amarna, here was a temple open to the sky that let in the light of the living sun as it crossed the heavens. There you could stand and see the god as he passed and offer prayers and see, on the northern wall an image carved in marble of the pharaoh kneeling beneath the golden disc from which rays shone down each one ending in a hand of benediction. To either side of this passage, in the halls and beyond were one thousand eight hundred offering tables. Nine hundred on each side representing Upper and Lower Egypt These were kept loaded with gifts so the Aten might see them as he passed overhead. To these were brought every kind of sacrifice; all the produce of the valley: grain and green, the fowl of the air and the beast of the earth, bread, beer, long-horned and short-horned cattle, calves, fowl, wine, fruits, incense, all kinds of fresh green plants, and everything good gathered by an army dedicated to this and nothing else.

After the sun had fallen to earth these offerings were distributed among the priests and populace of the city. Within the precinct of the Great Temple there was also a holy stone to receive the first rays of the raising sun. On this were shown the king and queen in prostration before the Aten.

And then there was the North City where he has built a large fortified villa, the North Riverside Palace. This was the site of the main royal residence of the king. Surrounded by high walls which encompass magnificent apartments around a sunken garden of geometric design. Here was the throne room of the pharaoh with a courtyard for many beasts and aviaries with nesting niches, and friezes of spectacular paintings of birds flying and diving among marsh plants. Again, all in a new and naturalistic style, with a zoological garden where the king could keep animals and birds and satisfy his love of the natural world. Some of the animals bred here and the rarer plants from the gardens were carried in ceremonial processions to the sacrificial tables in the temple. Included is a warren of offices and smaller apartments for the many who run the empire during this time.

To the north of the city is a palace built for Neferatiti. This was constructed on the same plan as the palace of the king with the throne room almost as grand and the gardens and rooms in the same style.

The southern suburb of Akhetaten was a place of villas and smaller palaces belonging to high officials of the city. Each villa with its accompanying granaries and gardens. There was the villa of Panehesy and those the king’s sculptor Djutmose, his vizier Nakht and his General Ramose.

And magnificent gardens watered from the great river. They brought to the centre of the city a canal which connected to the lake of Tiye on the city’s eastern edge. This was three thousand seven hundred cubits long and seven hundred cubits wide. The lake was built behind dams which were broken when the river was in flood and then closed off again leaving a lake in the midst of the desert. Here the pharaoh and his wife sailed on the barge Splendour of Aten

Looking down over the Amarna plain from the tombs dug into the high cliffs of the bay, Akhenaten and his queen could see their city nearing completion, the highway of the king cutting through it like a knife, palaces, storehouses, villas, great houses and lesser houses. Ready for the reception of foreign tribute during the great celebrations of year 12.

And there on that hill they built also a tomb of which the records are silent; the tomb of 13 steps which lead down into a chamber deep in the broken crust of earth where two of the mountains had split against each other in the distant past. There they hollowed out place of burial, a sarcophagus of stone waiting for its inhabitant and beyond it on the far wall they painted the image of the pharaoh seated and his queen beside him.

Thus, according to his own prayer did his city rise in the ring of mountains in the sandy wilderness and was complete in three years by the time of the death of his father. The gardens bloomed with myriad petals; pomegranate and cactus, orange and yellow citrus. In the pools and calm water swam golden fish and their surfaces were covered in lotus blossom and **. Temples and palaces, gardens and pools sprang from the floor of the desert. Wide streets lined with palms and in the palaces a smell of perfumes and the spices of sacrifice. The bodies of these men and women stank of it. They bathed in it. They prayed with it. It settled in all their orifices so that, even when they were out in the fields or the marketplace they smelt it. It had insinuated itself into their very senses. Behind their robes, behind their eyes. They walked in beauty like their days surrounded by creation plumed and feathered hardly perceiving any difference between the painted tiles and the peacock in all its glory strutting, strutting. Like them in their gold and blue. The vulture circled high but came not near for they were used rather to the cries of death and battle and the constant prayers kept them away.

In the midst of this building was the destroying of men’s lives and skills, of the desert sands loved by the eye of the sun, of its loneliness and its colours and the creatures which sculled among its rifts and gulleys. All this vanished under the weight of the new god and his pharaoh and his megalomaniac dreams, a king who treated his workers as hands and shoulders for the project he had ordained. More than many were dead in their teens and were not buried in tombs of glory and sarcophagi for eternity. This was the price paid on the desert floor for the obsession of pharaoh with his new city. Thus the ants dedicated their lives of labour. Here, the dust lifted by their feet from the floor of this new paradise eddies and dies and what is not dust is heat that enters into all the folds of the skin. Around these many insects the new city rears itself like a threat and a promise to the north and the south.

He thought they built for love; for the love of him and for the love of his god. But his servants knew better and out of his sight brought forth his new city with whips and scourges and did not count the deaths that came about because of it. He lived apart in a world of dreams and saw not what they did. And likewise he told the generals of his armies that he would rule with only the strength of his god and none other was needful and he forbade them to go into battle and commit murder for the glory of his throne for he would rule without it. yet his men of war, those away from the court where they could pretend to be deaf to his voice of his couriers set out to battle but had not the gold or authority to do it well. And he told the men of ships to curtail their voyages where dangers might be met but the bravest of them set forth nonetheless. And so away from his gilded cage at Akhetaten, his kingdom faltered for lack of protection and lack of trade and the men of Thebes looked on and smiled.

A pharaoh of creation who was also a pharaoh of destruction who built the new and destroyed the old, who sent to temples around the empire to destroy images of the rites of Amun and the other gods, who scratched out their eyes and broke their noses so that their faces would be lost and their images stand only as huge dead bodies in memory of lost rites.

Here, in the rocky floor of Egypt and of all the ages, appeared the sudden slither of a crack that would open along a gulley crossing the two kingdoms to reveal an earthquake too large to be bonded over, hidden, scratched out, although they would try. Such cracks become chiasms, open for all to fall into. Here was an eruption from out of the depths of the earth; sudden, strange, molten, alchemical, mad startling with all the colours of a new god as it rose in those distant skies.