Wednesday, May 31, 2017

El-Amarna – Historical Notes .. Part ( 1 )

We are now within the sacred territory of Akhenaten's holy city, Akhetaten, better known to most people as El-Amarna . The present appearance of this once great and famous city is not imposing . The area is located on the east bank of the Nile River in the modern Egyptian province of Minya, some 58 km ( 36 miles ) south of the city of al-Minya .
It originally extended along the east bank of the Nile for about five miles ; but its maximum breadth was only about 1100 yards, and it must have appeared as a long, straggling town situated between the fertile land by the river-bank and the barren desert behind, which extends to the base of the hills, in which were the rock-tombs of its great men . At present it is represented by Beni Imran, El-Hagg Qandil, El-Amarna, and El-Hawata, and by the scanty ruins which lie along the line of the ancient city and the tombs behind . It is, nevertheless, one of the most interesting spots in Egypt ; the scene of the great adventure in which a Pharaoh ( Amenhotep IV ), the son of the most magnificent monarch of the 18th Dynasty, pitted his will against the religious inertia of the whole nation and the fanaticism and jealousy of its priests in an effort to accomplish what he deemed to be a reformation in religious belief ; and perished in the prime of his days amid the ruin of his plans . 



This is not the place for a discussion of the significance of Atenism, the new religion which Akhenaten strove to introduce in place of Amunism and the other faiths of Egypt, nor the question of whether it was or was not a spiritual monotheism and an advance upon previous Egyptian beliefs . It is sufficient for our purpose to say that when once Amenhotep IV ( Akhenaten ) had broken with Amunism he found it necessary to abandon the ancient capital Thebes, the stronghold of Amunism, and to build for himself a new and holy city in which his new faith might strike root, unhindered and undefiled by any taint of ancient superstitions . Choosing this area immediately south of Gebel El-Sheikh Said, where the hills recede from the river-bank for some miles, he marked out the limits of a sacred domain, with a corresponding area on the western bank, and delimited it by means of fourteen inscriptions chiselled on rock-steles, binding himself by a solemn oath not to overstep the boundaries of the domain for ever . The oath is as follows : ҅ My oath of truth, which it is my desire to pronounce, and of which I will not say " It is false " eternally for ever : The southern tablet, which is on the eastern mountain of Akhetaten . It is the tablet of Akhetaten, namely this one by which I have made halt : I will not pass beyond it southwards, eternally, for ever . Make the south-west tablet opposite it on the western mountain of Akhetaten exactly ҆ - and so on for each eastern tablet, with its counterpart on the west bank .



Whether the oath meant, as some believe that Akhenaten meant to bind himself to a hermit existence, and never to move beyond the limits of his holy domain, or whether he meant merely to indicate that the domain was not to be extended beyond these limits by encroachments on the rights of the magnates of the vicinity, is another matter which it is perhaps impossible to decide . At all events, the absolute power of the young Pharaoh ensured for his new city rapid growth and prosperity for so long as his life or his control of the resources of his nation lasted . The city of Akhetaten ( The Horizon of Aten ) grew up with more than the rapidity of a mushroom town of the West . It had at least three palaces, one of which was a summer palace of somewhat fantastic design, and several temples, of which the great Aten temple was of imposing size and splendour . The courtiers, whether from genuine conviction or from mere desire to be in the fashion and to make themselves acceptable to their monarch, followed his example and built themselves mansions in the new city . The arts and crafts which ministered to the taste and luxury of the court speedily established themselves, and Akhetaten became a busy centre of several industries, especially of the manufacture of coloured glazes and of glass itself . Art, too, established itself in the city, exhibiting that spirit of freedom which had been growing for some time in Egypt, and along with it that tendency to what seems almost caricature, which is the besetting sin of the Amarna Art . Nevertheless, some of the finer pieces discovered in the ruins of Akhetaten by German Expedition rank among the very foremost products of the Egyptian school of sculpture .



All this came to a comparatively sudden end when Atenism fell from power with the death of the Pharaoh who had maintained it in being . It had never had any grip on the national mind, and from first to last had been a purely court religion, dependent for its life upon the championship of the king . When that was withdrawn by death, and when Akhenaten was succeeded by two young lads, Smenkhkere and Tutankhamun, the older faith of Amun, which had possibly been regaining some of its influence even before the death of the heretic Pharaoh, had no difficulty in re-establishing itself . The withdrawal of the court sealed the doom of Akhenaten's holy sity, and though its decay may have been a somewhat longer business than was once supposed, the whole story of its prosperity and magnificence falls within the limits of a single generation .



Successive expeditions have done much to reveal the character of this short-lived capital . Petrie visited it in 1891-1892, and his investigations disclosed much of the great possibilities of the site . His work did much to reveal the splendour of the great palace of Akhenaten, and particularly its treasures of painting and its rich decoration of glazes and gilding . Two fine painted pavements of stucco were discovered by him and placed under cover and guard, only to be destroyed in 1912 by the spite of a dismissed guardian . The portions which were rescued from the wreck may be seen in the Egyptian Museum at Cairo ( 627, G 28, centre ) . To the east of the palace lay the chamber in which the records of the Egyptian Foreign Office of Akhenaten's time were stored ; and here, in 1887, a woman fertilizer-digger found the famous tablets since so widely known as The Amarna Tablets . Such of them as survived rough handling and official incredulity are now scattered in the British Museum, the Berlin Museum, and the Egyptian Museum . It is said that the original discoverer disposed of her interest in the find for about two shillings . The tablets of course have proved to be of the utmost value, as giving a first-hand picture of the views and desires of the various kings of Babylonia, Mitanni, Hatti, and Assyria, who wrote some of them to the king of Egypt ; while the tablets written by Egypt's vassal princes and governors in Syria, particularly those of Ribaddi of Byblos, Abi-Milki of Tyre, and Abdi-khipa of Jerusalem, are of even greater interest and value, since in them we can trace the process of the downfall of the Egyptian Empire in Asia .



Akhenaten's great palace and temple lay side by side to the south of the village of El-Tell . To the north of the village was a second palace, excavated in 1923-1925 by the Egypt Exploration Society's Expedition . The ruins of the city itself, though not imposing, are instructive, and enable the lay-out of Akhetaten to be grasped with more or less clearness . The city was traversed from north to south by three main streets, which were crossed at right angles by other streets running east and west . There was no attempt, however, to secure uniformity in the blocks of houses, which vary considerably in size, and sometimes even in alinement . Neither, apparently, was there any effort to keep the residential quarters and the industrial separate . Houses seem to be set down without any suggestion of an attempt to secure suitable grouping and consistency in arrangement . High priest rubs shoulders with leather-worker, and vizier with glass-maker ( see The City of Akhenaten, by Peet and Woolley, chapter I ) .



The mansions of the grandees were fine spacious houses, with great reception-halls, tastefully decorated, plenty of bedroom accommodation, and good provision of lavatories and bathrooms . The average size of the better type of house is about 65 to 70 feet square . The house of the Vizier Nakht, which is one of the finest examples of the domestic architecture of Akhetaten, measures about 95 feet by 85 feet . The workmen's houses are, on the whole, not disproportionately small, and even the poorest has the indispensable front hall, a living-room, a bedroom, and perhaps a kitchen . All the houses, from the mansion of the vizier down to the smallest workman's cottage, are, of course, built of crude brick, which was covered with white stucco or whitewash .





Part ( 2 ) .. Coming SoOoOon .....
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