Entering through the portal of time into the mysterious world of ancient Egypt, guided by an armchair Indiana Jones
In our first journey of discovery through the portal of time we seek the real Akhenaten, a quest made possible by the spectacular developments and successes of Egyptology. And yet the artefacts and records unearthed in ruined temples, palaces, homes and tombs leave many aspects of the life and times of the heretic pharaoh shrouded in mystery and open to interpretation. This is our first sortie into this fascinating world of Egypt during the fourteenth century BCE, and we discover Akhenaten as a misunderstood high initiate with an amazing vision for his people that they rejected.
1. The Dark Empire of Egypt and the Young Heretic King Filled with Living Light
The language of legend and fairy tale is extremely powerful as it speaks to the imagination and knowing of the human heart. During the recent school holidays (April, 2016) my wife Helen and I went to the movies to see The Huntsman: Winter’s War with two of our grandchildren. The story is spellbinding (okay the script is riddled with holes) for young and old alike (a prequel to the fairy tale of Snow White) and tells how the Ice Queen, in the grip of evil, attempts to eradicate the power of love from the world. As her empire grows the world is in the process of becoming a frozen wasteland … and yet, through the indomitable human spirit, love and goodness find a way to prevail against overwhelming odds.
The age-old story of the battle of good against evil continues to inspire us. The story of Akhenaten (who changed his name from Amenhotpe IV) can be glimpsed from the hard facts of Egyptian political history etched in stone and recovered by archaeologists. But he is often portrayed in a bad light as a weak and inadequate king by specialists impressed by despotic kings, before and after, who ruled a military empire with an iron fist. It struck me that when the deeper level of meaning is grasped, related to the secret history of Israel in Egypt, that the story can be encapsulated using the compelling language of fairy tale. Here is my imaginative retelling of the intertwined stories of Akhenaten and Moses.
Once upon a time in the land of the Nile there was a people who lived and died in the living light of eternity. And in the silence of their splendid isolation from other peoples, they built Pyramids encased in polished limestone that reflected the brilliant light of the sun and gave the appearance of stars fallen to earth.
And then after the passage of a thousand years, a pharaoh called Thutmose I was born with a dark vision of Egypt as a mighty political power. With boundless energy he conducted military campaigns to the south in Sudan and to the north in Palestine and Syria, and made the boundaries of Egypt coincide with those encircled by the sun. And he built mighty temples and palaces throughout the land to enhance the glory of his rule. The empire grew stronger in the course of the next five generations when his descendants ascended the pharaonic throne.
But in the sixth generation of his lineage a figure of living light was born whose name was Akhenaten. And he turned his back on the idea of Egypt as an empire, left the old capital of Thebes, and closed all the shrines dedicated to the many gods of Egypt. The young king led a religious revolution that disempowered the corrupted priesthoods along the Nile and made many enemies in high places. As part of a new political order he built a city called Akhetaten on virgin land untouched by spade, hammer and trowel. The city was dedicated to the universal wisdom streaming from the Aten (God in the form of the sun disk) and the power of love personified by his beautiful wife Nefertiti and their six daughters – raised up from the sands of Middle Egypt to be a beacon of living light.
But after seventeen short years on the throne the king of light died and within a decade usurpers had demolished his city, defaced his statues, and erased his name from every inscription. With great fanfare the old shrines were reopened and the elites systematically set about erasing all memory of Akhenaten’s hated rule and every vestige of the teachings of light, life and love.
And during the next three generations the majestic gloom of the empire reached its greatest intensity and military power with the rise of Ramesses the Great and his fifty sons and fifty daughters. But in the fourth generation the ‘son’ of Akhenaten was born in a cradle of reeds floating on the Nile, representing the ‘life’ bequeathed to this baby from above. And that ‘son,’ born through spirit and blood, was Moses the Hebrew destined by the unseen powers to be the saviour of his suffering people and a light unto the world. And as he grew to maturity the wheels of ambition continued to drive the empire as the light of eternity grew dimmer.
And the Israelites took the mysteries of the sun (gold) and of the moon (silver) from the Egyptians, and thus they stripped the Egyptians of the riches of a culture grown old and corrupt (Ex. 12:35-36). Then Moses led the courageous Israelites into the dangerous freedoms of the Sinai wilderness, and towards the Promised Land of the future flowing with milk and honey.
But instead of living happily ever after, the Israelites continued to be guided and tested by their strong but loving God in a rollercoaster ride towards redemption through the transformation of evil into good.
So what looked like a failed experiment in Akhenaten’s revolutionary monotheism was a bequest to Israel evident in the monotheism of Moses and his composition of the Torah. And the light was not extinguished but continued to live in the hearts and minds of the chosen ones.
Despite the language, this is not a fairy tale set in the land of the Nile. Rather, when the legend of Moses is interpreted with the aid of records related to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties of Egypt, I have discovered that this is factual history. But the reconstruction cannot be made from the Bible alone nor the findings of Egyptologists. This secret history rooted in the identity, teachings and destiny of Akhenaten and his relationship to Moses can only be pieced together through a perspective that integrates the decipherment of biblical legends and Egyptology. We will explore these frontiers of knowledge that remain obscured to the great majority of specialists and mainstream academic institutions.
Remarkably, even to myself, the essential elements of the secret history of Israel in Egypt are recounted above in the language of fairy tales – elegantly and powerfully, and without exaggeration or distortion.
2. Akhenaten Erased from Egyptian History, and Now the Most Famous Face in Modern Egyptology
A map of Egypt during pharaonic times, showing Akhetaten (=Amarna) in Middle Egypt.
Akhenaten (reigned c.1372-1355 BCE) ruled Egypt for seventeen years in the mid-fourteenth century and he is surely one of the most extraordinary individuals in the annals of any history. Only two hundred years ago he was unknown to the Western world. The episodes in this tale are focused on the city of Akhetaten (modern Tell el Amarna) built by the king on virgin land by the Nile in Middle Egypt, and can be outlined as follows:
1714 Pater Sicard sketched boundary stelae marking the city limits
1824 Wilkinson discovered the nearby rock tombs
1828 Champollion (the first to decipher hieroglyphics) visited Amarna briefly
1843/45 Richard Lepsius the founder of German Egyptology stayed at Amarna for
ten days
1851 Lepsius published his theory that Akhenaten founded ‘a pure solar cult’
1883/84 Bouriant copied the most important inscriptions, including the ‘Great Hymn
to the Aten’
1895 Breasted composed his Berlin dissertation comparing Akhenaten’s hymn
to Psalm 104
1906 In History of Egypt Breasted characterizes Akhenaten’s religion as a
precursor to biblical monotheism
The history of archaeology abounds with sensational discoveries but none is more exciting or stimulates more debate than the rediscovery of Akhenaten during the second half of the nineteenth century, one of the most remarkable chapters in modern Egyptology. Jan Assmann sums up this achievement:
What archaeology brought to light was not only a city with temples, palaces, villas, houses, sculptures, texts, and the like, but a religious revolution of immense consequences: the abolition of traditional religion and the institution of a new and apparently monotheistic cult, the first founding of a religion in history (From Akhenaten to Moses: Ancient Egypt and Religious Change, Cairo, AUC Press, 2014, p. 62).
The military usurper Horemheb (1343-1315 BCE) ascended the pharaonic throne twelve years after the death of Akhenaten, probably after murdering Tutankhamun the boy king. The usurper undertook a systematic campaign of wanton destruction that included demolition of the new city (called Akhetaten) built by his revolutionary predecessor at Tell el Amarna, as well as sun temples throughout the land (at Karnak, Memphis and elsewhere). Statues and monuments were smashed and inscriptions erased in a concerted effort to eradicate all memory of the heretic pharaoh and his hated reforms and innovations. Horemheb even inflated the length of his reign from the factual 28 to 59 years, appropriating the 31 years of Akhenaten and the other Amarna monarchs.
It is irony on a grand scale that Akhenaten, his beautiful wife Nefertiti and son Tutankhamun have become the three most famous faces in the twenty-seven centuries of pharaonic Egypt. In 1891-2 Flinders Petrie was the first Egyptologist to fall under the spell of Akhenaten while working at Amarna. Since then he has become a magnet for controversy and wildly divergent opinions regarding who he was, what he taught, and what he was trying to achieve.
Anyone trying to figure out ‘what really happened’ must negotiate a labyrinth of theories and opinions. Many personal issues remain controversial. For instance, why did Akhenaten instruct artists to represent him as effeminate or androgynous with abnormal distortions of his anatomy? This has prompted some pathologists to suggest that he may have suffered from an endocrine disorder related to the pituitary gland. Earlier Egyptologists were shocked to discover that he may have practised incest with two of his six daughters and fathered children through them. And an aura of mystery surrounds Nefertiti and her sudden disappearance from court life inferred from her absence in iconography.
3. Deranged Megalomaniac Founding a Weird Cult, or Visionary Genius Centuries Ahead of His Time?
With breathtaking audacity Akhenaten eliminated sixteen centuries of religious traditions going back to the First Dynasty by abolishing the pantheons of Heliopolis, Hermopolis and Memphis. The thronging gods with popular appeal were replaced by the distant figure of the Aten represented as the sun disk, to the displeasure of many. In a year or so he put whole priesthoods out of business by closing prestigious temples to Amun, Osiris and other gods throughout the land. We can only imagine the enemies that he made amongst the elites of Egyptian society through his ruthless reformation of Egyptian culture.
The face of Akhenaten represented in the contours of a statue from Karnak,
now in the Luxor Museum.
For Shakespeare beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it seems that a similar truth applies to the identity of Akhenaten. For James Breasted he was ‘the first individual in history’ (The Dawn of Conscience, 1933), while for Sigmund Freud he mentored Moses the biblical lawgiver. Two of his more recent erudite ‘biographers’ Donald Redford (1984) and Cyril Aldred (1988) arrive at diametrically opposed assessments of his character.
Redford wants to confront his readers with ‘factual evidence’ so that they are in a position to ‘ferret out the truth’ rather than be seduced by ‘the scholar’s or the novelist’s romanticized version of the story.’ His research discloses deep character flaws in a man ‘deemed ugly by the accepted standards of the day,’ a fearful person who was a poor judge of character, and fawned over by sycophants. In connection with affairs of state, he is guilty of ‘refined sloth.’ ‘True, he rides a chariot’ but ‘how often does he walk?’ There are a few positives in the depressing portrait, however, since he ‘possessed unusual ability as a poet’ and ‘had a flair for art, sculpture and design.’ Summing up:
For all that can be said in his favour, Akhenaten in spirit remains to the end totalitarian. The right of an individual freely to choose was wholly foreign to him. … I cannot conceive a more tiresome regime under which to be fated to live (Akhenaten: the Heretic King, Princeton University Press, 1984, pp. 232-235).
This negative interpretation tells us more about Redford as an American living in the twentieth century than it does about Akhenaten turning his back on the ideology of empire and building a city to function as a beacon of spiritual light.
Against Redford’s picture, Aldred argues that many unflattering impressions stem from ‘Akhenaten’s practice of revealing himself rather freely to his intimates as compared with other kings’ and ‘his taste for relaxed domesticity’ evident in murals depicting the royal family at play. And on some occasions servants experience joy in his presence and refer to ‘The Good Ruler who loves Mankind.’
The royal family at play: Akhenaten, Nefertiti and three of their daughters (an altar piece from Amarna).
Undoubtedly his preoccupation with the Aten/God (represented as the sun disk) diverted his attention and that of officials from the affairs of government. Aldred notes that ‘Such a dereliction from statecraft to theology led to neglect, corruption and near-anarchy.’ When the winds of change arrived, all too soon, the result was ‘the virtual extermination of the ruling family.’ It is a remarkable fact that the city of Akhetaten was occupied for less than twenty years - from about 1360 as the new capital and then abandoned by 1343 BCE within a dozen years of Akhenaten’s death (The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt 1, pp. 61f.).
Aldred concludes his book by noting a linkage from the pharaoh to Moses:
The eclipse of Akhenaten was complete. After the Amarna interlude, the life of Egypt resumed its flow through familiar channels. Yet perversely, the ideas to which Akhenaten had sacrificed so much did not wholly die with him. They continued to haunt the minds of others, and eventually prevailed as the ordinances for the conduct of Man vis-a-vis God in the Decalogue [i.e., the Ten Commandments] that was part of another ‘Teaching’ (Akhenaten: King of Egypt, London, Thames and Hudson, 1988, pp. 303-306).
This hidden connection evident in the commonality of Atenic and Yahwistic monotheism is explored in a later post.
4. Akhenaten Fighting Against the Corrupting Influences of Egypt as an Imperial Power
Who was Akhenaten (reigned 1372-1355 BCE), what were his ideals, and what did he achieve? And why did he polarize opinions in his own day and into the present? He ruled Egypt with his beautiful wife Nefertiti by his side. They had six daughters and his son Tutankhamun by another wife ruled briefly. The boy king became synonymous with the glories of the land of the Nile when his tomb filled with treasures of gold was discovered intact by Howard Carter in 1922.
A bust of Queen Nefertiti who was venerated at Amarna as especially favoured by the Aten, a face to rival
that of Helen of Troy who launched a thousand ships according to legend.
The high status of Nefertiti at the Amarna court can be appreciated from a set of titles and epithets that are exclusive to her. Marianne Eaton-Krauss comments:
Among his wives, only Nefertiti wore crowns and only she was entitled to have a uraeus at her brow. Aten, too, was known to be partial to Nefertiti; she is the only person, other than Akhenaten, who received life from the god and who was fondled by Aten’s hands. In return, she was often shown actively worshipping the sun disk (The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt 2, 2001, p. 514).
There is a backstory (seldom mentioned by specialists) to Akhenaten’s fiery dissatisfaction with the state of Egyptian religion and society. This has to do with the period when Egypt became an empire built on military power and vassal states that began 150 years earlier with Thutmose I (c.1525-1516 BCE). The Anthroposophist Emil Bock regards Akhenaten as a visionary, the opposite of Thutmose III (c.1504-1452 BCE) and other despotic empire builders who preceded him:
He was the first Utopian idealist of mankind, an avowed opponent of all quest for power and the use of force. He turned his back on the splendid royal residence of Thebes and the temples of Karnak. Instead of siding with the priesthood of Thebes and Karnak, corrupted by political involvement, and their gods of black magic, he adhered to the light-filled sun divinity proclaimed in Heliopolis. … The figure of Akhenaten was a living protest against Egypt’s decadence at a time when the country had attained the pinnacle of earthly power and treasures of gold (Moses: From the Mysteries of Egypt to the Judges of Israel, Edinburgh, Floris Books, 1986, pp. 17f.).
Only two sources exist that offer a window onto the corruption that had engulfed Egyptian society by Amarna and Ramesside times. One source is the political agenda, teachings and reformation of Akhenaten and the other is the picture that can be inferred from the books of Genesis and Exodus in the Bible. Even though, as discussed in the first post, these narratives are allegorical legends composed by Ezra it is possible to draw political inferences concerning core facts related to the actual political history of the Israelites settled in the land of Egypt.
In the novella (short novel) of Joseph (Gen. 37-50) we encounter a rags-to-riches tale of a young Semite from Mesopotamia who was sold into slavery by his brothers, jealous because he was the favourite of their father Jacob. The visionary powers of Joseph enabled him to accurately interpret Pharaoh’s dreams and as a result he rose to power and was invested as the governor or vizier of all Egypt, second only to the king (Gen. 41:37-45). And through Joseph’s wise leadership the land of Egypt was saved from a disastrous famine and prospered. Finally Joseph was embalmed and buried in Egypt with full ceremonial honours and the book of Genesis closes in dramatic fashion by reporting the lid of his sarcophagus being set in place (Gen. 50:26).
But a very different scenario emerges in the next episode of the legend told in the book of Exodus. The fortunes of the Hebrews descended from Joseph had plummeted and they have become enslaved as a Semitic underclass building store cities for the new Pharaoh who, significantly, ‘did not know Joseph’ (Ex. 1:8-14). Even natural procreation was controlled by the king’s tyrannical policy that all male babies be drowned at birth! (Ex. 1:15-22). In the darkness of this despotic regime Moses was born in secret and through fortuitous circumstances he rose to challenge the political and military power of Pharaoh. And in the course of this challenge Yahweh, the god of Moses, wreaks havoc on the ruler and his kingdom by bringing ten plagues (Ex. 7:14-12:32) that weaken his resolve. A dramatic crescendo is recounted from the first plague of the Nile turned into blood by the magical power of Aaron’s rod to the last that brought death to the firstborn offspring from Pharaoh’s son to that of the simplest peasant. In the wake of this tragedy the king finally agreed to allow the Hebrews to depart from the land of Egypt (Ex. 12:29-32).
Given the far-fetched subject matter, with good reason Bock urges us not to interpret these legends in a deadening literal sense:
With the help of Aaron’s magical forces, Moses overcame Egypt in the spiritual battle assigned to him. The Bible gives imaginative descriptions of the two brothers’ appearance before Pharaoh and the ten plagues that they conjure up over Egypt. Such imaginative descriptions must not be misunderstood as … grotesque external miracles, but interpreted clearly into outer historical conceptions (Moses, p. 50).
A century before Moses the heroic figure of Akhenaten offered the Egyptian people a new beginning, the possibility of an age of living light radiated by the Aten that infused his new city of Akhetaten built on virgin land. Yet the hard facts of political history tell us that the Egyptian elites utterly rejected his vision, and the consequences can be discerned in the life and career of Moses who became engaged in a civil war known as ‘the feud of the Ramessides.’ Before going forward to the time of Moses, though, I want to explore some of Akhenaten’s teachings in depth.
5. The Next Post: Akhenaten as the First Humanist with a Visionary Understanding of the Male Sperm and Female Egg in Human Procreation
Esoteric (related to the ‘inner’ or hidden realm of existence) teachings probe beneath the surface of outer circumstances in history, and recognize that a high initiate like Akhenaten dwells in a consciousness centuries ahead of his time. This is explored in the next post in connection with his composition of the famous Hymn to the Aten, with the aim of showing that he possessed biomedical knowledge of human procreation more advanced than that of Aristotle who was living a thousand years later.