Tutankhamun Uncovered Read Free Page B

time and the inclination to become totally absorbed in the new cult. He devoted every moment of his otherwise idle immature life to its study and received fulfilment through worship.
    However, the unexpectedly premature death of his elder brother flung him headlong into kingship an office for which by design he was totally unprepared. But his infatuation with his sole deity shielded him from fear of this new position. Within just a short time of becoming Pharaoh, Akhenaten proclaimed to his people that from now on there would be just one all-powerful god, the god of the sun disc, the Aten, who blessed and protected his people with his gentle, warming rays. He became represented in the stone reliefs of temples everywhere as a disc, its rays of light falling on the royal family and ending in open hands to caress them with warmth and proffer them gifts of health and long life. Akhenaten was consumed by his faith. Administration of the great Egyptian state and empire was subordinate to worship and, surely, better left to lesser mortals.
    Nowhere would the god be more exalted than at Aten’s birthplace, Akhetaten, ‘the city without equal’, which the Pharaoh conceived, designed and had built for him and where the Pharaoh, his family and his entourage could live out their lives in the sun god’s blissful care. The site the heretic chose to build this crucible of the one faith lay on the Nile about half way between Thebes and Memphis. It was three or more days’ good sailing downstream from Thebes. The new city rose up from the dust of the virgin desert. It was built on a broad plain held close in the embrace of a bow shaped arc of cliffs and hills on the east bank, at the doorstep of the sunrise. It became a land in itself beautiful, colourful, verdant and self-contained within its natural borders; a sacred, landlocked island unlike any other in Egypt; a city literally planned from the ground up on a grid dictated by the daily passage of the solar disc; a city of unmatchable beauty, with massive buildings and exceptional, lively art.
    Akhenaten’s creation became a magnificent tribute to his faith, but the Aten heresy, as it came to be known, did little to protect the people of Egypt. The Pharaoh gave no attention to the stewardship of his kingdom. There were insurrections, border problems, failed military campaigns, corruption in government, chaos in the bureaucracy and worse towards the end of Akhenaten’s reign a great plague had descended on the land; ‘the sickness’ everyone called it.
    The royal family were not immune, nor the Pharaoh himself. Akhenaten’s wives had died one by one. His queen, the beautiful Nefertiti, mother to most of his children, was the second of the royal family to succumb to the illness. All but one of his remaining daughters had died, almost year on year. And, after just three years in power, his brother, Smenkhkare, who had succeeded Akhenaten on his death, was himself lost to the same vile hand.
    Through this unhappy litany the much younger half-brother, Tutankhaten, ascended the throne at the tender age of eight. He was betrothed to Akhenaten’s sole surviving daughter, Ankhesenpaaten. And she, of pure royal blood but yet a child, became his chief wife, cementing the succession.
    Too young to rule without a guardian, the child Pharaoh was easily manipulated into returning to the old religious order. Thereby his elders could restore a sense of foundation and normality to the country, appease the gods, and lift the deadly veil of fever from the land. His old and trusted uncle, Ay, previously Master of the Horse for Akhenaten, had helped and guided Tutankhaten through this religious metamorphosis. To signal rejection of the sun god and properly reflect the old ways, he had the young king’s name changed to Tutankhamun and that of his queen to Ankhesenamun.
    But Ay himself had been manipulated. Through his earlier campaigns General Horemheb had become a man of some influence. His well