Renegade Pharaoh not so isolated
2001-04-15 10:35
Cairo - The recent discovery of the tomb of a high priest of the
monotheistic god Aten has reopened the debate on relations between
the renegade pharaoh Akhenaten and the powerful clergy of Ancient
Egypt, Egyptologists say.
In February, a Dutch-Egyptian team excavating just south of Cairo found the statue of Meri Nit, a high priest who served the
monotheistic cult established by Akhenaten, a pharaoh of the
XVIIIth dynasty who ruled Egypt for 17 years in the late 1300s BC.
Amenophis IV broke away from the polytheistic ancient Egyptian religion centred on the sun god Amon and took the name of Akhenaten
to worship a supreme being called Aten, whom he represented as a
solar disk whose rays terminated in outstretched hands.
Meri Nit also changed his name to Meri Aten and became the high priest of the Aten temple in Memphis, according to hieroglyphic
inscriptions found on the statue, the Supreme Council of
Antiquities (SCA) secretary general, Gaballah Ali Gaballah, told
AFP.
The statue was found in Saqqara, which was the burial ground for
the neighbouring ancient city of Memphis in northern Egypt, the seat
of the pharaohs who ruled the northern administrative region of
lower Egypt under the new kingdom (1567-1085 BC).
The find there proves that Akhenaten's worship of the sun god was not limited to Al-Amarna, the then capital of upper Egypt.
However, the Memphis temple which is mentioned in the inscriptions has yet to be discovered. Searches should resume in the winter, he added.
Despite strong opposition from the clergy who remained attached to
the old religion, which over the previous dynasties had grown into
a real state within the state, the renegade pharaoh and his wife
Nefertiti had the name of Amon and all signs of allegiance to the
god systematically erased, SCA experts said.
But the cult of the iconoclastic Akhenaten did not survive beyond his reign.
His father, Amenophis III, had represented the zenith of
conventional pharaonic rule, and his successor, originally
Tutankhaten, was forced by the clergy to restore the cult of Amon
and changed his name to Tutankhamon.
Tutankhamon, by the accidental discovery of his untouched tomb, was to become the best-known pharaoh of modern times.
"The disappearance of Akhenaten himself remains one of the greatest mysteries in pharaonic history", says Adel Hussein, in charge of the excavation in Saqqara.
He added the pharaoh seemed to have died "during religious wars led
by the Amon priests", but that the circumstances surrounding his
death were never elucidated.
Historians generally describe the unconventional Akhenaten as an idealist pharaoh, more concerned with spiritual matters than the politics of his empire, which was attacked by the Hittites under his rule.
Akhenaten has also attracted attention by the physical deformities he is represented with on the statues and frescoes found in Tell-el-Amarna, leading to theories that he suffered from a
physical disease.
"Sickly features, oblong head, swollen stomach... These are typical representations of the Amarnian aesthetic revolution, which
liberated shapes and brought realism to the forefront," Hussein
said. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA