Themes at the end of the Historical Period – Religion

1. The position of Amen-Re and priesthood of Amun

Forbes(2005) identified an important shift in religion and kingship during Thutmose IV’s reign that focused on ‘reshaping the image of the king vis-a- vis his relationship with the gods’, in particular the king’s ‘personal identification with the sun god, Re through an emphasis on solar worship.’

This handout focuses on religion, and its political implications.

But a re-evaluation of Thutmose IV’s few years on the throne has shown that, to a significant degree, this was when the first seeds were sown which produced the religious revolution ultimately wrought by his grandson, ...... Akhenaten. It is now also fully recognized that the fourth and final Thutmose initiated a foreign policy favouring diplomacy over militancy, which would be continued by both his son and grandson. Imperial Lives, Dennis Forbes, 2005. p.199

With Egypt now in a peacetime economy, Thutmose IV was able to focus his attention on reshaping the image of the king vis-a-vis his relationship with the gods. Although he maintained the fiction of himself as warrior-pharaoh, Menkheperure was principally, interested in establishing his personal identification with the sun god, Re. This began with his unprecedented veneration of the Great Sphinx of Giza as Horemakhet-Khepri-Re-Atum (or “Horus on the Horizon,” the sun god in all of his aspects, morning, noon and evening). Menkheperure’s emphasis on solar worship saw the bringing to the fore of a previously quite obscure sun-deity, the Aten: more specifically, the physical disk of the sun visible in the daytime sky. On a scarab commemorating his successful pacification campaign in Syria-Palestine at the beginning of the reign,...Thutmose [IV] names the Aten as accompanying him into battle, and the inhabitants of those foreign places whom he “trampled” as being “subjects to the rule of the Aten forever” In only a few decades, this very same Aten would become the chief and ultimately sole deity of the Two Lands. (Forbes. pp 205-06)

Note that this is a trend emerging. However, Thutmose IV’s building program still focused on Karnak. By the end of the HP Thutmose IV is giving more emphasis to the Re aspect of Amun-Re.

Another historian, Barbara Watterson (1997), however, was much more direct in claiming that ‘Amun’s status was lowered in the reign of Thutmose IV’. She used the Sphinx stela as evidence that Thutmose IV ‘gained the throne with the backing of the priesthood at Heliopolis’, rather than by associating his succession with an oracle of Amun, as Hatshepsut and Thutmose III had done.

Read this extract, again with highlighted sentences.

From Chapter 4, The Imperial Age

Religion The conquest of Syria-Palestine in the Eighteenth Dynasty introduced the Egyptians to foreign deities such as Baal, Anat and Astarte, who were quickly assimilated into the Egyptian pantheon. But in the Eighteenth Dynasty, two gods above all came to prominence. They were Amun and [Aten – beyond our period]

The cult of Amun was ...... in the Eighteenth Dynasty, after the princes of Thebes had made themselves rulers of Egypt, he [Amun] was elevated from local to state god, in which capacity he was syncretized with the great sun god, Re. Under the patronage of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, who both professed great devotion to him, Amun became Amen-Re, King of the Gods. An inscription’ 44 in the Temple of Amun at Karnak records that, when Thutmose III was a child, the statue of Amun sought him out and led him to stand in the place in the temple normally occupied by the king, an indication that the priesthood of Amun had made the young prince their protégé, engineering a divine oracle to proclaim him the next King of Egypt. Thutmose repaid them by pouring an enormous amount of the wealth gained from the empire into the treasury of Amun; and his immediate successors did likewise.

Amun’s status was lowered in the reign of Thutmose IV, who favoured the cult of the sun god, Re of Heliopolis. According to a stele145 erected between the paws of the Great Sphinx at Giza, Thutmose once had a dream in which Re-Harakhte promised him the throne in return for clearing sand away from the Sphinx. It seems clear from this that Thutmose was not the crown prince, but gained the throne with the backing of the priesthood at Heliopolis, and was thus in its debt.

(Watterson, The Egyptians, 1997, pp 135-6)

The political implications of this religious shift were addressed by Betsy Bryan (2000) who drew attention to the fact that Thutmose IV’s Sphinx Stela ‘made no reference to Amun-Ra’ which must have been deliberate and perhaps indicated both ‘the increasing importance of the Heliopolitan gods and the political influence of the north itself as the administrative centre of Egypt.’ This had implications for the power of the priesthood of Amun with its power base in Karnak. These implications were to become obvious in the reigns of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten.

I have provided an extract, with the relevant sentences highlighted.

The story of Thutmose TV’s elevation to the kingship related by the Giza Sphinx Stele inscription ...... that royal ideology often drew upon divine legitimization in the New Kingdom.

The sheer romance of the ‘Sphinx Stele’ is perhaps a good enough reason to quote part of it here: Now the statue of the very great Khepri [the Great Sphinx] rested in this place, great of fame, sacred of respect, the shade of Ra resting on him. Memphis and every city on its two sides came to him, their arms in adoration to his face, bearing great offerings for his ka. One of these days it happened that prince Thutmose ...... rested in the shadow of this great god. [Sleep and] dream [took possession of him] at the moment the sun was at zenith. Then he found the majesty of this noble god speaking from his own mouth like a father speaks to his son, and saying: ‘Look at me, observe me, my son Thutmose. I am your father Horemakhet-Khepri-Ra-Atum. I shall give to you the kingship (upon the land before the living].. .. [Behold, my condi- tion is like one in illness], all [my limbs being ruined]. The sand of the desert, upon which I used to be, (now) confronts me; and it is in order to cause that you do what is in my heart that I have waited.’

The request addressed to Thutmose to excavate the Sphinx from the sand was answered, and the king’s retaining wall around the amphitheatre, as well as a set of stelae set up around the arena, document his work in the region. The king’s interest in the sun-gods may be documented throughout his building campaigns and in his inscriptions as well. At Giza, he devoted himself not to a display of equestrianism and archery, but to the god Horemakhet and the Heliopolitan cult. He made no reference to Amun-Ra on the Sphinx Stele, allowing the northern deity (Horemakhet-Khepri-Ra-Atum) to dominate both as sun- god and as royal legitimator. Given that Amun, even on Amenhotep II’s Sphinx Stele, was the primeval creator and the god who determined the kingship, Thutmose [IV]’s omission of Amun from his stele must surely have been deliberate, perhaps reflecting both the increasing importance of the Heliopolitan gods and the political influence of the north itself as the administrative centre of Egypt.

At Karnak, the king shifted the main axis back to east—west, thus reducing the importance of Amenhotep II’s north—south entranceway. Placing a porch and door before the Fourth Pylon, Thutmose IV probably first left the original court untouched and changed only the monumental doorway itself. He erected a porch for the Fourth Pylon doorway with columns made of wood (ebony and meru according to an inscription), probably gilded with electrum. This porch would have been a protected space used during court rituals, and two contemporary representations of it have been preserved. B. Byran, in Shaw, I [ed] The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, 2000 pp 254-56

Reeves (2001) was even more direct in ascribing political motivation to Thutmose IV’s actions. He saw the accession of Thutmose IV as ‘decisive’, a reaction to the growth in power of the Amun priesthood especially since the reign of Hatshepsut. During Thutmose IV’s reign the Amun priesthood lost their hold on administrative offices to men from the army and the North. Furthermore, the depiction of Thutmose IV on an obelisk atKarnak had clear solar dimensions and the Aten scarab referred to foreigners being subject ‘to the rule of the Aten forever’, rather than ascribing rule over foreigners to Amun-Re.

In the monument erected at the Sphinx by [Amenhotep II], the earlier king’s descent from six gods is acknowledged, with a clear affirmation of the omnipotence of Amun of Thebes. [but]... in the Dream Stela of Tuthmosis IV, Amun does not even rate a mention.

In this text we detect fundamental change. With the accession of Tuthmosis IV, it is the priests of Heliopolis who are in the ascendant, and the Theban Amun to whom lip-service is now paid. Close scrutiny of the titles and careers of the officials active during the reigns of Tuthmosis IV and Amenophis Ill confirms this conclusion: no longer are the state’s key administrative posts held by members of the Amun priesthood, they have gone to more dependable subjects, including the viceroy of Nubia and other members of the military — and, more significantly, to men of northern stock......

...... Certain sections of Egyptian society with a vested interest in the realignment of temporal power evidently wished to set back the clock. Among their number were key, unnamed figures within the Heliopolitan priesthood. Anxious to re-establish the monarchy on a sounder theological footing, their goal was a return to the values of this purer past, when the king’s godlike status was unchallenged and the principal power in the heavens was Re — the solar deity ......

The accession of Tuthmosis IV was a decisive moment, heralding a discernible increase of kingly interest in the solar cult — particularly at Giza, as we have seen, as well as at Re’s cult centre, Heliopolis itself. Even in the south, at Karnak, the king’s personal devotion to the sun god was marked by the erection of an immense obelisk, first quarried by Tuthmosis III but left unfinished for several decades. The Heliopolitan influence, however, is most clearly revealed in Tuthmosis IV’s personal identification with the sun god: for the first time, we see pharaoh wearing in life the distinctive beaded shebyu-collar and armlets of gold previously found only in a funerary context, and occasionally ...... displaying on his head the disc emblematic of the sun god.

The most significant development of all, however, was the emphasis placed, from this time on, on a ‘new’ and highly honoured solar manifestation — the Aten. The Aten was not originally a god in its own right, but Re’s most sentient aspect, the sun god’s ‘visible body’ or light-energy. Occasionally, from as early as the reign of Amenophis II, this ‘force’ would appear as a disc sprouting a pair of arms, and consistently, following the accession of Ameriophis IV-Akhenaten, the representation would be one of radiating beams terminating in hands presenting the sign of ‘life’ to the noses of the king and his family — and to them alone.

THE ATEN SCARAB One important document relating to this new solar aspect, and an early, explicit reference to the Aten as an independent manifestation of solar divinity, is a large scarab, or beetle-form amulet, now in the British Museum. Scarabs were among the most popular of Egyptian protective charms, and possessed a powerful solar imagery in their own right: the beetle laid its eggs in a ball of dung, which it rolled along the ground with its legs in a motion reminiscent of the sun’s journey through the sky; when the eggs hatched, new life was seen to spring forth from seemingly dead matter, completing the metaphor. Nicholas Reeves, Egypt’s False Prophet Akhenaten, 2001 pp.46-49

Large scarab of Tuthmosis IV inscribed with eight columns of hieroglyphic text celebrating the reception of Mitannian tribute — or even the arrival at court of a princess of that country. The last sentence alludes to foreigners being ‘subjects to the rule of Aten forever’

Hopes this helps. You might model some of your own writing on texts in the coloured boxes!