As the reign and influence of Queen Hatasu or Hatshepsut included, in part as those of her father and two brothers, so did that of Queen Tyi those of husband and son. The fair young girl who had left her own country with high hopes and aspirations had crystallized into the determined woman, who bent all the energies of a strong nature to the accomplishment of her wishes and purposes. The religion of her fore-fathers was no longer kept in the background. She inspired her son with the zeal of an apostle or a fanatic, as we may choose to consider it, and the king devoted his life to upturning the old order of things and an endeavor to establish the new. His father had shown much deference to his wife’s religious faith. In the new festival, instituted in his honor, that of the Solar Disk, on the 16th of Athyr (October 4th), a prominent place had been assigned in the procession to the boat of the sun “Aten-ne-fru.” He also put the disk on the head of his crlo-sphinxes and on the statues of the goddesses Pasht and Sekhet; but all this was, in a measure, tentative.
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It remained for Amenophis IV, who was by early writers numbered among the Stranger kings, till his true paternity was discovered and now styled himself “Akhenaten” of “Khu-n-aten,” Worshipper of the (Sun’s Disk) to proclaim openly his mother’s faith. It has been suggested that his aim was to provide a god visible to all the people of his extensive empire, and who could be worshipped in common by all, or jealousy between the priests of Heliopolis and those of Thebes may have been another ingredient in the mixed and vexed problem. Beside his father’s great temple at Luxor he erected a sanctuary of the sun, and in various places the name of Amon was obliterated.
Whatever the subsequent history of Queen Tyi’s other children, it was to the eldest son that the mother evidently clung, and we may perhaps believe that he, chiefly of them all, shared her views and opinions. On slips from toilette boxes, etc., are found the names of the princesses Sat-amen, Hent-mer-hab and Ast; there was also a son, with the family name of Tahutmes. Bekaten is by some believed to be the youngest and favorite daughter of Tyi, by others to be her grand-daughter, the child of Amenophis IV, who is thought to have married before his father’s death. At Somma is a group of the king and Tyi. At Qurneh a funeral temple north of Ramesseum, rearranged by Amenhotep III for his daughter Sit-amen, which proves that this child, at least, died before the father. Another inscription read, “Amen’nekht, princess, prays with her mother, before[176] Amenhotep III, because he praises her beautiful face and honors her beauty.” Some of the children probably died young, some may have married and gone elsewhere, but the eldest, the father’s successor, had both the will and the power to plant the new faith, and with him Queen Tyi’s later life seems closely associated.
As the character of this prince has afforded historians much ground for speculation, so do the presentments that remain of him. No cartoon in Punch could more ludicrously caricature the human face than do the pictures that are preserved of King Khu-n-aten. Yet in their ghastly ugliness they still retain the conventional type. Many writers seem to consider them as reliable as other likenesses, and attribute the protruding lips and attenuated mis-shapen proportions to heredity, some ancestor of negro blood, or the results of ill health. Others offer no explanation. It seems impossible that any reigning king (and in no period of Egyptian history does the monarch appear to be more autocratic than at this time) should have permitted such portraits of himself to remain to posterity. He was the son of handsome parents. It is possible that the conventional type was considered so beautiful that no deviation which yet preserved the general outline could mar it? Or perchance is there another solution. The king forced upon the country a religion abhorrent to the priests, to the majority of the people, and to his successors, who soon returned to the polytheistic faith and worship of earlier centuries, and who might well have taken pleasure[177] in caricaturing and handing down to their descendants a garbled picture of the hated monarch, iconoclast as he seemed to them, reformer as he doubtless appeared in the eyes of his mother and all the converts to the worship of the sun. The slanting forehead, the long thin nose, the protruding, flexible mouth, the serpent-like neck and the ungainly proportions of the figure are little calculated to attract admiration.
A parallel to this might perhaps be found in the case of Richard III of England, who, as he was a monster of wickedness, must needs be a monster of ugliness as well, and whose personal defects have been exaggerated by limner and scribe until his traditional semblance is that of a dwarfish fiend.
Says Curtis, “the old Egyptian artist was as sure of his hand and eye as the French artist who cut his pupil’s paper with his thumb nail to indicate that the line should run so and not otherwise. The coloring is rude and inexpressive, the drawing of the human figure conventional, for the church or the priests ordained how the human form should be drawn. Later the church and priests ordained how the human form should be governed. Yet, O sumptuous scarlet queen sitting on seven hills, you were generous to art, while you were wronging nature.”
Khu-n-aten or Akhenaten married, however, and probably in youth, as he was the father of quite a large family. His wife is spoken of as the daughter of Dushratta and may have been the grand-daughter of an Egyptian king, her mother[178] having married a Syrian prince. Dushratta, writing to Queen Tyi, before Amenophis IV took up affairs, greets Tadekhipa, his daughter, Tyi’s daughter-in-law. As seems to have been the custom, she changed her name on coming to Egypt and is known as Aten’neferu,’ Nefertiti, or Nefertity. She was always closely associated with the king and there seems no mention of other wives or connections of any kind. She doubtless shared or was a convert to his faith and we may judge its enthusiastic supporter.
Queen Tyi appears to have remained in Thebes while the king and his wife went to superintend the building of the temple, palaces, etc., of the new city which Khu-n-aten had resolved to build and make his royal residence. Angry blood rose between him, his priests and his people, but he was dictator, he would no longer dwell among them, but in a new and richly adorned city, worthy of the faith which he held, and whose building should equal or surpass older monuments. He issued a command to obliterate from the tombs of his ancestors the names of the god Amon and the goddess Mut. This fanned the smouldering discontent into flames and open rebellion broke out. Against Amon the king seemed to hold a particular spite, and around the shrine of this god priests and followers mustered their forces.
But although the king abandoned Thebes, he retained his power and was not overthrown. No council of priests or people brought him to trial, sent him into exile, or took his life. Nor in turn[179] does he seem to have been severe or vengeful. No records remain, as is frequently the case in such instances, of barbarous punishments or cruel executions being meted out to the offenders. For the time being, if for that only, he was absolute and carried his point. He could afford to be generous.
The new capital was distant from both Memphis and Thebes, in middle Egypt, and received the name of Khu-a-ten, or as it is elsewhere given, Khuteteyn, “the horizon of the sun,” the modern Tel-el-Amarna or El-Amarna, the extensive ruins of which may yet be seen on both banks of the Nile. Like Solomon in Scripture, the potentate summoned to his assistance both artists and artizans, and the work was pressed with all possible vigor and speed. First the temple, then the palaces and homes of the nobility, lastly, in the neighborhood, their tombs. It is said that a revolution in art proceeded side by side with that in religion, an attempt was made to discard the older traditions and approximate more nearly to nature, and the specimen of these attempts at realism, to be found in the tombs, are of great interest. To this fact some authorities attribute the singular and disagreeable portraits of the king before referred to.
How deeply Queen Tyi’s heart was stirred and how keenly her feelings were concerned we may well conceive. The great enterprise was the development of her heart’s desire and every aid in her power she must have lent to the king’s assistance. Remaining in the old city she could no[180] doubt expedite the sending of all sorts of supplies and materials required for the buildings and the private needs of her beloved son and his family.
Architecture and sculpture were ever important in the eyes of the Egyptian kings, and even the queens had their own sculptors and overseers of such work. Timber was scarce, quarries of sandstone and limestone numerous, hence the more enduring wa............