Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-01-02

NO. 53.THE GOD-KINGS OF EGYPT
| The story of priest and king in Egypt is
that of BabylOnia The kings Of Sumeria
and Assyria were priests who had become
| kings; they were secuarized priests.
The Pharaoh of Egypt does not appear to
| have followed precisely that line. Already
| in the very oldest records the Pharaoh has
power and Importance exceeding that Of
any priest He is, in fact, a god and more
| than either priest or king. We do not know
how he got to that position. No monarch of
| Sumeria or Babyonia or Assyria could have
| induced his people to do for him what the
great pyramidbuilding PharaOhs of the WITH
Dynasty made their people do in those vast
erectons.
Three Gods in One
The earlier Pharaohs were not improbably
regarded as incarnations of the dominant god.
The falcon god HOruS sits behind the head OF
the great statue of Chephren. So late a
monarch as Rameses III. (XIXth Dynasty
is represented upon his carcOphagus (noW at
Cambridge bearing the distinctive symbols
of the three great gods of the Egyptian sys-
| tenn. He carries the two sectors OF Osiris,
| the god of day and resurrection; upon his
! head are the horns of the cow goddess Hath
| or, and also the sun ball and feathers Of
Ammon Ra. He is not merely wearing the
| symbols of these gods a devOut Babylon
ian might wear the symbols of Bel-Marduk;
he is these three gods in one
We IlnQ also d NUMBER OIL sculptures ana
paintings to enforce the idea that the Pha-
| raohs were the actual sons of gods. The
divine fathering and birth Of AmenOphis Ill,
for instance (of the XVITTH Dynasty, is
displayed in extra ordinary detail in a series
of sculptures at Luxor. Moreover, it was
held that the Pharaohs being of so divine a
strain, could not marry common clay, and
consequently they were accustomed to marry
blood relations within the degrees of consan-
guinity now prohibited, even marrying their
sisters.
The struggle between palace and temple
came into Egyptian history, therefore, at a
different angle from that at which it came
in. Prof. Maspero Tin his New Light on
Ancient Egypt'D gives a very interesting
account of the struggle of Amenophis ".
with the priesthoods, and particularly with
priests of the great god, Ammon Ra, Lord
of Karnak
Dynastic Romance
The mother of Amenophis ". was not of
the of Pharaoh; it would seem that his
father, AmenOphis Ill, made a love match
with subject, beautiful Syrian named
Til, and Prof. Maspero finds in the possible
opposition to and annoyance of this queen
by the priests of Ammon Ra the beginnings
of the quarrel. She may, he thinks, have
inspired her son with a fanatical hatred
of Ammon Ra. But Amenophis ". may
have had wider view. Like the Babylonian
NabOnidus, who lived thousand years later,
lie Inlay nave udu III NINA the prODlem OF
moral unity in his empire.
We have already noted that Amenophis III
ruled from Ethiopia to the Euphrates and
that the store of letters to himself and his
son found at Tel-Amarna show a very wide
range of interest and influence. At any rate,
Amenophis ". set himself to close all the
Egyptian and Syrian temples, to put an end
to all sectarian worship throughout his
dOminiOns, and to establish everywhere the
worship of one god, Atom, the solar disk.
He left his capital Thebes, which even
more the city of Ammon Ra than later Baby
lon was the city of Bel-Marduk, and set up
his capital at Tel-Amarna; he altered has
name from "Amenophis," which consecrated
him to AmmOn (Amen) to "AkhnatOn," the
Suns Glory; and he held his own against
all the priesthoods of his empire for eighteen
years and died Pharaoh.
Opinion upon Amenophis ", or Allh-
nation, differ very widely. There are those
who regard him as the creator Of his
mothers hatred of Ammon and the uXor
ious spouse of a beautiful wife. Certainly
he loved his wife very passiOnately; he
showed her great honor-Egypt bonored
women, and was ruled at different times
by several queensland he was sculptured
in one instance with his wife seated upon
his knees, and in another in the act of
kissing her in chariot but men who