Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs_ A Popular History of Ancient Egypt - Barbara Mertz [120]
Will it ever be found? The possibility seems unlikely. Akhenaton probably died at Amarna and was buried there. His tomb had been prepared for him, and fragments of a sarcophagus found therein belonged to him. It is possible that when Tutankhamon left the city of the Horizon of Aton, he moved the bodies of his royal relatives to Thebes for safekeeping. But if this is what happened, then what became of Akhenaton’s own coffin and golden ornaments, which must have surpassed those of Tutankhamon in splendor? He had seventeen or eighteen years in which to prepare them, in comparison with Tutankhamon’s nine years of rule, and he was not, as his critics have pointed out, a humble man. The god son of the sole universal god deserved the best that imperial grandeur could supply, and the empire was in better shape at Akhenaton’s accession than it was when Tutankhamon took over.
Active persecution of Akhenaton’s memory did not begin immediately after Tutankhamon went over to the enemy. The boy-king could still place in his tomb many of the cherished objects he had owned while he was still Tutankhaton, “Living Image of Aton,” including the throne, which still bears the name and shape of the solar orb. We are safe in assuming that Akhenaton was laid to rest with all the pomp and reverence due a divine king of a mighty empire. What befell his body afterward is a matter of pure speculation. Perhaps his enemies eventually broke into the tomb and destroyed it. Perhaps it was desecrated by tomb robbers of ancient times, as were the mummies and the treasures of other pharaohs. A third possibility—that when the city of Akhetaton was abandoned, Akhenaton was taken back to Thebes with the other royal dead—isn’t as romantically unlikely as it may sound. How it kindles the imagination, to fancy that the mummy of the first great heretic still lies undisturbed somewhere in the Valley of the Kings.
Lest the reader accuse me of going into inordinate detail over this confused era, let me assure him that I have not even touched upon many of the problems which are connected with this reign. More verbiage has been produced on Akhenaton and his times than on almost any other era of Egyptian history, and the work of scholars is remarkable for its heated tone. It is hard to be dispassionate about Akhenaton; you may loathe him or admire him, but you cannot ignore him. He has been described as a sexual degenerate and as a pure spiritual leader; as a destructive fanatic and as a great idealist. Psychiatrists have written about his psychoses and doctors have diagnosed his diseases. And Egyptologists—well, they have theories, and passionate ones, about every aspect of Akhenaton’s life except what he ate for breakfast. I know of no better illustration of the subjectivity of some types of historical research than the widely varying approaches to the character and exploits of Akhenaton, and the bias extends to the minor characters. Some people, for instance, persist in viewing that old scoundrel Ay as a dedicated servant of his country, and Ankhesenamon as a traitor to Egypt! I, of course, am completely dispassionate on this subject, as on everything that has to do with Akhenaton.
The city of the Horizon of Aton struggled on for a time after Tutankhamon deserted it, but eventually it died, as cities will when the spirit that animated them is gone. The houses were abandoned and the tombs in the cliffs were emptied or robbed. Some of the latter, designed for high officials, contain reliefs and inscriptions of interest, though many are in poor condition. The royal tomb, at the end of a long wadi, is in even worse condition. After the death of Ay his successor began the demolition of palaces and temples, a process that continued into the following dynasty. The site has been methodically excavated in modern times, most recently by the Egypt Exploration Society of En gland,