Page 303 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

god. As soon as lie was officially adult he had, with the support
of Ai, proclaimed Aten as the only true god within his kingdom,
and changed his name to Akhenaten.

He had been surprised, and somewhat disappointed, when
the priests of Amon, instead of accepting the new revelation with
joy, had carried on as though the proclamation had never been
made. The idea of using force was abhorrent to him, for Aten

was a god of love, with no liking for war and blood offerings.
And so, again with the encouragement of Ai, Akhenaten had
retaliated by withdrawing his divine presence from Thebes, and

ordered the construction of a new capital in the desert halfway
between Thebes and Memphis, between Amon and Ra. There
he would wait, he said, until the manifest truth of Aten’s god­

head became clear to all Egypt.
All that the young princesses really gathered from their
grandmother’s story was that the priests in Thebes were in­

credibly wicked and their father incredibly brave. It did not
make them like Ai, who, as high priest of Aten in the great
temple of the new city, was impatient of children and always

appeared to them much too full of his own importance. But
Thebes seemed far away, and life at Akhetaten was very pleasant.
The first shadow came with the death, shortly afterward, of

Makt-Aten, the second princess, Ankh-esenpa-Aten’s nearest
sister. Akhenaten took it very hard, for he loved his children,
and even though he believed firmly that the little princess was
safe in the arms of the almighty father he was depressed for

several months. And the death of his mother, Teie, some years
later caused him to withdraw into himself.

He was worried, too, by the state of his kingdom. He had
confiscated the estates of Amon and his priests, and closed their
temples, but in retaliation the priests of Amon were preaching
that pharaoh had abandoned his people and been abandoned

by his father, the true god Amon. This was obviously a prelimi­
nary to an announcement, unprecedented in Egyptian history,

that Akhenaten was no longer pharaoh. But this they did not
feel strong enough yet to make, for the army and the civil service
were loyal to Akhenaten, and the machinery of government
worked undisturbed by religious doubts. The vizier of lower