Page 311 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

— 1Hb uiiiuussea renet ot tne royal children drinking wine
beneath the spreading rays of the sun-god was undoubtedly
meant to be symbolic of the state of Egypt, carefree plenty under

the guidance of the all-wise priests of Amon. But even the child­
rulers, as they grew through their teen-age years, could see that

this picture was false. The land was rich enough, but the priests
of Amon exploited it with ruthless hand. The heresy which had
reigned for fifteen years had extinguished all the human kindness
that had once been a feature of the worship of Amon. The priests

had been badly frightened, and for that the people should pay.
In the name of the pharaoh and of Amon the priests conducted
an inquisition over the whole land. And if in many cases the

inquisitors proved less than incorruptible, and charges of heresy
were levied or laid aside as it paid best, it should not be forgotten
that Amon and his priests had also suffered material losses under

the reformation, and it was only reasonable that the counter­
reformation should make these good.
The inquisition tended, as inquisitions do, to vent itself most

strongly on racial minorities. One of these in particular had been
especially strongly infected by the heresy. The children of
Israel, a Semitic-speaking Amorite and Canaanite minority living

mainly in the eastern delta, claimed descent from a certain
Abraham, whose grandson, they said, had entered Egypt with
his people even before the Hyksos conquest, some four hundred

years ago. And over the centuries this odd people had retained
its individuality, as a caste of shepherds and traders, with its
own language and its own religion. That religion had been the

oddest thing about them, for they had only a single tribal god
instead of the multitude of gods which every other people had.
And during the Aten reformation they had been receptive of the

new heresy, with its blasphemous talk of a single god ruling all
mankind. Some of the children of Israel claimed that their own
god Yahwa was identical with Aten; others that Yahwa, and not

Aten, was the only true god of all mankind. In either case it was
rampant heresy, and a fine of cattle and goods was imposed on
the children of Israel, of sufficient size to ensure their insolvency

and indebtedness for many generations.
Queen Ankhesenamon was not greatly interested in e