The Metamorphoses of Titus

Akhetaten

It is written, In the fifth year, on the thirteenth day of the eighth month of the reign of Amenophis IV - Akhenaten, the pharaoh, went with his queen, Neferatiti, to the banks of the great river, in the region near Hermopolis, the city of Thoth, the god of thought. Here, in the fifteenth nome of Upper Egypt, that of the lower sycamore and viper, at a point where the Arabic Chain curls round itself into a huge semi-circle, he dedicated his city of Akhetaten - the horizon of the globe. At the boundaries he placed fourteen majestic stele all hewn out of the solid rock; eleven of them on the right bank and three against the numulithic limestone of the mountains to the west. On these the king declared in stone that he would never travel beyond this place, neither to the north nor to the south, neither to the rising nor to the setting sun, and that nowhere could be found a more promising or more holy place to venerate the new lord of the world.

On one of these stele is inscribed, The Aten desires that there be made for him a great city as a monument with an eternal and everlasting name. Now, it is the Aten, my father, who advised me concerning it, so that it might be made for Him. Behold, it is Pharaoh who has discovered it. In this place I shall make the House of the Aten. I shall make the Mansion of the Aten. I shall make the Sun Temple of the Great King's Wife, Neferatiti. I shall make the House of Rejoicing for the Aten, my father, in the Island of the Aten, Distinguished in Jubilees. And I shall make for myself the apartments of Pharaoh and of the Great King's Wife. In Akhetaten, in this place, I shall do all these things. I shall make here a great city to live and pray in.

Here was a project for an imperium; for an imperial and messianic builder of new truths, a maker of new religions. This in a time of certainties handed down through the generations, for a ruler who could look to the four corners of the world and see no end to his dominions and his power and who was wealthy beyond knowing.

An army was prepared, an army of slaves with their weapons of many skills to strike against a valley of dead sands, manoeuvres carefully planned to trick that intransigent enemy. Planned by a vizier appointed to supervise and chiefs of work and skilled assistants and those trained to give orders and obey in their turn. All of these were set to work and nothing was spared.

And a new form of art was ordained to do away with the old in which the figures were drawn to a formula learned from books in the schools at Thebes and the figures shown as ideal with bodies that were perfect. And it would do away with the old writing also of old praises handed down unchanged for generations. Bek, the master sculptor of the city always told those who asked that he had been taught by the pharaoh himself and that his task was to portray only the truth illuminated by the Aten and nothing more and, if possible, nothing less. Pharaoh spoke and in his speaking demanded honesty of the sculpture of his city and his lands, sometimes, indeed, to much honesty. Thus were the images sometimes too close to the real, no longer perfect but included all faults and imperfections. so unlike those of Amun that the pilgrim was used to that he would never forget them. This was a new kind of imaging: naturalistic and drawn from the life. The pharaoh was presented like a giant but all of his features, his thin, effeminate body, present to the life. There were his thin limbs and his swollen thighs, his immaculate small hands and his weak chest. Above all, his long, thin face, high above, with its large dark eyes with their thick brows, high cheekbones and sunken cheeks below them the thin lips with their subtle smile, his feminine curves, heavy thighs and belly, half-closed eyes, full lips, and a long face and neck. And so it was ordered.

And down the great river from the old city came ship after ship low in the water, loaded with the riches of the old city; gold and silver and bronze and linens and all else needful. Also men, architects and overseers, masons and carpenters, weavers and metal-workers. Even priests and members of the old court with their sly smiles, they who saw which way the future might lie. The place was cleared of its drovers and cattle men who were given new land nearby across the river and pharaoh went here and there with his stick and marked out the plan of his new city; a palace here, a temple there; here a great house for one of his princes, there a store for grain; here a highway, there a quay and warehouses. The rich were given their houses and the poor theirs also.