“As you all know, the gods of Thebes, of On, of white-walled Memphis, are but attributes of the one beneficent sun-god, of Aton the Glorious, the Life-giver, who dwelleth within the Sun!
“Henceforth, let Aton, not Amen, be upon your lips! Let Aton, not Amen, be upon the lips of your children! Thus, as in times past, Egypt shall worship one god from Nubia to Suan of the North. May Aton’s bright beams embrace you! May Aton’s rays forever enfold you!”
Across the flashing waters of the Nile, where the great temple of Karnak raised its giant pylons high above the palm groves which fronted it, Huy, Great High Priest of Amen, frowned darkly as the sound of the loud applause which followed Pharaoh’s speech, reached his ears.
To Huy and the prophets of Amen that sound heralded the beginning of a war to the death.
In Thebes a religious drama was enacted annually, a drama in which was portrayed the eternal conflict waged between Amen, the sun-god, and Apep, Prince of Darkness.
Unknown to the peasant, as indeed to many a priestly participant, the story of the drama, in truth, perpetuated the prehistoric invasion of Egypt by those “Followers of Horus” who had subdued, and, eventually, become absorbed by the original inhabitants of the Nile Valley.
At that early date, Thebes had been but a small village, a cluster of mud huts and a small shrine, over whose walls rose the emblem of the primitive cult.
Since that time, three thousand years had come and gone, and Thebes had become the richest and most powerful city of the ancient world.
Now, since Horus, son of Hathor, was the leader of the victorious invaders, and the two great battles had taken place at Nekhen and Abdu—Thebes being entirely outside the field of operations—the various incidents enacted in this great religious spectacle had nothing whatever to do with Thebes nor, indeed, with its famed local deity, the sun-god Amen.
But the priests of Amen’s great temple at Thebes had always looked with envy at the popularity of the yearly spectacle as enacted in the two rival cities. Thus, when finally a Theban prince became Pharaoh, the first care of the Chief Prophet of Amen had been to get the royal seal affixed to a permit looking toward the perpetual endowment of a similar festival in his own city of Thebes, a six days’ wonder that should utterly eclipse anything of which Nekhen, Abdu or any other rival god or city could boast.