Читать книгу The Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt онлайн

24 страница из 29

The splendour and gaiety of the court at Thebes remind one of the tales from the Arabian Nights. One reads of banquets, of splendid festivals on the water, of jubilee celebrations, and of hunting parties. When the scenes depicted on the monuments are gathered together in the mind, and the ruins which are left are there reconstructed, a life of the most intense brilliancy is shown. This was rather a development of the period than a condition of things which had been derived from an earlier régime. The Egyptians had always been a happy, light-hearted people; but it was the conquests of Thothmes III. that had given them the security and the wealth to live as luxuriously as they pleased. The tendency of the nation was now to break away from the old, hardy traditions of the earlier periods of Egyptian history; and virtually no other body, except the priesthood of Amon, held them down to ancient conventionalities. But while the king and his court made merry and amused themselves in sumptuous fashion, that god Amon and his representatives towered over them like some sombre bogie, holding them to a religion which they considered to be obsolete, and claiming its share of royal wealth.