Atenism

disk...was merely one aspect of the sun god Re.[1] The

Aten, hence, was a relatively obscure sun god; without the Atenist period, it would barely have gured in
Egyptian history. Although there are indications that the
Aten was becoming slightly more important in the eighteenth dynasty periodnotably Amenhotep III's naming
of his royal barge as Spirit of the Atenit was Amenhotep
IV who introduced the Atenist revolution, in a series of
steps culminating in the ocial installment of the Aten as
Egypts sole god. Although each line of kings prior to the
reign of Akhenaten[2] had previously adopted one deity as
the royal patron and supreme state god, there had never
been an attempt to exclude other deities, and the multitude of gods had been tolerated and worshipped at all
times. During the reign of Thutmosis IV it was identied
as a distinct solar god, and his son Amenhotep III established and promoted a separate cult for the Aten. There
is no evidence however that Amenhotep III neglected the
other gods or attempted to promote the Aten as an exclusive deity.

Aten

Atenism, or the Amarna heresy, refers to the religious changes associated with the eighteenth dynasty
Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, better known under his adopted
name, Akhenaten. In the 14th century BC, Atenism
was Egypt's state religion for around 20 years, before
subsequent rulers returned to the traditional gods and
the Pharaohs associated with Atenism were erased from
Egyptian records.

History of the Aten before

Akhenaten

2 Atenist revolution
Amenhotep IV initially introduced Atenism in Year 5 of
his reign (1348/1346 BC), raising the Aten to the status of
supreme god, after initially permitting the continued worship of the traditional gods.[3] To emphasise the change,
Atens name was written in the cartouche form normally
reserved for Pharaohs, an innovation of Atenism. This
religious reformation appears to coincide with the proclamation of a Sed festival, a sort of royal jubilee intended to
reinforce the Pharaohs divine powers of kingship. Traditionally held in the thirtieth year of the Pharaohs reign,
this possibly was a festival in honour of Amenhotep III,
whom some Egyptologists think had a coregency with his
son Amenhotep IV of two to twelve years.

Year 5 is believed to mark the beginning of Amenhotep

IVs construction of a new capital, Akhetaten (Horizon of
the Aten), at the site known today as Amarna. Evidence
of this appears on three of the boundary stelae used to
mark the boundaries of this new capital. At this time,
Amenhotep IV ocially changed his name to Akhenaten
(Spirit of the Aten) as evidence of his new worship. The
Pharaoh Akhenaten and his family adoring the Aten
date given for the event has been estimated to fall around
January 2 of that year. In Year 7 of his reign (1346/1344
The Atenthe god of Atenismrst appears in texts BC) the capital was moved from Thebes to Akhetaten
dating to the 12th dynasty, in the Story of Sinuhe. (near modern Amarna), though construction of the city
Here during the Middle Kingdom, the Aten as the sun seems to have continued for two more years. In shifting
1

3 CONTRAST WITH TRADITIONAL EGYPTIAN RELIGION

his court from the traditional ceremonial centres Akhen- who was both king and living god, and the administration
aten was signalling a dramatic transformation in the focus of the Egyptian kingdom was thus inextricably bound up
of religious and political power.
with, and largely controlled by, the power and inuence
The move separated the Pharaoh and his court from the of the priests and scribes. Akhenatens reforms cut away
inuence of the priesthood and from the traditional cen- both the philosophical and economic bases of priestly
tres of worship, but his decree had deeper religious signif- power, abolishing the cults of all other deities, and with
icance tootaken in conjunction with his name change, them the large and lucrative industry of sacrices and
it is possible that the move to Amarna was also meant as tributes that the priests controlled.
a signal of Akhenatens symbolic death and rebirth. It
may also have coincided with the death of his father and
the end of the coregency. In addition to constructing a
new capital in honor of Aten, Akhenaten also oversaw the
construction of some of the most massive temple complexes in ancient Egypt, including one at Karnak and one
at Thebes, close to the old temple of Amun.

At the same time, this strengthened the role of the

Pharaoh. Dominic Montserrat, analysing the various versions of the hymns to the Aten, argues that all the versions
of the hymns focus on the king and suggests that the real
innovation is to redene the relationship of god and king
in a way that beneted Akhenaten, quoting the statement
of Egyptologist John Baines that Amarna religion was a
religion
of god and king, or even of king rst and then
In Year 9 (1344/1342 BC), Akhenaten strengthened the
[5][6]
god.
Atenist regime, declaring the Aten to be not merely the
supreme god, but the only god, a universal deity, and for- Initially, Akhenaten presented Aten to the Egyptian peobidding worship of all others, including the veneration ple as a variant of the familiar supreme deity Amun-Ra
of idols, even privately in peoples homesan arena the (itself the result of an earlier rise to prominence of the
Egyptian state had previously not touched in religious cult of Amun, resulting in Amun becoming merged with
terms. Aten was addressed by Akhenaten in prayers, the sun god Ra), in an attempt to put his ideas in a familiar
such as the Great Hymn to the Aten: O Sole God beside religious context. Aten is the name given to the solar disc,
whom there is none. Dominic Montserrat wrote that the whereas the full title of Akhenatens god was Ra-Horus,
Egyptian people were to worship Akhenaten while only who rejoices in the horizon in his name of the light which
Akhenaten and Nefertiti could worship Aten.[4]
is in the sun disc. (This is the title of the god as it appears
on
the numerous stelae which were placed to mark the
Akhenaten staged the ritual regicide of the old supreme
boundaries of Akhenatens new capital at Akhetaten.)
god Amun, and ordered the defacing of Amuns temples
throughout Egypt, and of all the old gods. The word However in the ninth year of his reign Akhenaten defor `gods (plural) was proscribed, and inscriptions have clared a more radical version of his new religion by
been found in which even the hieroglyph of the word for declaring Aten not merely the supreme god, but the only
mother has been excised and re-written in alphabetic god, and that he, Akhenaten, as the son of Aten was the
signs, because it had the same sound in ancient Egyptian only intermediary between the Aten and his people.[7] He
as the sound of name of the Theban goddess Mut. Atens even staged the ritual regicide of Amun, and ordered the
name is also written dierently after Year 9, to empha- defacing of Amuns temples throughout Egypt. Key feasise the radicalism of the new regime. No longer is the tures of Atenism included a ban on idols and other images
Aten written using the symbol of a rayed solar disc, but of the Aten, with the exception of a rayed solar disc, in
instead it is spelled phonetically.
which the rays (commonly depicted ending in hands) appear to represent the unseen spirit of Aten. New temples
were constructed, in which the Aten was worshipped in
the open sunlight, rather than in dark temple enclosures,
3 Contrast with traditional Egyp- as the old gods had been.

tian religion
Akhenaten carried out a radical program of religious reform which, for a period of about twenty years, largely
supplanted the age-old beliefs and practices of the Egyptian state religion, and deposed its religious hierarchy,
headed by the powerful priesthood of Amun at Thebes.
For fteen centuries the Egyptians had worshiped an extended family of gods and goddesses, each of which had
its own elaborate system of priests, temples, shrines and
rituals. A key feature of these cults was the veneration of
images and statues of the gods, which were worshipped
in the dark connes of the temples.
The pinnacle of this religious hierarchy was the Pharaoh,

Although idols were bannedeven in peoples homes

these were typically replaced by functionally equivalent
representations of Akhenaten and his family venerating
the Aten, and receiving the ankh (breath of life) from him.
The radicalisation of Year 9 (including spelling Aten phonetically instead of using the rayed solar disc) may be due
to a determination on the part of Akhenaten to dispel a
probable misconception among the common people that
Aten was really a type of sun god like Ra. Instead, the
idea was reinforced that such representations were representations above all of conceptsof Atens universal
presencenot of physical beings or things.

Amarna art

Main article: Amarna art

Styles of art that ourished during this short period are
markedly dierent from other Egyptian art, bearing a variety of aectations, from elongated heads to protruding
stomachs, exaggerated ugliness and the beauty of Nefertiti. Signicantly, and for the only time in the history of
Egyptian royal art, Akhenatens family was depicted in a
decidedly naturalistic manner, and they are clearly shown
displaying aection for each other. Greek inuence may
have resulted in some of the Amarna artistic characteristics.
Images of Akhenaten and Nefertiti usually depict the
Aten prominently above that pair, with the hands of the
Aten closest to each oering Ankhs. Unusually for newkingdom art the Pharaoh and his Great Royal Wife are
depicted as approximately equal in size, which together
with Nefertitis image used to decorate the lesser Aten
temple at Amarna may suggest she also had a prominent
ocial role in Aten worship.
Artistic representations of Akhenaten usually give him
an unusual appearance, with slender limbs, a protruding
belly and wide hips. Other leading gures of the Amarna
period, both royal and otherwise, are also shown with
some of these features, suggesting a possible religious
connotation, especially as some sources suggest that private representations of Akhenaten, as opposed to ocial
art, show him as quite normal. It is also suggested by
Bob Brier, in his book The Murder of Tutankhamen,
that the family suered from Marfans syndrome, which
is known to cause elongated features, and that this may
explain Akhenatens appearance.

Decline of Atenism

Crucial evidence about the latter stages of Akhenatens

reign was furnished by discovery of the so-called Amarna
Letters. Believed to have been thrown away by scribes
after being transferred to papyrus, the letters comprise
a priceless cache of incoming clay message tablets sent
from imperial outposts and foreign allies. The letters suggest that Akhenaten was obsessed with his new religion,
and that his neglect of matters of state was causing disorder across the massive Egyptian empire. The governors
and kings of subject domains wrote to beg for gold, and
also complained of being snubbed and cheated. Also discovered were reports that a major plague pandemic was
spreading across the ancient Near East. This pandemic
appears to have claimed the life of Akhenatens main
wife (Nefertiti) and several of his six daughters, which
may have contributed to a declining interest on the part
of Akhenaten in governing eectively.
With Akhenatens death, the Aten cult he had founded al-

most immediately fell out of favor due to pressures from

the Priesthood of Amun. Tutankhaten, who succeeded
him at age 8 (with Akhenatens old vizier, Ay, as regent)
changed his name to Tutankhamun in year 3 of his reign
(1348 BC or 1331 BC) and abandoned Akhetaten, the
city falling into ruin. Temples Akhenaten had built, including the temple at Thebes, were disassembled, reused
as a source of building materials and decorations for their
own temples, and inscriptions to Aten defaced. Finally,
Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, and Ay were removed from the ocial lists of Pharaohs, which instead
reported that Amenhotep III was immediately succeeded
by Horemheb.

6 Link to Judaism
See also: Akhenaten Akhenaten and Judeo-ChristianIslamic monotheism
Because of the possible monotheistic character of
Atenism, a link to Judaism (and subsequently the
monotheistic religions springing from it) has been suggested by various writers. For example, psychoanalyst
Sigmund Freud assumed Akhenaten to be the pioneer of
monotheistic religion and Moses as Akhenatens follower
in his book Moses and Monotheism (see also Osarseph).
The Egyptian author Ahmed Osman went as far as to
claim that Moses and Akhenaten were the same person.

7 Atenism in ction and popular

culture
Finnish author Mika Waltari used the idea of Aten
and Atenism in his famous historical novel The
Egyptian
So did New Zealand-Canadian author Pauline
Gedge in her 1984 historical novel The Twelfth
Transforming.
"Son of the Sun", a song by the symphonic metal
band Therion, is critical of Atenism and monotheism.

8 Literature
Aldred, Cyril, Akhenaten, King of Egypt ISBN 0500-05048-1
Mahfouz, Naguib, Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth
ISBN 0-385-49909-4
Redford, Donald B., Akhenaten: The Heretic King
ISBN 0-691-00217-7

10
Reeves, Nicholas, Akhenaton: Egypts False Prophet
ISBN 0-500-28552-7

See also
Judaism and ancient Egyptian religion
Solar deity

10

References

[1] Rosalie David, Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt, Facts

on File Inc., 1998. p.124
[2] Rosalie David, op. cit., p.124
[3] Rosalie David, op. cit., p.125
[4] Hart, George (2005). The Routledge dictionary of Egyptian gods and goddesses (2nd ed.). Routledge. p. 39.
ISBN 978-0-415-34495-1.
[5] Montserrat, Dominic (2002). Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egyp. Routledge. p. 40. ISBN 9780415301862.
[6] John Baines (1998). The Dawn of the Amarna Age. In
David O'Connor, Eric Cline. Amenhotep III: Perspectives
on His Reign. University of Michigan Press. p. 281.
[7] Reeves, Nicholas, Akhenaton: Egypts False Prophet
ISBN 0-500-28552-7, pg 146

REFERENCES

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Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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