The Egyption God Aten

[GateKeeper]

Sun-god who in his zenith under the pharaoh Akhenaten (1379-1362 BC), who became the universal and almost exclusive deity.
If you had asked any Ancient Egyptian priest about the god Aten you would have fortunate to get a coherent answer. Even if the priest could have overcome his rage, wounded pride and bitterness, it would still have been difficult to understand his description. In fact there is really only one man who would have been able to give you even an approximate idea of Aten: the eccentric king Akhenaten, originally known as Amenhetep IV. By the 18th Dynasty, circa 1400 B.C., the power base of the Egyptian state had already moved from Heliopolis, home of Ra the Sun god, to Thebes, home of the god Amun. To satisfy the need of the Egyptian kinds to be identified with the solar deity, he was now called Amun-Ra. There had been some move to get back to the pure solar idea of Ra when all of a sudden Amenhetep IV, a physically and emotionally odd sort of character, created a religious cataclysm by declaring that all the many Egyptian gods were false; including the all-powerful Amun-Ra. Henceforth the only god to be worshipped, solely and supremely, was to be Aten. The stunned priesthood watched amazing scenes of official revolution. Temples were closed down, priest and priestesses turned out, all references on monuments, tombs and civic buildings to 'gods', especially the name of Amun-Ra, were brutally obliterated by hammer and chisel. Lightning had struck at the heart of Egypt, leaving it paralysed. The idea of monotheism, of one god eternal, transcendent and uncreated, was alien to a people who saw gods in every natural phenomenon about them. Their minds were simply not on that wavelength. But that is what the king ordered them to believe. He called his abstract god after the shining solar disc of Ra, the aten. To this god he composed hymns, rituals and new ceremonies. The dissident king changed his name from Amen-hetep ('Amun is content') to Akhenaten ('it is well with Aten'). He deserted Thebes for a brand-new capital city, Akhetaten ('the horizon of Aten'); for which he departed lock, stock and sarcophagus as soon as it was finished. The new god was depicted as the sun from which descended many rays, each ending in a hand which caressed the royal family. The changed attitude even affected sculpture; Akhenaten was carved as he really was, not as an ideal. And he really was a strange looking manl a bony equine face with sensitive features, a thin body with a bulging paunch. The king neglected state affairs for the constant rituals and ceremonies of his god; as a result things went badly on the frontiers, the north-eastern boundary especially was prone to pressure as Hittites, Habiru and dynasts took advantage of Egypt's internal troubles. The worship of Aten lasted exactly as long as the life of the king; and not a mintute longer. Aten's priest had all been sycophantic time-servers, and were swift to drop the new and disturbing worship. The truth is that Akhenaten was a man out of his time who, because of an accident of birth that made him king, had the power and authority to express and publicize his personal beliefs on a scale never before or since achieved by a mere mortal. On the road-map of religions, the worship of Aten was a cul-de-sac.

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