The Amarna Heresy and the Horizon of the Aten
Today, we will be talking about one of my favorite pharaohs, Akhenaten (1353–1336BCE). Akhenaten was born Amenhotep IV, the son of one of the most powerful and impressive pharaohs in Egypt’s long and illustrious history, Amenhotep III. He inherited a very powerful and wealthy nation thanks to his father. In the beginning, he seemed intent on following in his father’s footsteps and was set out to become a conscientious ruler. However, in the fifth year of his reign, Amenhotep IV suddenly changed his name to Akhenaten. More alarming to his subjects was his decision to move the capital from Thebes to a new city in the middle of the desert, and naming it Akhetaten (also known as Armana) — Horizon of the Sun Disc. This new city would be special as no other god had ever been worshipped there before and it would be a city totally built for the glory of Aten.
Aten already existed in the pantheon of gods as a kind of ‘aspect’ of the main god Ra (the Sun god). While Ra was always depicted in the form of a human with the head of a bird, Aten had no human qualities and was depicted as the Sun with rays that shoot out. In art and on monuments, Aten was often represented as the sun above Ra’s head. Akhenaten also ordered the closure of all the other temples and fired all the priests. He decreed that from that moment on, there would only be one god, Aten. Asking his subjects to forsake their former beliefs must have been shocking and deeply objectionable. So why did Akhenaten make such a divisive decision? Again, there are no records so we will never know for sure. One thing is clear though. While he was the pharaoh, there wasn’t much the people could do. Upon his death, however, his son King Tutmankamen, and later pharaohs went out of their way to completely erase Akhenaten from history. They accomplished this by reinstating the old religion, destroying his temples, and wiping his name from monuments and steles.
While his reign is generally considered a total failure by all the pharaohs who followed, Akhenaten is seen in a more favorable light in modern times. He was the first to introduce monotheism on such a grand scale and introduced freedom in the arts that triggered a kind of renaissance period that saw a departure from the rigid, highly stylized art of Ancient Egypt. While a lot of mystery surrounds why he chose to depart so dramatically from the tried and true ways of his forefathers, for modern Egyptologists, his reign is one of great interest and exciting speculation.
