Akhenaton
Akhenaton or Ikhnaton, also called Amenhotep IV,
was pharaoh of Egypt from about 1350 to 1334 BC. Akhenaton was
the son of Amenhotep III and Tiy, and husband of Nefertiti, whose
beauty is now famed through celebrated portrait busts of the
period. Akhenaton was the last important ruler of the 18th
dynasty and notable as the first historical figure to establish a
religion based on the concept of monotheism. He established the
cult of Aton, or Aten, the sun god or solar disk, which he
believed to be a universal, omnipresent spirit and the sole
creator of the universe. Some scholars believe that the Hebrew
prophets' concept of a universal God, preached seven or eight
centuries later in a land that Akhenaton once ruled, was derived
in part from his cult. After he established the new religion,
sometimes referred to as solar monotheism, he changed his name
from the royal designation Amenhotep IV to Akhenaton, meaning
Aton is satisfied. He moved his capital from Thebes to Akhetaton
(now the site of Tell el-Amarna), a new city devoted to the
celebration of Aton, and he ordered the obliteration of all
traces of the polytheistic religion of his ancestors. He also
fought bitterly against the powerful priests who attempted to
maintain the worship of the state god Amon, or Amen. This
religious revolution had a profound effect on Egyptian artists,
who turned from the ritualistic forms to which they had been
confined, to a much more realistic representation of nature as
evidence of the all-embracing power of the sun, Aton. A new
religious literature also arose. This blossoming of culture,
however, did not continue after Akhenaton's death. His
son-in-law, Tutankhamen, moved the capital back to Thebes,
restored the old polytheistic religion, and Egyptian art once
more became ritualized.
SUGGESTED READING: AKHENATEN
- KING OF EGYPT ; by Cyril Aldred. Thames & Hudson
(1991).