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Akhenaten

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Ancient History,
Classical History and Mythology; Historical figures

                  Persondata
   NAME              Akhenaten / Amenhotep IV
   ALTERNATIVE NAMES Amenophis IV
                     Naphu(`)rureya
                     Khuenaten
   SHORT DESCRIPTION Pharaoh of Egypt
   DATE OF BIRTH     {{{Birth}}}
   PLACE OF BIRTH    Ancient Egypt
   DATE OF DEATH     {{{Death}}}
   PLACE OF DEATH    Ancient Egypt
   Preceded by:
   Amenhotep III Pharaoh of Egypt
                 18th Dynasty    Succeeded by:
                                 Smenkhkare
                         Akhenaten / Amenhotep IV
                               Amenophis IV
   Naphu(`)rureya
   Khuenaten
   A portrait of Akhenaten or Smenkhkare in the naturalistic style of the
   late-Amarna period, associated with the sculptor Thutmose
   Reign         1352 BC – 1336 BC or
                 1351– 1334 BC
   Praenomen

                 <

                   ra nfr xpr Z3 ra
                                 wa
                                 n
                                   >
                    Neferkheperre-waenre
                 Beautiful are the forms of Re, the one of Re
   Nomen

                 <

                   i  t
                     n
                     ra G25 x
                            n
                             >
                    Akhenaten
                    He who is beneficial to the Aten
                    (after Year 4 of his reign)


                 <

                   M17  Y5
                       N35   R4
                           X1 Q3 R8 S38 O28
                                           >
                    Amenhotep
   Horus name    Meryaten
   Nebty name    Wernesytemakhetaten
   Golden Horus  Wetjesrenenaten
   Consort(s)    Nefertiti, Kiya
                 Meritaten, Ankhesenpaaten,
                 Ankhesenpaaten-ta-sherit
   Issues        Meritaten, Meketaten,
                 Ankhesenpaaten,
                 Neferneferuaten Tasherit,
                 Neferneferure, Setepenre, Tutankhamun
   Father        Amenhotep III
   Mother        Tiye
   Died          1336 BC or 1334 BC
   Burial        Royal Tomb of Akhenaten
   Major
   Monuments     El-Amarna

   Akhenaten (original pronunciation ʔxnʔtn, vowels unknown; modern
   pronunciation axɛnatɛn), known as Amenhotep IV at the start of his
   reign, was a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, especially
   notable for single-handedly restructuring the Egyptian religion to
   monotheisticly worship the Aten. He was born to Amenhotep III and his
   Chief Queen Tiye and was his father's younger son. Akhenaten was not
   originally designated as the successor to the throne until the untimely
   death of his older brother, Tuthmose. Amenhotep IV succeeded his father
   after Amenhotep III's death at the end of his 38-year reign, possibly
   after a coregency lasting between either 1 to 2 or 12 years. Suggested
   dates for Akhenaten's reign (subject to the debates surrounding
   Egyptian chronology) are from 1353 BC- 1336 BC or 1351 BC– 1334 BC.
   Akhenaten's chief wife was Nefertiti, who has been made famous by her
   exquisitely painted bust in the Altes Museum of Berlin.

Atenist revolution

   Pharaoh Akhenaten and his family adoring the Aten
   Enlarge
   Pharaoh Akhenaten and his family adoring the Aten

   A religious revolutionary, Amenhotep IV introduced Atenism in the first
   year of his reign, raising the previously obscure god Aten (sometimes
   spelt Aton) to the position of supreme deity. The early stage of
   Atenism appears to be a kind of henotheism familiar in Egyptian
   religion, but the later form suggests a proto-monotheism. Aten was the
   name for the sun-disk itself — hence the fact that it is often referred
   to in English in the impersonal form "the Aten". The Aten was by this
   point in Egyptian history considered to be an aspect of the composite
   deity Ra-Amun-Horus. These previously separate deities had been merged
   with each other. Amun was identified with Ra, who was also identified
   with Horus. Akhenaten simplified this syncretism by proclaiming the
   visible sun itself to be the sole deity, thus introducing a type of
   monotheism. Some commentators interpret this as a proto- scientific
   naturalism, based on the observation that the sun's energy is the
   ultimate source of all life. Others consider it to be a way of cutting
   through the previously ritualistic emphasis of Egyptian religion to
   allow for a new "personal relationship" with god; this interpretation
   is hampered by the fact that only the Royal family was able to interact
   with and perform rituals pertaining to the Aten. Others interpret it as
   a pragmatic political move designed to further centralise power by
   crushing the independent authority of the traditional Amun priesthood
   who controlled Egypt's wealth and produce. However, Akhenaten did not
   formally break with the Amun priests and still used his old Amun
   inspired royal name--Amunhotep IV--until Fourth Year when the latter
   defied his authority, according to the text on one of his Amarna border
   stela.

   This religious reformation appears to have begun with his decision to
   celebrate a Sed festival in his third regnal year — a highly unusual
   step, since a Sed-festival, a sort of royal jubilee intended to
   reinforce the Pharaoh's divine powers of kingship, was traditionally
   held in the thirtieth year of a Pharaoh's reign.

   Year 5 marked the beginning of his construction of a new capital,
   Akhetaten ('Horizon of Aten'), at the site known today as Amarna. In
   the same year, Amenhotep IV officially changed his name to Akhenaten
   ('Effective Spirit of Aten') as evidence of his new worship. Very soon
   afterward he centralized Egyptian religious practices in Akhetaten,
   though construction of the city seems to have continued for several
   more years. In honour of Aten, Akhenaten also oversaw the construction
   of some of the most massive temple complexes in ancient Egypt,
   including one at Karnak, close to the old temple of Amun. In these new
   temples, Aten was worshipped in the open sunlight, rather than in dark
   temple enclosures, as had been the previous custom. Akhenaten is also
   believed to have composed the Great Hymn to the Aten.
   Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their children
   Enlarge
   Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their children

   Initially, Akhenaten presented Aten as a variant of the familiar
   supreme deity Amun-Ra (itself the result of an earlier rise to
   prominence of the cult of Amun, resulting in Amun becoming merged with
   the sun god Ra), in an attempt to put his ideas in a familiar Egyptian
   religious context. However, by Year 9 of his reign Akhenaten declared
   that Aten was not merely the supreme god, but the only god, and that
   he, Akhenaten, was the only intermediary between Aten and his people.
   He ordered the defacing of Amun's temples throughout Egypt, and in a
   number of instances inscriptions of the plural 'gods' were also
   removed.

   Aten's name is also written differently after Year 9, to emphasise the
   radicalism of the new regime, which included a ban on idols, with the
   exception of a rayed solar disc, in which the rays (commonly depicted
   ending in hands) appear to represent the unseen spirit of Aten, who by
   then was evidently considered not merely a sun god, but rather a
   universal deity. It is important to note, however, that representations
   of the Aten were always accompanied with a sort of "hieroglyphic
   footnote", stating that the representation of the sun as
   All-encompassing Creator was to be taken as just that: a representation
   of something that, by its very nature as something transcending
   creation, cannot be fully or adequately represented by any one part of
   that creation.

Depictions of the Pharaoh and his family

   Bust of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Egyptian Museum, Cairo
   Enlarge
   Bust of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Egyptian Museum, Cairo

   Styles of art that flourished during this short period are markedly
   different from other Egyptian art, bearing a variety of affectations,
   from elongated heads to protruding stomachs, exaggerated ugliness and
   the beauty of Nefertiti. Significantly, and for the only time in the
   history of Egyptian royal art, Akhenaten's family was depicted in a
   decidedly naturalistic manner, and they are clearly shown displaying
   affection for each other. Nefertiti also appears beside the king in
   actions usually reserved for a Pharaoh, suggesting that she attained
   unusual power for a queen. Artistic representations of Akhenaten give
   him a strikingly bizarre appearance, with slender limbs, a protruding
   belly and wide hips, giving rise to controversial theories such as that
   he may have actually been a woman masquerading as a man, or that he was
   a hermaphrodite or had some other intersex condition. The fact that
   Akhenaten had several children argues against these suggestions. It has
   also been suggested that he suffered from Marfan's syndrome.

   Until Akhenaten's mummy is located and identified, proposals of actual
   physical abnormalities are likely to remain speculative. However, it
   must be kept in mind that there is no good evidence that we are
   necessarily dealing with a literal representation of Akhenaten's
   physical form, or that of his wife or children. As pharaoh, Akhenaten
   had complete control over how he, his family, and his government in
   general was represented in art. Rather than a literal representation of
   his physical appearance, it must be kept in mind that what we see as an
   odd physical abnormality was the way that Akhenaten wanted to be
   artistically portrayed.

   Following Akenaten's death, a peaceful but comprehensive political,
   religious and artistic reformation returned Egyptian life to the norms
   it had followed previously during his father's reign. Much of the art
   and building infrastructure that was created during Akhenaten's reign
   was defaced or destroyed in the period immediately following his death.
   Stone building blocks from his construction projects were later used as
   foundation stones for subsequent rulers temples and tombs.

Problems of the reign

   Crucial evidence about the later stages of Akhenaten's reign has been
   provided by the discovery of the Amarna Letters, a cache of diplomatic
   correspondence discovered in modern times at el-Amarna, the modern
   designation of the Akhetaten site. This correspondence comprises a
   priceless collection of incoming messages on clay tablets, sent to
   Akhetaten from imperial outposts and foreign allies. The letters
   suggest that Akhenaten's neglect of matters of state were 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.

   Early on in his reign, Akhenaten fell out with the king of Mitanni,
   Tushratta. He may even have concluded an alliance with the Hittites,
   who then attacked Mitanni and attempted to carve out their own empire.
   A group of Egypt's other allies who attempted to rebel against the
   Hittites were captured, and wrote begging Akhenaten for troops; he
   evidently did not respond to their pleas. Evidence suggests that the
   troubles on the northern frontier led to difficulties in Canaan,
   particularly in a struggle for power between Labaya of Shechem and
   Abdi-Kheba of Jerusalem, requiring the Pharaoh to intervene in the area
   by dispatching Medjay troops northwards. There is some evidence that
   the spread of plague throughout the Middle East at this time was
   precipitated by this action.

Plague and pandemic

   This Amarna period is also associated with a serious outbreak of a
   pandemic, possibly the plague, or perhaps the world's first outbreak of
   influenza, which came from Egypt and spread throughout the Middle East,
   killing Suppiluliuma I, the Hittite King. The prevalence of disease may
   help explain the rapidity with which the site of Akhetaten was
   subsequently abandoned. It may also explain why later generations
   considered the gods to have turned against the Amarna monarchs.

Family

          See also : Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt Family Tree

   Amenhotep IV was married to Nefertiti at the very beginning of his
   reign, and the couple had six known daughters and possibly one son.
   This is a list with suggested years of birth:
     * Meritaten – year 1.
     * Meketaten – year 3.
     * Ankhesenpaaten, later Queen of Tutankhamun – year 4.
     * Neferneferuaten Tasherit – year 8.
     * Neferneferure – year 9.
     * Setepenre – year 9.
     * Tutankhaten–year 11

   His known consorts were:
     * Nefertiti, his Great Royal Wife early in his reign.
     * Kiya, a lesser Royal Wife.
     * Meritaten, recorded as his Great Royal Wife late in his reign.
     * Ankhesenpaaten, his third daughter, and who is thought to have
       borne a daughter, Ankhesenpaaten-ta-sherit, to her own father.
       After his death, Ankhesenpaaten married Akhenaten's successor
       Tutankhamun.

   Two other lovers have been suggested, but are not widely accepted:
     * Smenkhkare, Akhenaten's successor and/or co-ruler for the last
       years of his reign. Rather than a lover, however, Smenkhkare is
       likely to have been a half-brother or a son to Akhenaten. Some have
       even suggested that Smenkhkare was actually an alias of Nefertiti
       or Kiya, and therefore one of Akhenaten's wives.
     * Tiye, his mother. Twelve years after the death of Amenhotep III,
       she is still mentioned in inscriptions as Queen and beloved of the
       King. It has been suggested that Akhenaten and his mother acted as
       consorts to each other until her death. This would have been
       considered incest at the time. Supporters of this theory (notably
       Immanuel Velikovsky) consider Akhenaten to be the historical model
       of legendary King Oedipus of Thebes, Greece and Tiy the model for
       his mother/wife Jocasta.

Burial

   Akhenaten planned to relocate Egyptian burials on the East side of the
   Nile (sunrise) rather than on the West side (sunset), in the Royal Wadi
   in Akhetaten. His body was probably removed after the court returned to
   Thebes, and reburied somewhere in the Valley of the Kings. His
   sarcophagus was destroyed but has since been reconstructed and now sits
   outside in the Cairo Museum.

Succession

   There is much controversy around whether Amenhotep IV succeeded to the
   throne on the death of his father, Amenhotep III, or whether there was
   a coregency (lasting as long as 12 years according to some
   Egyptologists). Current literature by Eric Cline, Nicholas Reeves,
   Peter Dorman and other scholars comes out strongly against the
   establishment of a long coregency between the 2 rulers and in favour of
   either no coregency or a brief one lasting 1 to 2 years, at the most.

   Similarly, although it is accepted that both Smenkhkare and Akhenaten
   himself died in Year 17 of Akhenaten's reign, the question of whether
   Smenkhkare became co-regent perhaps 2 or 3 years earlier is also
   unclear, as is whether Smenkhkare survived Akhenaten. If Smenkhkare
   outlived Akhenaten, becoming sole Pharaoh, he ruled for less than a
   year.

   The next successor was certainly Tutankhaten (later, Tutankhamun), at
   the age of 9, with the country perhaps being run by the chief vizier
   (and next Pharaoh), Ay. Tutankhamun is believed to be a younger brother
   of Smenkhkare and a son of Akhenaten.

   It has also been suggested that after the death of Akhenaten, Nefertiti
   reigned with the name of Neferneferuaten .

   With Akhenaten's death, the Aten cult he had founded gradually fell out
   of favour. Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamun in Year 2 of his
   reign { 1332 BC) and abandoned the city of Akhetaten, which eventually
   fell into ruin. His successors Ay and Horemheb disassembled temples
   Akhenaten had built, including the temple at Thebes, using them as a
   source of easily available building materials and decorations for their
   own temples.

   Finally, Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, and Ay were excised from
   the official lists of Pharaohs, which instead reported that Amenhotep
   III was immediately succeeded by Horemheb. This is thought to be part
   of an attempt by Horemheb to delete all trace of Atenism and the
   pharaohs associated with it from the historical record. Akhenaten's
   name never appeared on any of the king lists compiled by later Pharaohs
   and it was not until the late 19th century that his identity was
   re-discovered and the surviving traces of his reign were unearthed by
   archaeologists.

In the arts

     * Spelled 'Akenhaten', he appears as a major character in the first
       of a trilogy of historical novels by P.C. Doherty, "An Evil Spirit
       out of the West".
     * The song 'Cast Down the Heretic' by the death metal band Nile on
       the album Annihilation of the Wicked.
     * The song 'Son Of The Sun' by swedish Symphonic Metal band Therion
       on the album Sirius B.
     * Thomas Mann, in his fictional biblical tetralogy Joseph and His
       Brothers (1933-1943), makes Akhenaten the "dreaming pharaoh" of
       Joseph's story.
     * Savitri Devi: play Akhnaton: A Play (Philosophical Publishing House
       [London], 1948)
     * Mika Waltari: historical novel The Egyptian, first published in
       Finnish (Sinuhe egyptiläinen) in 1945, translated by Naomi Walford
       ( G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1949, ISBN 0-399-10234-5; Chicago Review
       Press, 2002, paperback, ISBN 1-55652-441-2)
     * The Egyptian, motion picture (1954, directed by Michael Curtiz,
       Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation), based on the novel by Mika
       Waltari.
     * Gwendolyn MacEwen: historical novel King of Egypt, King of Dreams
       (1971, ISBN 1-894663-60-8)
     * Agatha Christie: play, Akhnaton: A Play in Three Acts ( Dodd, Mead
       [New York], 1973, ISBN 0-396-06822-7; Collins [London], 1973, ISBN
       0-00-211038-5)
     * Nefertiti: The Musical is a stage musical based on the Amarna
       period in the life of Akhenaten. Book by Christopher Gore and Rick
       Gore, Music by David Spangler.
     * Philip Glass: opera, Akhnaten: An Opera in Three Acts (1983; CBS
       Records, 1987)
     * Naguib Mahfouz, novel, Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (1985)العائش فى
       الحقيقة
     * Allen Drury, historical novels, A God Against the Gods (Doubleday,
       1976) and Return to Thebes (Doubleday, 1976)
     * Andree Chedid, novel, " Akhenaten and Nefertiti's dream"
     * Wolfgang Hohlbein, German novel, Die Prophezeihung (The Prophecy),
       in which Echnaton is killed by Ay and curses him into eternal life
       until a prophecy is fulfilled.
     * Moyra Caldecott: novel Akhenaten: Son of the Sun (1989; eBook,
       2000, ISBN 1-899142-86-X; 2003, ISBN 1-899142-25-8)
     * Judith Tarr, historical fantasy, Pillar of Fire (1995)
     * Carol Thurston, fiction, The Eye of Horus (William Morrow & Co.,
       2000), posits the "Akhenaten was Moses" theory.
     * Moyra Caldecott: novel The Ghost of Akhenaten (eBook, 2001, ISBN
       1-899142-89-4; 2003, ISBN 1-84319-024-9)
     * Lynda Robinson, historical mystery, Drinker of Blood (2001, ISBN
       0-446-67751-5)
     * Edgar P. Jacobs: comic book, Blake et Mortimer: La Mystère de la
       Grande Pyramide vol. 1+2 (1950), adventure story using the mystery
       of Akhenaten as motor
     * The Akhenaten Adventure P.B. Kerr: fiction Akhenaten is said to be
       the holder of 70 lost Djinn
     * Dorothy Porter, verse novel, Akhenaten (1991)

Speculative theories

   Akhenaten's status as a religious revolutionary has led to much
   speculation, ranging from the mainstream to New Age esotericism. He has
   been called "the first individual in history", as well as the first
   monotheist, first scientist, and first romantic. As early as 1899
   Flinders Petrie gushingly declared that,

          If this were a new religion, invented to satisfy our modern
          scientific conceptions, we could not find a flaw in the
          correctness of this view of the energy of the solar system. How
          much Akhenaten understood, we cannot say, but he certainly
          bounded forward in his views and symbolism to a position which
          we cannot logically improve upon at the present day. Not a rag
          of superstition or of falsity can be found clinging to this new
          worship evolved out of the old Aton of Heliopolis, the sole Lord
          of the universe.

   H. R. Hall even claimed that the pharaoh was the "first example of the
   scientific mind".

   The idea of Akhenaten as the pioneer of a monotheistic religion that
   later became Judaism was promoted by Sigmund Freud, the founder of
   psychoanalysis, in his book Moses and Monotheism and thereby entered
   popular consciousness. Freud argued that Moses had been an Atenist
   priest forced to leave Egypt with his followers after Akhenaten's
   death.

   In vivid contrast, the pro-Nazi Aryanist writer Savitri Devi insisted
   in her book The Lightning and the Sun that Akenaten's god bore no
   resemblance to,

          the jealous tribal god Jehovah, created in the image of the
          Jews, — but the equivalent of the immanent, impersonal Tat —
          That — of the Chandogya Upanishad, no less than of das Gott (as
          opposed to “der Gott”) of the ancient Germans, and the one
          conception of Divinity that modern science, far from disproving,
          on the contrary, suggests.

   More recently, Ahmed Osman has claimed that that Moses and Akhenaten
   were the same individual. While these speculative views have gained
   acceptance in some quarters (e.g. Laurence Gardner, Bloodline of the
   Holy Grail, Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark; Gary Greenberg, The Moses
   Mystery: The African Origins of the Jewish People), most mainstream
   Egyptologists do not take them seriously, pointing out that there are
   direct connections between early Judaism and other Semitic religious
   traditions, and that two of the three principal Judaic terms for God,
   Yahweh and Elohim, have no connection to Aten . Additionally, Akhenaten
   appears in history almost two-centuries before the first archaeological
   and written evidence for Judaism and Israelite culture is found in the
   Levant. Furthermore abundant visual imagery was central to Atenism,
   which celebrated the natural world, while such imagery is not a feature
   of Israelite culture. Osman also claimed that Akhenaten's maternal
   grandfather Yuya was the same person as the Biblical Joseph.
   Egyptologists reject this view because Yuya had strong connections to
   the city of Akhmin in Upper Egypt, which is indicated in his title
   "Overseer of the Cattle of Min at Akhmin. Hence, he most likely
   belonged to the regional nobility of Akhmim. This makes it very
   unlikely that he was an Israelite, as most Asiatic settlers tended to
   cloister around the Nile delta region of Lower Egypt . Some
   Egyptologists, however, give him a Mitannian origin. It is widely
   accepted that there are strong similarities between Akhenaten's Great
   Hymn to the Aten and the Biblical Psalm 104, though whether this
   implies a direct influence or a common literary convention remains in
   dispute.

   Another claim was made by Immanuel Velikovsky. Velikovsky argued that
   Moses was neither Akhenaten, nor one of his followers. Instead,
   Velikovsky identifies Akhenaten as the history behind Oedipus and moved
   the setting from the Greek Thebes to the Egyptian Thebes. His theory
   also includes that Akhenaten had an incestous relationship with his
   mother, Tiy. Velikovsky also posited that Akhenaten had elephantiasis,
   producing enlarged legs – Oedipus being Greek for "swollen feet." As
   part of his argument, Velikovsky uses the fact that Akhenaten viciously
   carried out a campaign to erase the name of his father, which he argues
   could have developed into Oedipus killing his father.
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