Akhenaten: The First Monotheist? | Atenism

over the course of thousands of years Egyptian political systems and regimes Rose and fell but Egyptian religion continued with surprising consistency that is to say until the reign of the King Akhenaten some have called him the heretic King others a prophet or a religious zealot the renowned egyptologist Flinders Petri declared that Akhenaten is perhaps the most original thinker that ever lived in Egypt and one of the greatest idealists of the world within the first five years of his Reign Akhenaten managed to overthrow the traditional religion of his day he instituted a brand new system of art founded a brand new capital and elevated the worship of a previously marginal God the aten the sundisk the changes he made were so radical that some have suggested that Akhenaten didn't merely revise the old polytheistic system but rather he introduced an entirely new form of monotheism called autonism but it didn't last long long Beyond his Reign by the time Ramses the Great took the throne just under 50 years later all memory of Akhenaten was completely erased so what happened what led Akhenaten to overturn centuries of established polytheistic tradition to worship a single sun god what were the political implications of his religious Revolution and can we call his religious Innovation an early form of monotheism first let's establish the context Akhenaten was part of what egyptologists call the 18th Dynasty the first dynasty of the New Kingdom of Egypt dating between 1550 and 1292 BCE although ancient Egyptians worshiped many different gods the popularity of certain Gods would rise and fall from Century to Century from Dynasty to Dynasty sometimes because a particular Pharaoh would become a patron of a specific God other times because of the rising or falling economic or political fortunes of a particular City where specific gods were worshiped for example as we've talked about before on this channel the crocodile god Sobek was very popular during the Middle Kingdom especially because of the patronage of the Pharaoh amanemhat III by 1390 BCE when akhenaten's father Ahman hotep III Rose to the throne Egyptian religion primarily focused on Amun Rey a hybrid God of fertility and the sun Rey sometimes pronounced as Ra was the sun god while Amun was a primeval God of fertility a moon had two cultic cities one at a town called hermopolis and the other at Thebes modern-day Luxor and was here at Thebes where a moon was merged with the sun god Rey together forming a solar God of regeneration amunray was depicted like a king wearing a flat-topped crown with two tall Falcon plumes during the 18th Dynasty Thebes was the religious capital of the Egyptian Empire serving as the holy city of Amun for over 500 years and the Karnak Temple precinct on the East Bank of Thebes was the religious center of gravity it's jaw-dropping if you visit it today a maze of massive pylons obelisks statues temples and shrines it includes an impressive Temple complex dedicated to Amun Rey along with smaller but still impressive temples dedicated to his consort the goddess Moot and their son kansu amunre was at the height of his popularity just to underscore how popular four monarchs in this dynasty were named amenhotep which means Amun is satisfied this included Akhenaten his birth name was amenhotep IV before he changed his name and all of the kings of the 18th Dynasty contributed to this complex expanding it more and more with each subsequent Reign however things started to change under akhenaten's father amenhotep III aten became more prominent so who or what is the aten the term atan means sun or disc of the sun and it had been part of the Egyptian language for hundreds of years before Akhenaten and while Egyptians had long recognized Rey as the sun god they seemed to have conceptualized the aten as a separate entity for example middle King Kingdom text called the coffin texts use phrases like Rey who was in his disc the lord of the disc Rey and his disc so the atan was part of Egyptian religion as far back as the Middle Kingdom but the aten grew more prominent during the 18th Dynasty the Autumn came to be associated with kingship a popular expression at the time was the king ruled that which the Autin has encircled an inscription from Karnak Temple uses solar imagery to refer to the founder of the 18th Dynasty he is gazed upon like Rey when he rises like The Shining of auten although Amun Rey remained the center of Egyptian religion at the time mentions of the aten really started to spike during the reign of amenhotep III akhanan's father in fact he even took the DraStic step of deifying himself claiming to be a living God a practice normally reserved for a king after they died he then adopted the title the dazzling auten so just imagine the religious and political ramifications of that you just declared yourself to be the physical manifestation of the sun with all of the life-giving creative power associated with it so the stage was set Amun Rey was at the peak of his popularity amenhotep III just declared himself the dazzling auten but then he died he died approximately two years before what would have been his 40th year as king So in around 1352 BCE he was succeeded by his son amen hotep IV The Man Who Would One Day take the name Akhenaten but how do we go from amenhotep IV to Akhenaten we know basically nothing about akhanan's early life and we know very little about his motivations for why he would launch such a drastic religious Revolution it's hard enough to figure out the motivations of people alive today let alone someone who died three thousand years ago one popular theory is that he was politically motivated at least in part and that his religious Revolution was an attempt to weaken the power of the priesthood of Amun perhaps viewed as a threat to Royal Authority some Egyptian just like James Hoffmeyer suggests that Akhenaten must have experienced some sort of Revelation or Divine encounter a dramatic conversion experience like the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus when the Risen Christ appeared to him we can't say much with certainty but it's generally understood that akhenaten's religious Revolution proceeded in stages at first aachencoexisting with other gods followed by increasingly dramatic changes with Akhenaten moving to a new capital and then actively persecuting other gods as we said originally he ruled under his birth name amenhotep a moon is pleased and his Reign lasted 17 years from approximately 1352-1336 BCE when he ascended to the throne he adopted the throne name beautiful or the manifestations of the sun god Rey traditionally Kings had five names and the most important of these were the throne name and the birth name the earliest depictions of amenhotep IV show him making offerings to the traditional Gods namely of course Amun but probably within the first year of his Reign he began to experiment with the solar religion that his father showed interest in he he turned sun god worship away from Amun Rey to focus on a solar format of the god Horus named Ray harakti this was a falcon-headed God who was associated with the early morning sun here you can see an early depiction of Akhenaten when he was still called amanhotep on the left side of the image he's offering incense to Rey herakti and the goddess mat and on the right side he's offering to the Creator God Autumn and the goddess hawthor but then within just one year traditional religion art and architecture changed dramatically as with other kings he started building temples within the Karnak Precinct but now he built these temples to aten instead of amunray he built four large temples dedicated to aten within the first five years of his Reign some historians theorized that the traditional temples were neglected and defunded partially because so many resources were redirected from them to fund akhenaten's building projects while Akhenaten was still based at Thebes one official wrote that while the other gods were receiving revenues the revenues for the Autin were measured out in heaps we can't be 100 sure but some have detected a measure of resentment or jealousy in that statement sure revenues for the gods are coming in but someone is measuring out extra for the Autumn also during this early period along with a stronger focus on Ray harapti Ray hirakti and the aten were somewhat merged all the way to a point where they were interchangeable and the auction was given a new name the full name became Rey hirakti lives rejoicing in the Horizon in his name of Shu who was in the aten some historians see this new name for the Autin less like a name and more like a Creed shu is the name of another traditional primeval God associated with light Shu was married to tefnute and both were the children of the Creator God Autumn Scholars had proposed that in his early years as King Akhenaten identified himself as Shu and his chief wife Nefertiti as TEF Newt while the aten takes the place of atum together the three figures formed the Primeval Triad that created the world as we've talked about before on this channel important Gods within Egyptian religion were often grouped into Triads the theban Triad of our moon Moot and kansu or Osiris Isis and Horus but this association with reiharakti was short-lived because in perhaps the second year as king amanhotep IV discarded the traditional falcon-headed deity and changed the artistic representation of the aten into a more minimalist design it now appeared as the sun disc with human hands extending down to earth sometimes holding the hieroglyphs were dominion and life thus the aten literally extends life and power to the king himself art historians would describe this as an iconic a term used to describe a symbolic or suggestive representation of a god you see this a lot in roughly contemporary religions in ancient Canaan where gods were represented simply by a standing Stone this is in contrast to more detailed or literal representations While most Egyptian gods were portrayed as literal humanoid figures often sharing animal and human features the aten was depicted as a disc or probably a globe notice how the atenas carved more deeply into the stone making it look more like a sphere the Anton also possessed a ureas or a rearing Cobra which was always featured on the crowns of kings and gods this change corresponded with a more General change in all of artwork you can see this in the Colossus of Akhenaten in the Cairo Museum he has a long narrow face elongated neck and he's somewhat pear-shaped with an elongated high waist low placed navel and backward knees the feminine attributes of the statue have even LED some Scholars to argue that perhaps it was meant to be a statue of akhenaten's wife Nefertiti there have been countless attempts over the decades to pathologize these artistic representations as evidence that Akhenaten may have had some sort of physical condition a popular Theory floated in recent decades is that he and maybe his family had the genetic disorder called Marfan syndrome but these theories remain speculative and most Scholars don't really pay attention to them these theorists are probably reading too much into the artistic change more real to life statues of Akhenaten exist especially from earlier in his Reign and his whole family in even members of his Entourage are portrayed with the same exaggerated Anatomy How likely is it that his entire Inner Circle including people not directly related to him suffered from Marfan syndrome sometimes a stylistic choice is just a stylistic choice along with all of these artistic changes came the very personal change we mentioned before in year 5 of his Reign he changed his birth name from amenhotep a moon is pleased to Akhenaten one who is effective for the aten he proceeded to erase his original name from all of his monuments replacing it with his new name also probably in year 5 of his Reign he made the biggest change of all and probably the most controversial change both religiously and politically he founded a brand new capital in the middle of Egypt calling it akitaten or the Horizon of the sun disk the egyptologist Dimitri labori Likens it to Versailles in France when King Louis XIV compelled his entire court to move out to the Royal residence Akhenaten made a similar move he abandoned thieves the capital of his ancestors of the 18th Dynasty and the holy city of the dynastic God Amun Rey today the site of akatatan is called Tel El amarna or simply amarna this is what it looks like today not much of it is left in fact the site was lost to history until the 1700s notably Napoleon bonaparte's Expedition mapped the site for the first time as they made their way through Egypt in the late 1700s we know a decent amount about amarna because of the discovery of a series of inscriptions that marked out the boundaries of the city one of the inscriptions called the early Proclamation reports the foundation of the city from the king's perspective he says he chose the site because it was the place of the Primeval event in other words the place where the creation of Life first happened he then declares his intent for the new city at akhitatin in this place shall I make the house of aten for the aten my father he followed through on that promise he built several temples chapels and palaces all relating to the worship of aten most notably he built what he calls the house of arten or the Great artan temple which has been described as the nerve center of the art and cult at amarna whereas traditional temples had a roof religious structures at amarna dedicated to the aten were open to the sky so you can bask in aten's radiant power while you worship him only an outline of the Great atan temple remains today but we can tell it was gigantic measuring 730 meters by 229 meters to get a sense of what this looked like check out this Recreation of the interior of the Great temple which essentially was an open-air Court a raid with altars these little squares here inside and around the temples of amarna were built literally hundreds of offering tables that were piled high with offerings of food and flowers a practice depicted inscribed on the temple walls and in Elite tombs ritual practice must have also involved other practices known from Egyptian religion like chanting hymns and rattling ritual instruments called sistra but the main difference being there was no Divine image of the god no statue to venerate Scholars aren't sure how much the average person would have participated paid in cultic practice but at least a few Scholars have argued that the non-elite of amarna may have participated particularly because of the large spaces in front of the Great temple where large crowds could have gathered the foundation of the new capital undoubtedly rocked the political and religious world of ancient Egypt and he probably made a lot of political enemies back in Thebes amarnath thus became the holy city of aten the religious center of a new religion that Scholars Now call autonism now not much is actually understood about the religion of autonism but our best Clues come from the so-called hymn to the aten the most elaborate of sun god hymns from ancient Egypt the surviving hymns are found inscribed in the tombs of the officials at amarna it's way too long to read the whole thing but I'll highlight a few passages some stanzas describe arten as a life-giving god o you who bring into living fetuses and women who give life to the sun in his mother's womb when the chick is in the egg you give him breath within it to cause him to live so auten's life-giving power or functions not just on a cosmic level creating the whole world and giving the whole world life but on a personal level giving life to humans and animals alike remember back to those an iconic images of the aten literally extending the symbol for life down to humans other passages reveal the universal nature of the aten an inclusive God witnessed by everyone one stanza reads you have filled every land with your beauty you are fine great radiant lofty over and above every land your rays bind the lands to the limit of all you have made so often can Embrace many lands and many peoples Egyptians and foreigners alike but auten is also a God that only Akhenaten himself could truly understand the hymn describes his special relationship you are in my heart there is none other who knows you beside your son Akhenaten you instruct him in your plans in your strength passages like this lead some to argue that Akhenaten himself composed the hymn here Akhenaten functions not only as a king but as a prophet and intermediary one who knows the mind of God in this hymn and others found around amarna we catch a glimpse of akhenaten's personal devotion another hymn reads I am your son who is effective for you and raises up your name your might and your power are established in my heart another inscription records a prayer calling aten my father my reminder of continuity my witness to Eternal things so the great hymn and other religious inscriptions around amarna illustrate how the aachen was conceptualized as a god aten was a god of regeneration in other words it was believed that aten not only created the world but recreates it every single day unlike other Egyptian gods aten does not share the spotlight with a consort moreover auton does not speak directly like other gods but through Akhenaten as an intermediary who claimed Otten to be his father now some Scholars have suggested that the auten may actually have been akhenaten's literal father the deified amenhotep III this is because refers to the aten as father and as we've already established amanhochet III called himself the dazzling arten this would make autonism something akin to ancestor worship however Kings had always considered the primary State God to be their father which is what granted the king the Divine Right To Rule as if moving to a new capital wasn't enough sometime between year 2 and year 5 with the Swift Rise of aten as the primary State God Akhenaten made a daring move that rocked the state religion he banned the worship of a moon closed his temples and ordered the widespread and thorough Erasure of the name and image of Amun we have evidence that this Erasure campaign was waged from Nubia in the South all the way up to the Sinai Peninsula over 3 200 kilometers away the destruction of our moon was so widespread that some egyptologists theorize it could only have been accomplished with the help of the army just imagine the effort required to carry out such a widespread campaign and let me remind you all of this was happening during a Moon's height as the most popular Egyptian god he made some enemies by doing this in the tombs around Thebes the name Amun was obliterated chipped off the walls the name was also removed from the tip of hotshepsut's Obelisk just picture that Akhenaten presumably made some guy climb all the way up there with hammer and chisel just to destroy the name of Amun he even ordered the destruction of his own father's name remember that amenhotep contains the name of Amun so even though it was the name of his father Akhenaten had his name destroyed even within amenhotep III's own funerary Temple the temple meant to honor him and his legacy it's still not exactly clear why Akhenaten held so much animosity against Amun but Scholars have often suggested that it may have been for political reasons as the theory goes the Almond priesthood had become too powerful and this was akhenaten's way of establishing his own power but there aren't any texts that prove this to be true also Amun was not the only God that was attacked the name of a few other gods were occasionally targeted such as amun's consort Moot and even the plural word for Gods was sometimes erased this has led some to theorize that the worship of all gods but aten were banned and that perhaps autonism was the first occurrence of monotheism so can we categorize akhanan's religion as a form of monotheism this Association has fascinated Scholars for over a century it even captured the imagination of Sigmund Freud who floated the idea in his book Moses and monotheism suggesting that Moses was actually a priest of Otten who fled to Canaan and introduced monotheism to the Israelites as is always the case in religious studies it's difficult applying our own modern academic categories to our subjects of research sometimes our research subjects don't agree with our academic labels other times like Akhenaten were separated from our subjects by thousands of years who spoke a different language and had a different concept of what we might call religion or what we might call monotheism today typically monotheism is defined as belief in the existence of a single God this is distinguished from other terms like henotheism or monolatry which refer to the belief and worship of a single God while accepting the existence of other gods in a henotheistic system one God is typically elevated as the primary object of worship often due to cultural familial or personal devotion many if not most ancient Israelites could be classified within this framework as many texts in the Hebrew Bible assume the existence of other gods even if the Israelite God is the primary object of worship later during the Roman period Emperors like aurelian and Constantine came to favor the sun god while accepting the existence of other Roman gods both monotheism and henotheism have been used to describe autonism though with all of the qualifiers that Scholars like to use to hedge their conclusions henotheism seems to be the easiest term to defend there are several instances during akhenaten's rule where certain traditional gods were accepted especially Creator Gods the god Ray for example continued to be a major deity during akhenaten's Reign the name Rey even formed part of akhenaten's throne name during akhenan's Reign there were also temples dedicated to Rey that were built in heliopolis and perhaps even at the new capital amarna a letter dated to akkenan's fifth year informs the king that the Pata temple in Memphis was functioning at full capacity after the eliminate nation of the worship of a moon many ancient Egyptians who had names referring to our moon change their names to include accepted gods among these are Ray Pata and Thoth apparently these were the favored Gods during akhenaten's Reign it seems that Osiris was also accepted particularly at his cult site in abidos where Akhenaten may have even constructed a temple or Chapel dedicated to auten that functioned alongside the Temple of Osiris some point to the fact that the plural word for Gods was defaced during the destruction of the amunri cult on the surface this might suggest monotheistic violence and exclusivity an attempt to destroy the concept that there are other gods but as we just saw we have clear evidence that other gods were accepted and we have clear evidence that other gods were passed over in the anti-amun Erasure campaign for example in the memorial Temple of amenhotep III amun's figure was erased but the nearby image of Osiris was left untouched this practice of erasing the plural word Gods might rather be associated with ammun's title King of the Gods an unacceptable title when aachen is the supreme god the historian Ronald Ridley thus concludes that the erasures were intended to nullify that epithet rather than deny the existence of the broader Pantheon so many scholars argue that identifying optimism as monotheistic is not a compelling conclusion the egyptologist Brianna Jackson says that this is probably the dominant view these days among egyptologists so henotheism may be a more accurate term to describe this religion however there are egyptologists today that say autonism was functionally a monotheistic religion the historian Ronald Ridley simply quotes the great Hymn of arten Line 39 when he says what else however but monotheism can one call a religion which speaks of its God as quote Soul god without another beside him though of course as we've just seen it's more complicated than that since other gods were recognized if not worshiped within autonism egyptologists such as James Hoffmeyer who defends the label monotheism argues that the aten was elevated to a new category above the other gods and thus functioned as the one and only Supreme Being the egyptologist Orly goldwasser argues that we can see this in how the word auten was written in Egyptian hieroglyphs she says that the standard determinatives or classifying symbols that are usually attached to the names of gods are not used when describing the aten she argues that autonists deliberately didn't add a God classifier after the word auten because their revolutionary Doctrine has actually canceled the options for a category of gods this is a little confusing so let's use another example this would be similar to how some early Christians simply relabeled the Greek and Roman gods as demons a lot of early Christians did not deny that Zeus and Athena existed they definitely thought they existed but Christians simply demoted the Greco-Roman Gods to a new class of Supernatural being effectively canceling the category of Greco-Roman God since all these gods were technically demons this left the Christian God in his his own unique category Scholars like goldwasser and hofmeyer argue that the auction was in its own category too and thus monotheism is an accurate term to use whether or not we classify optimism as monotheistic or henotheistic many throughout the past Century have proposed that Akhenaten may have directly or indirectly influenced ancient Israelite religion and its worship of one God the god of Israel as we already saw Freud was convinced of this in the early 20th century even though much of his book is fanciful now most egyptologists today don't think autonism had any ties to Israelite religion though with a notable possible exception ever since the great ottenham was first discovered in the late 1800s Scholars of religion have pointed out the Striking similarities between this hymn and Psalm 104 in the Hebrew Bible specifically verses 20 to 30. there are numerous parallel motifs shared between these two texts for example Psalm 104 verses 20 to 22 has the motif of wild animals in the night you you send darkness and it is night when all the beasts of the forest prowl the Young Lions Roar for prey to seek their food from the Lord the sun arises they slip away and lie down in their dens meanwhile the great hymn says when you set Earth is in darkness as if in death every lion comes from its den all the serpents bite both texts also describe their respect of God as a source of life and they praise their God in comparable ways Psalm 104 says O Lord how manifold are your Works in wisdom you have made them all the Earth is full of your creatures while the great hymn says how manifold is it what you have made they are hidden from the face of Man O soul God like whom there is no other many scholars have proposed that the atenhim may have inspired this Psalm the Hebrew Bible scholar John day goes so far as to say that whoever wrote Psalm 104 must have had access to the atenhim other Scholars say we should be more cautious there is not a single instance of a direct translation between these two texts instead we see similar motifs but even these motifs are out of order comparing them side by side necessarily takes a stanza out of context from one of the texts so some have argued that the similarities are interesting but probably not the result of direct dependency rather they point to the fact that both texts emerged out of a shared near Eastern context Akhenaten died in or around 1336 BCE and his religious Revolution did not last long beyond the 17 years of his Reign it didn't disappear overnight Autumn temples continue to function for some time but optimism did eventually fizzle out the most dramatic evidence we have for this is the so-called restoration Stila of Tutankhamun who ascended to the throne a few years after Akhenaten the inscription declares his intent to restore the traditional religion of Egypt it describes the country's temples and ruin the temples and the cities of the gods and goddesses were fallen into Decay and their shrines were fallen into ruin but then his majesty appeared upon the throne of his his father and his majesty made monuments for the gods building their shrines Anew as monuments of Eternity endowed with possessions forever instituting Divine offerings for them consisting a regular daily sacrifices and providing their food offerings on Earth the inscription goes on to say that he installed new priests and that as for the gods and goddesses their hearts are joyful this inscription was discovered in amun's Temple in Karnak probably the temple to suffer the most during akhenaten's Purge suffering not only a loss of prestige but also probably finances as Akhenaten dedicated so many resources to the construction of the temples of aten and Karnak and the construction of a whole new city so granting that this is a piece of Royal propaganda it seems that chuchon common restored what Akhenaten had destroyed initiating a campaign to revitalize impoverished and abandoned temples and restoring a moon as the top God despite his fervent attempt to remake Egyptian religion he fell to a common phenomenon seen throughout the history of religion top-down mandated religious reforms seldom stick akhenaten's radical imposition of antonism serves as a powerful case study while he attempted to impose new beliefs and practices his successors quickly returned Egypt to his traditional Roots akhenaten's story serves as a fascinating study not just of one eccentric King but of religious transformation in general one of akhenaten's most radical decisions was to move the capital from thieves to amarna at the time this up ended the religious and political landscape of Egypt but looking back on it three thousand years later Egypt's political center of gravity moved Bunches of times Memphis to Thebes to Alexandria and then to Cairo the current capital and a mega City home to 10 million people I lived there for two years while doing my post-doc and let me tell you I fell in love with the city if you want to learn more about Cairo check out the video cairo's history Roman Fortress to Modern Mega City it's made by the Creator City beautiful he walks you through the stages of the city from a Roman military encampment to the seat of power for the fatimids mom looks and later the Ottomans it's one episode in a longer series on the world's greatest cities that you can find exclusively on nebula nebula is a platform where you'll find all sorts of thoughtful ad-free content from some of your favorite content creators because nebula creators like myself are free from the YouTube recommendation 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Channel: ReligionForBreakfast

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Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 27 2023