Due to his father’s death, the son succeeded the throne initially as Amenhotep IV in 1353 B.C. The new pharaoh seems to have shown his interests on launching a radical religious reform from relatively early years of his reign. Within a year or two since he took the throne, Amenhotep IV began to build ‘temples to the Aten or divinised sun-disk at Karnak in a very different artistic style’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/akhenaten_01.shtml) and he also changed his name from Amenhotep, which means ‘Amun is content’ – honouring the state god Amun-Re – to Akhenaten, meaning ‘effective for the Aten’ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/10561090/Akhenaten-mad-bad-or-brilliant.html). Meanwhile, there are some arguments that point out some connections between the possible self-deification of Amenhotep III in his life time and Akhenaten’s worship of Aten. It is said that ‘Amenhotep III was somewhat insistent that he be identified with this sun god during his lifetime’ (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/amenhotep3.htm), therefore ‘the worship of the sun god, Aten, by his son may have directly or indirectly also involved the worship of his father’ (ibid). Furthermore, some scholars suggest Akhenaten’s ‘cult of Aten was a simple admiration for his father. They point out that the name Aten, which was pronounced yati, sounded much like the Egyptian word for father, perhaps pronounced yata‘ http://books.google.co.za/books?id=JADDYAZ9GIIC&pg=PA199&lpg=PA199&dq=amenhotep+iii+iv+co-regent&source=bl&ots=071zZVA-nD&sig=cNv_RhGWv7X9eKIZZUqDDRXuVT4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KawpU-7QMYPKhAe1jIGQAQ&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=amenhotep%20iii%20iv%20co-regent&f=false). For the argument’s sake, it would be also important to point out that Egyptian pharaohes were ‘expected to merge with the sun after his death’ (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/amenhotep3.htm) and there is no physical evidence that proves ‘Amenhotep III (being regarded) as a major deity during his lifetime’ (ibid).
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| Aten (sun-disk) |
Regardless to whether his worship involved the deification of his father or not, Akhenaten’s next step towards his religious reform shows unparalleled uniqueness of this pharaoh in the Egyptian history: ‘In the fifth year of his reign, around the time that he changed his name, Akhenaten decided to build a new royal capital’ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/10561090/Akhenaten-mad-bad-or-brilliant.html). In doing so, he made it clear that ‘the worship of the Aten required a location uncontaminated by the cults of traditional gods’ ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/akhenaten_01.shtml) and in this logic, he decided to ‘ban the traditional gods altogether, making redundant up to 2,000 time-honoured deities’ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/10561090/Akhenaten-mad-bad-or-brilliant.html). Taking the contemporary circumstance into the consideration, Akhenaten’s religious reform, in political view point, could be recognised as ‘declaration of warfare against the dominant religious authority in the day, the Amun priesthood based in Thebes… which by then was siphoning off a hefty percentage of the taxes collected in Egypt’ (http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320Hist&Civ/chapters/10AKHEN.htm). Whatever the case, Akhenaten then ‘began closing down Amun temples across Egypt and even had the name Amun erased from some inscriptions. Later, he went so far as to order the word “gods” removed and changed to “god,” wherever it occurred in public inscriptions. Whether or not this is monotheism by theological standards, it’s certainly grammatical monotheism (ibid). In terms of theological view point, the key elements of this grammatical monotheism could be represented in the following account: ‘Akhenaten’s aten is the font of all being, which means by nature he cannot be restricted in form, and thus is almost always presented as the aptly universal and geometric solar circle… Even to say “he” of the aten is perhaps too restrictive for this universalist conception of deity—gender is clearly not relevant to sun-disks’ (ibid). Nonetheless, even though his religious reform is said to have ‘raised the Aten to the position of “sole god”… Akhenaten’s religion is probably not strictly speaking monotheistic, although only the Aten is actually worshipped and provided with temples. Other gods still existed and are mentioned in inscriptions’ ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/akhenaten_01.shtml).
For reading the text in full: http://wrex2009.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/akhenaten/
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