Akhnaton's Religion 1

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Akhnaton's Religion 1

• AMORC
• RCUI Online
• Mystery School Class

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Participants in the Group Project for the Ancient
Mystery Schools

• Tony Griggs FRC
• Larry Ford FRC
• Leah Larsen SRC
• Glenn Larsen FRC

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The Great Hymn to the Aten

• try to think about his hymn to Aten as answers to
  some questions , may be if we found those
  questions we could reach something , I will post
  those questions due to my trial to understand
  this man , and his belief

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Who are you ? who am I ? where is your seat ?

• Splendid you rise in heavens lightland,O living
  Aten, creator of life!

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Are you the all ? are you in me ? are you there ?

• When you have dawned in eastern lightland, You
  fill every land with your beauty. You are
  beauteous, great, radiant, High over every
  landYour rays embrace the lands,To the limit
  of all that you made. Being Re, you reach their
  limits,

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who really is your son ?

• You bend them for the son whom you love Though
  you are far, your rays are on earth,Though one
  sees you, your strides are unseen.

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chaos or less universal logic or less blessing ,
we have when you leave it ?

• When you set in western lightland, Earth is in
  darkness as if in deathOne sleeps in chambers,
  heads covered, One eye does not see another.
  Were they robbed of their goods, That are under
  their heads, People would not remark it. Every
  lion comes from its den, All the serpents bite

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are you the light or the power behind the light
or the properties of light ? or all of them ?

• Darkness hovers, earth is silent, As their maker
  rests in lightland.Earth brightens when you dawn
  in lightland, When you shine as Aten of daytime
  As you dispel the dark,As you cast your
  rays,The Two Lands are in festivity. Awake they
  stand on their feet, You have roused
  themBodies cleansed, clothed,Their arms adore
  your appearance. The entire land sets out to
  work, All beasts browse on their herbs Trees,
  herbs are sprouting,Birds fly from their
  nests,Their wings greeting your ka.All flocks
  frisk on their feet,All that fly up and
  alight,They live when you dawn for them. Ships
  fare north, fare south as well, Roads lie open
  when you riseThe fish in the river dart before
  you. Your rays are in the midst of the sea.

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( in this part of hymn I found akhenaten a deep
thinker , mediating the creation process trying
to understand it using his belief , his ideas)
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are you there in the mother's womb ?

• Who makes seed grow in women, Who creates people
  from spermWho feeds the son in his mother's
  womb, Who soothes him to still his tears.Nurse
  in the womb,Giver of breath,

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are you there in the origin of every one , so in
the mother's womb ?

• To nourish all that he made.When he comes from
  the womb to breathe, On the day of his
  birth,You open wide his mouth,You supply his
  needs.

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are you there in the egg ?

• When the chick in the egg speaks in the shell,
  You give him breath within to sustain him When
  you have made him complete,To break out from the
  egg,He comes out from the egg,To announce his
  completion,Walking on his legs he comes from it.

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the chaos , discipline , the system , rules , are
all one , by you ?

• How many are your deeds, Though hidden from
  sight,O Sole God beside whom there is none!You
  made the earth as you wished, you alone, All
  peoples, herds, and flocks All upon earth that
  walk on legs, All on high that fly on wings,
  The lands of Khor and Kush, The land of
  Egypt.You set every man in his place, You
  supply their needsEveryone has his food,His
  lifetime is counted.Their tongues differ in
  speech, Their characters likewise Their skins
  are distinct,For you distinguished the peoples.

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Some information on the Hymn To the Aten

• In the tomb of Ay, the chief minister of
  Akhenaten (and later to become king after
  Tutankhamun's death), occurs the longest and best
  rendition of a composition known as the 'Hymn to
  the Aten', said to have been written by Akhenaten
  himself. Quite moving in itself as a piece of
  poetry, its similarity to, and possible source of
  the concept in, Psalm 104 has long been noted.
• It sums up the whole ethos of the Aten cult and
  especially the concept that only Akhenaten had
  access to the god 'Thou arisest fair in the
  horizon of Heaven, 0 Living Aten, Beginner of
  Lifethere is none who knows thee save thy son
  Akhenaten. Thou hast made him wise in thy plans
  and thy power.' No longer did the dead call upon
  Osiris to guide them through the after-world, for
  only through their adherence to the king and his
  intercession on their behalf could they hope to
  live beyond the grave.
• 2

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Perhaps all should look and see how the Hymn
Applies to them
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These are some added thoughts

• For one to truly understand Akhnaton and his
  faith you need to understand him a little more.
  Even though history tried to erase him and his
  ideas they lived on and we must piece together
  what we know of him.

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A Brief History

•    Amenhotep IV-better known as Akhenaten, the
  new name he took early on in his reign-ushered in
  a revolutionary period in Egyptian history. The
  Amarna Interlude, as it is often called, saw the
  removal of the seat of government to a
  short-lived new capital city, Akhetaten (modern
  el-Amarna), the introduction of a new art style,
  and the elevation of the cult of the sun disc,
  the Aten, to pre-eminent status in Egyptian
  religion. This last heresy in particular was to
  bring down on Akhenaten and his immediate
  successors the opprobrium of later kings.
•     The young prince was at least the second son
  of Amenhotep III by his chief wife, Tiy an elder
  brother, prince Tuthmosis, had died prematurely
  (strangely, a whip bearing his name was found in
  Tutankhamun's tomb). There is some controversy
  over whether or not the old king took his son
  into partnership on the throne in a co-regency
  there are quite strong arguments both for and
  against. A point in favor of a co-regency is the
  appearance during the latter years of Amenhotep
  III's reign of artistic styles that are
  subsequently seen as part of the 'revolutionary'
  Amarna art introduced by Akhenaten on the other
  hand, both 'traditional' and 'revolutionary' Art
  styles could easily have coexisted during the
  early years of Akhenaten's reign. At any rate, if
  there had been a co-regency, it would not have
  been for longer than the short period before the
  new king assumed his preferred name of Akhenaten
  ('Servant of the Aten') in Year 5.
•     The beginning of Akhenaten's reign marked no
  great discontinuity with that of his
  predecessors. Not only was he crowned at Karnak
  (temple of the god Amun) but, like his father  he
  married a lady of non-royal blood, Nefertiti, the
  daughter of the vizier Ay. Ay seems to have been
  a brother of Queen Tiy (Anen was another) and a
  son of Yuya and Tuya. Nefertiti's mother is not
  known she may have died in childbirth or shortly
  afterwards, since Nefertiti seems to have been
  brought up by another wife of Ay named Tey, who
  would then be her stepmother.
• 2

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The cult of the Aten

• Some say that he was the most remarkable king to
  sit upon Egypts throne.  There can be little
  doubt that the new king was far more of a thinker
  and philosopher than his forebears.  Akhenaten
  was traditionally raised by his parents,
  Amenhotep III and Queen Tiy (1382-1344 B.C.) by
  worshipping Amen. Akhenaten, however, preferred
  Aten, the sun god that was worshipped in earlier
  times.  Amenhotep III had recognized the growing
  power of the priesthood of Amun and had sought to
  curb it his son was to take the matter a lot
  further by introducing a new monotheistic cult of
  sun-worship that was incarnate in the sun's disc,
  the Aten.  When early in his reign he changed his
  name to Akhenaten, meaning He Who is of Service
  to Aten, he also renamed his queen to
  Nefer-Nefru-Aten, which is Beautiful is the
  Beauty of Aten.  Akhenaten's innovation was to
  worship the Aten in its own right. Portrayed as a
  solar disc whose protective rays terminated in
  hands holding the ankh hieroglyph for life, the
  Aten was accessible only to Akhenaten, thereby
  obviating the need for an intermediate
  priesthood.

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The New Religion

• It was said that one day Akhenaten had a vision
  wherein he saw a sun disc between two mountains.
  He felt that God was guiding him to make change.
  He was shown the God, Aten, as the Sun Disk - the
  Light. He felt guided by Aten to build a city
  between the two mountains. In the sixth year of
  his reign Akhenaten rejected the Gods of Thebes.
  They were never part of his childhood anyway
  since he had been shunned as a child.
• Akhenaten had declared for the first time in
  recorded that there was only one God - the
  concept of monotheism. He turned 2,000 years of
  Egyptian religious upside down overnight!
• To make a complete break, the king and his queen,
  left Thebes behind and moved to a new capital in
  Middle Egypt, 180 miles north of Thebes half way
  between Memphis and Thebes.
• It was a virgin site, not previously dedicated to
  any other god or goddess, and he named it
  Akhetaten - The Horizon of the Aten.
• Today the site is known as El-Amarna.
• In essence he was an cult leader taking his
  following into the mountains and desert to build
  a new paradise.

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In The Beginning.

• At first, the king built a temple to his god Aten
  immediately outside the east gate of the temple
  of Amun at Karnak, but clearly the coexistence of
  the two cults could not last. He therefore
  proscribed the cult of Amun, closed the god's
  temples, took over the revenues.  He then sent
  his officials around to destroy Amens statues
  and to desecrate the worship sites. These actions
  were so contrary to the traditional that
  opposition arose against him. The estates of the
  great temples of Thebes, Memphis and Heliopolis
  reverted to the throne. Corruption grew out of
  the mismanagement of such large levies.
• 2

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A new Capitol

• To make a complete break, in Year 6 the king and
  his queen, left Thebes behind and moved to a new
  capital in Middle Egypt, half way between Memphis
  and Thebes. It was a virgin site, not previously
  dedicated to any other god or goddess, and he
  named it Akhetaten-The Horizon of the Aten. Today
  the site is known as el-Amarna.

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In its finished state Armana offered a theatrical
setting for celebrating Akhenaten's kingship. The
city sprawled for miles over the plain. There
were elegant palaces, statues of the Pharaoh,
good housing throughout the city, a royal road
that ran through the center of town, probably the
widest street in the ancient world. It was
designed for chariot processions, with Akhenaten
leading the way.
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A new Art Form

• It is evident from the art of the Amarna period
  that the court officially emulated the king's
  unusual physical characteristics. Thus
  individuals such as the young princesses are
  endowed with elongated skulls and excessive
  adiposity, while Bek-the Chief Sculptor and
  Master of Works-portrays himself in the likeness
  of his king with pendulous breasts and protruding
  stomach. On a stele now in Berlin Bek states that
  he was taught by His Majesty and that the court
  sculptors were instructed to represent what they
  saw. The result is a realism that breaks away
  from the rigid formality of earlier official
  depictions, although naturalism is very evident
  in earlier, unofficial art.

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A lime stone slab, with traces of the
draughtsman's grid still on it, found in the
Royal Tomb of Amarna. Its style is characteristic
of the early period of Akhenaten's reign. The
king is accompanied by Nefertiti and just two of
their daughters, but this does not necessarily
indicate that these are the eldest, since others
of the six may have been omitted Cairo Museum
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Realism was a part of the new art form note the
king walking with a cane

• 4

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Nefertiti is depicted in her advanced years. She
wears a long, white linen dress that allows the
contours of her body to be seen. It has been
speculated that this small statuette was the
model for a life size representation that was
never executed. Arnold points out that, although
she is past her prime, she is not old. While this
may be true, the sagging features of the
statuette do indicate that she is no longer the
vivacious Queen.

• 4

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The End of a Dream

• Akhenaten's reign lasted 16 years. This was a
  difficult time in Egyptian history. Many scholars
  maintain that Akhenaten was responsible for this
  decline, but evidence suggests that it had
  already started.

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In 1332 BC Akhenaten died, the circumstances
never explained. His memory and all that he had
created soon to erased from history not to be
found for centuries later.
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Royal Tomb at Amarna Akhenaten and Nefertiti
grieve over daughterDrawing of Relief (N.
Davies, The Rock Tombs of el-Amrna, 1903-08)
Note that behind the King and Queen there is
what appears to be a wet-nurse holding an infant.
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Was The New Religion for Everyone?

• According to present evidence, however, it
  appears that it was only the upper echelons of
  society which embraced the new religion with any
  fervor (and perhaps that was only skin deep).
  Excavations at Amarna have indicated that even
  here the old way of religion continued among the
  ordinary people. On a wider scale, throughout
  Egypt, the new cult does not seem to have had
  much effect at a common level except, of course,
  in dismantling the priesthood and closing the
  temples but then the ordinary populace had had
  little to do with the religious establishment
  anyway, except on the high days and holidays when
  the god's statue would be carried in procession
  from the sanctuary outside the great temple
  walls.
• The standard bureaucracy continued its endeavors
  to run the country while the king courted his
  god. Cracks in the Egyptian empire may have begun
  to appear in the later years of the reign of
  Amenhotep III at any rate they became more
  evident as Akhenaten increasingly left government
  and diplomats to their own devices. Civil and
  military authority came under two strong
  characters Ay, who held the title 'Father of the
  God' (and was probably Akhenaten's
  father-in-law), and the general Horemheb (also
  Ay's son-in-law since he married Ay's daughter
  Mutnodjme, sister of Nefertiti). Both men were to
  become pharaoh before the 18th Dynasty ended.
  This redoubtable pair of closely related high
  officials no doubt kept everything under control
  in a discreet manner while Akhenaten pursued his
  own philosophical and religious interests.
• 2

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• Akhenaten wanted everyone to be happy. He created
  a beautiful, idealistic religion and Utopia for
  his people but many just didn't understand it.
  Akhenaten was not living in the reality of his
  worshippers. Though he had found himself and his
  God but the people were used to Gods they could
  see, carved in stone with beautiful bodies, many
  with heads of animals. Akhenaten's God was too
  much of an abstraction. Aten was the basic
  principle of the universe, Light! They also
  wondered why the sun God only shed its rays on
  the royal family and not everyone.
• According to present evidence, however, it
  appears that it was only the upper echelons of
  society which embraced the new religion with any
  fervor. Excavations at Amarna have indicated that
  even here the old way of religion continued among
  the ordinary people. On a wider scale, throughout
  Egypt, the new cult does not seem to have had
  much effect at a common level except, of course,
  in dismantling the priesthood and closing the
  temples but then the ordinary populace had had
  little to do with the religious establishment
  anyway, except on the high days and holidays when
  the god's statue would be carried in procession
  from the sanctuary outside the great temple
  walls.
• 4

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Or the Planting Of a Seed?

• Perhaps Egypt was not ready to give up 1000s of
  years of tradition. But change, It has to start
  somewhere
• What about the ancestors, and who they prayed to
  and dedicated the temples to?
• What about the confession to Maat? Why would you
  need to confess to 42 Gods and Goddesses other
  than The Aten?
• Perhaps it was the concepts that he taught that
  are his legacy?
• He was the first in recorded history to openly
  worship One God, Perhaps the Hebrews and
  Egyptians have more in common than they want to
  admit?
• was Akhnaton's religion different from how we
  define religion today. An opinion, Akhnaton
  taught a way of life.
• Perhaps we are sharing in this seed he planted

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Refrences

• Work Cited
• 1. Hymn To The Aten Rosicrucian Mystery
  Schools Translated by J.A. Wilson in ANET, pp.
  369-371.
• 2. http//www.touregypt.net/18dyn10.htm
• 3 Open http//web.ics.purdue.edu/rauhn/Akhnaton.h
  tm in a new window.
• 4 http//www.lost-civilizations.net/ancient-egypt
  -egiptian-pharaoh-akhenaten-nefertiti-page-3.html
• http//www.eternalegypt.org/EternalEgyptWebsiteWeb
  /HomeServlet?ee_website_action_keyaction.display.
  homelanguage_id1
• http//www.virtual-egyptian-museum.org/Collection/
  FullVisit/Collection.FullVisit-JFR.html?../Content
  /WOD.XL.00141.html0

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Akhnatons Cartouche