Egyptian pharaoh akhenaten biography of rory die in
Egyptians worshipped a sun god under several names, and solar worship had been growing in popularity even before Akhenaten, especially during the Eighteenth Dynasty and the reign of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten's father. The implementation of Atenism can be traced through gradual changes in the Aten's iconography , and Egyptologist Donald B.
Redford divided its development into three stages—earliest, intermediate, and final—in his studies of Akhenaten and Atenism. The earliest stage was associated with a growing number of depictions of the sun disc, though the disc is still seen resting on the head of the falcon-headed sun god Ra-Horakhty , as the god was traditionally represented.
The final stage had the Aten represented as a sun disc with sunrays like long arms terminating in human hands and the introduction of a new epithet for the god: "the great living Disc which is in jubilee, lord of heaven and earth". In the early years of his reign, Amenhotep IV lived at Thebes, the old capital city, and permitted worship of Egypt's traditional deities to continue.
However, some signs already pointed to the growing importance of the Aten. For example, inscriptions in the Theban tomb of Parennefer from the early rule of Amenhotep IV state that "one measures the payments to every other god with a level measure, but for the Aten one measures so that it overflows," indicating a more favorable attitude to the cult of Aten than the other gods.
The new Aten temples had no roof and the god was thus worshipped in the sunlight, under the open sky, rather than in dark temple enclosures as had been the previous custom. One of the most important turning points in the early reign of Amenhotep IV is a speech given by the pharaoh at the beginning of his second regnal year.
A copy of the speech survives on one of the pylons at the Karnak Temple Complex near Thebes. Speaking to the royal court, scribes or the people, Amenhotep IV said that the gods were ineffective and had ceased their movements, and that their temples had collapsed. The pharaoh contrasted this with the only remaining god, the sun disc Aten, who continued to move and exist forever.
Some Egyptologists, such as Donald B. Redford , compared this speech to a proclamation or manifesto, which foreshadowed and explained the pharaoh's later religious reforms centered around the Aten.
Egyptian pharaoh akhenaten biography of rory davis
The temples of the gods fallen to ruin, their bodies do not endure. Since the time of the ancestors, it is the wise man that knows these things. Behold, I, the king, am speaking so that I might inform you concerning the appearances of the gods. I know their temples, and I am versed in the writings, specifically, the inventory of their primeval bodies.
And I have watched as they [the gods] have ceased their appearances, one after the other. All of them have stopped, except the god who gave birth to himself. And no one knows the mystery of how he performs his tasks. This god goes where he pleases and no one else knows his going. I approach him, the things which he has made.
How exalted they are. The pharaoh "disbanded the priesthoods of all the other gods Artists started to depict him with the trappings of pharaohs, placing his name in cartouches —a rare, but not unique occurrence, as the names of Ra-Horakhty and Amun-Ra had also been found enclosed in cartouches—and wearing a uraeus , a symbol of kingship.
By Year Nine of his reign, Akhenaten declared that Aten was not merely the supreme god, but the only worshipable god. He ordered the defacing of Amun's temples throughout Egypt and, in a number of instances, inscriptions of the plural 'gods' were also removed. All life on Earth depended on the Aten and the visible sunlight. Akhenaten's Atenist beliefs are best distilled in the Great Hymn to the Aten.
It tells of the Aten as a sole god and the creator of all life, who recreates life every day at sunrise, and on whom everything on Earth depends, including the natural world, people's lives, and even trade and commerce. You made the earth as you wished, you alone. Some debate has focused on the extent to which Akhenaten forced his religious reforms on his people.
Yet, even at Amarna itself, some courtiers kept such names as Ahmose "child of the moon god", the owner of tomb 3 , and the sculptor's workshop where the famous Nefertiti Bust and other works of royal portraiture were found is associated with an artist known to have been called Thutmose "child of Thoth". An overwhelmingly large number of faience amulets at Amarna also show that talismans of the household-and-childbirth gods Bes and Taweret, the eye of Horus, and amulets of other traditional deities, were openly worn by its citizens.
Indeed, a cache of royal jewelry found buried near the Amarna royal tombs now in the National Museum of Scotland includes a finger ring referring to Mut, the wife of Amun. Such evidence suggests that though Akhenaten shifted funding away from traditional temples, his policies were fairly tolerant until some point, perhaps a particular event as yet unknown, toward the end of the reign.
Archaeological discoveries at Akhetaten show that many ordinary residents of this city chose to gouge or chisel out all references to the god Amun on even minor personal items that they owned, such as commemorative scarabs or make-up pots, perhaps for fear of being accused of having Amunist sympathies. Following Akhenaten's death, Egypt gradually returned to its traditional polytheistic religion, partly because of how closely associated the Aten became with Akhenaten.
Over time, however, Akhenaten's successors, starting with Tutankhaten, took steps to distance themselves from Atenism. Tutankhaten and his wife Ankhesenpaaten dropped the Aten from their names and changed them to Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun, respectively. Amun was restored as the supreme deity. Tutankhamun reestablished the temples of the other gods, as the pharaoh propagated on his Restoration Stela: "He reorganized this land, restoring its customs to those of the time of Re.
He renewed the gods' mansions and fashioned all their images. He raised up their temples and created their statues. When he had sought out the gods' precincts which were in ruins in this land, he refounded them just as they had been since the time of the first primeval age. Aten temples continued to be torn down under Ay and Horemheb , Tutankhamun's successors and the last pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Horemheb might also have ordered the demolition of Akhetaten, Akhenaten's capital city. Finally, Seti I , the second pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty, ordered the name of Amun to be restored on inscriptions where it had been removed or replaced by Aten. Styles of art that flourished during the reigns of Akhenaten and his immediate successors, known as Amarna art , are markedly different from the traditional art of ancient Egypt.
Representations are more realistic , expressionistic , and naturalistic , [ ] [ ] especially in depictions of animals, plants and people, and convey more action and movement for both non-royal and royal individuals than the traditionally static representations. In traditional art, a pharaoh's divine nature was expressed by repose, even immobility.
The portrayals of Akhenaten himself greatly differ from the depictions of other pharaohs. Traditionally, the portrayal of pharaohs—and the Egyptian ruling class—was idealized, and they were shown in "stereotypically 'beautiful' fashion" as youthful and athletic. Based on Akhenaten's and his family's unusual artistic representations, including potential depictions of gynecomastia and androgyny , some have argued that the pharaoh and his family have either had aromatase excess syndrome and sagittal craniosynostosis syndrome , or Antley—Bixler syndrome.
Arguing instead for a symbolic interpretation, Dominic Montserrat in Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt states that "there is now a broad consensus among Egyptologists that the exaggerated forms of Akhenaten's physical portrayal Depictions of other members of the court, especially members of the royal family, are also exaggerated, stylized, and overall different from traditional art.
Nefertiti also appears, both beside the king and alone, or with her daughters, in actions usually reserved for a pharaoh, such as "smiting the enemy", a traditional depiction of male pharaohs. Early artistic representations of her tend to be indistinguishable from her husband's except by her regalia, but soon after the move to the new capital, Nefertiti begins to be depicted with features specific to her.
Questions remain whether the beauty of Nefertiti is portraiture or idealism. Akhenaten's status as a religious revolutionary has led to much speculation , ranging from scholarly hypotheses to non-academic fringe theories. Although some believe the religion he introduced was mostly monotheistic, many others see Akhenaten as a practitioner of an Aten monolatry , [ ] as he did not actively deny the existence of other gods; he simply refrained from worshiping any but the Aten.
The idea that Akhenaten was the pioneer of a monotheistic religion that later became Judaism has been considered by various scholars. Freud argued that Akhenaten was striving to promote monotheism, something that the biblical Moses was able to achieve. Freud commented on the connection between Adonai , the Egyptian Aten and the Syrian divine name of Adonis as stemming from a common root; [ ] in this he was following the argument of Egyptologist Arthur Weigall.
Jan Assmann 's opinion is that 'Aten' and 'Adonai' are not linguistically related. There are strong similarities between Akhenaten's Great Hymn to the Aten and the Biblical Psalm , but there is debate as to relationship implied by this similarity. Others have likened some aspects of Akhenaten's relationship with the Aten to the relationship, in Christian tradition, between Jesus Christ and God, particularly interpretations that emphasize a more monotheistic interpretation of Atenism than a henotheistic one.
Redford has noted that some have viewed Akhenaten as a harbinger of Jesus. Although scholars like Brian Fagan and Robert Alter have re-opened the debate, in , Redford concluded:. Before much of the archaeological evidence from Thebes and from Tell el-Amarna became available, wishful thinking sometimes turned Akhenaten into a humane teacher of the true God, a mentor of Moses, a christlike figure, a philosopher before his time.
But these imaginary creatures are now fading away as the historical reality gradually emerges. There is little or no evidence to support the notion that Akhenaten was a progenitor of the full-blown monotheism that we find in the Bible. The monotheism of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament had its own separate development—one that began more than half a millennium after the pharaoh's death.
The unconventional portrayals of Akhenaten—different from the traditional athletic norm in the portrayal of pharaohs—have led Egyptologists in the 19th and 20th centuries to suppose that Akhenaten had some kind of genetic abnormality. However, this is unlikely, because this disorder results in sterility and Akhenaten is known to have fathered numerous children.
His children are repeatedly portrayed through years of archaeological and iconographic evidence. People with Marfan syndrome tend towards tallness, with a long, thin face, elongated skull, overgrown ribs, a funnel or pigeon chest, a high curved or slightly cleft palate, and larger pelvis, with enlarged thighs and spindly calves, symptoms that appear in some depictions of Akhenaten.
By the early 21st century, most Egyptologists argued that Akhenaten's portrayals are not the results of a genetic or medical condition, but rather should be interpreted as stylized portrayals influenced by Atenism. Akhenaten's life, accomplishments, and legacy have been preserved and depicted in many ways, and he has figured in works of both high and popular culture since his rediscovery in the 19th century AD.
Akhenaten—alongside Cleopatra and Alexander the Great —is among the most often popularized and fictionalized ancient historical figures. On page, Amarna novels most often take one of two forms. They are either a Bildungsroman , focusing on Akhenaten's psychological and moral growth as it relates to establishing Atenism and Akhetaten, as well as his struggles against the Theban Amun cult.
Alternatively, his literary depictions focus on the aftermath of his reign and religion.
Egyptian pharaoh akhenaten biography of rory
Thus, before the s, Akhenaten had appeared as "a ghost, a spectral figure" in art, while since he has become realistic, "material and tangible". In this movie, Akhenaten, portrayed by Michael Wilding , appears to represent Jesus Christ and his followers proto- Christians. A sexualized image of Akhenaten, building on early Western interest in the pharaoh's androgynous depictions, perceived potential homosexuality , and identification with Oedipal storytelling , also influenced modern works of art.
In the 21st century, Akhenaten appeared as an antagonist in comic books and video games. For example, he is the major antagonist in limited comic-book series Marvel: The End In this series, Akhenaten is abducted by an alien order in the 14th century BC and reappears on modern Earth seeking to restore his kingdom. He is opposed by essentially all of the other superheroes and supervillains in the Marvel comic book universe and is eventually defeated by Thanos.
American death metal band Nile depicted Akhenaten's judgement, punishment, and erasure from history at the hands of the pantheon that he replaced with Aten, in the song "Cast Down the Heretic", from their album Annihilation of the Wicked. He was also featured on the cover artwork of their album, Those Whom the Gods Detest.
Hoffmeier , p. There has been some debate whether the similarities direct or indirect borrowing Alter , p. I think there may be some likelihood, however unprovable, that our psalmist was familiar with at least an intermediate version of Akhenaton's hymn and adopted some elements from it. Brown , p. Day , pp. Akhenaten's Hymn to the Sun god Aten Here the evidence is particularly impressive, since we have six parallels with Akhenaten's hymn Landes , pp.
Indeed, most Egyptologists argue that this hymn inspired the psalm For some, the relationship to Hebraic monotheism seems extremely close, including the nearly verbatim passages in Psalm and the "Hymn to Aten" found in one of the tombs at Akhetaten Shaw , p. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history.
Egyptian pharaoh akhenaten biography of rory hamilton: Akhenaten (pronounced / ˌækəˈnɑːtən / listen ⓘ), [8] also spelled Akhenaton[3][9][10] or Echnaton[11] (Ancient Egyptian: ꜣḫ-n-jtn ʾŪḫə-nə-yātəy, pronounced [ˈʔuːχəʔ nə ˈjaːtəj] ⓘ, [12][13] meaning 'Effective for the Aten '), was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh reigning c. –[3] or – BC, [4] the tenth ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. For other uses, see Akhenaten disambiguation. Statue of Akhenaten at the Egyptian Museum. Royal titulary. Wetjes khau em Iunu shemay Year 1—5 [ 5 ] Elevated of appearances in southern Heliopolis [ 5 ] Wetjes ren en Iten after Year 5 [ 5 ] Who has elevated the name of the Aten [ 5 ].
Imen-hetep u netjer heqa Waset Year 1—5 [ 5 ] Amun is satisfied, god, and ruler of Thebes [ 5 ] Akh-en-Iten after Year 5 [ 5 ] The one who is beneficial to the Aten [ 5 ]. Meritaten Tasherit? Ancient Egyptian religion Atenism. See also: Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt family tree. Coregency with Amenhotep III. Early reign as Amenhotep lV.
Main article: Amarna. Further information: Amarna letters. Coregency with Smenkhkare or Nefertiti. Further information: Amarna succession and KV Further information: Atenism and Aten. Implementation and development. Further information: Amarna art. Akhenaten and monotheism in Abrahamic religions. Thutmose III 8. Amenhotep II Merytre-Hatshepsut 4.
Thutmose IV 9. Tiaa 2. Amenhotep III 5. Mutemwiya 1. Akhenaten 6. Yuya 3. Tiye 7. Retrieved January 18, Entrepreneurship and Religion. Edward Elgar Pub. ISBN OCLC Archived from the original on October 14, Retrieved October 2, Dorman, Peter F. Retrieved August 25, Albright, William F. Moses out of Egypt". The Biblical Archaeologist.
JSTOR S2CID Aldred, Cyril New Aspects of Antiquity 1st ed. London: Thames and Hudson.
Egyptian pharaoh akhenaten biography of rory and ryan
Aldred, Cyril []. Egyptian art in the Days of the Pharaohs —32 BC. World of Art. The Egyptians had traditionally worshipped a whole pantheon of gods who were represented in human or animal form or as animal-headed humans. Some gods were specific to particular towns or places; others had broader appeal. From early periods solar gods such as Re had played an important role in Egyptian state religion because the distant but universal power of the sun fitted well with prevailing ideas of the supreme power of the king both within Egypt and beyond its borders.
In the New Kingdom, solar gods again became prominent, among them the Aten, the visible sun-disk which can be seen traversing the sky each day. Akhenaten raised the Aten to the position of 'sole god', represented as a disk with rays of light terminating in hands which reach out to the royal family, sometimes offering the hieroglyphic sign for life.
Akhenaten and his family are frequently shown worshipping the Aten or simply indulging in everyday activities beneath the disk.
Everywhere the close ties between the king and god are stressed through art and text. The king forms the link between the god and ordinary people whose supposed focus of worship seems to have been Akhenaten and the royal family rather than the Aten itself. Relief showing Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti worshipping the Aten. Other gods still existed and are mentioned in inscriptions although these tend to be other solar gods or personifications of abstract concepts; even the names of the Aten, which are written in cartouches like king's names, consist of a theological statement describing the Aten in terms of other gods.
The majority of traditional gods were not tolerated, however, and teams of workmen were sent around the temples of Egypt where they chiselled out the names and images of these gods wherever they occurred. A number of hymns to the Aten were composed during Akhenaten's reign and these provide a glimpse of what James Allen has described as the 'natural philosophy' of Akhenaten's religion.
The wonders of the natural world are described to extol the universal power of the sun; all creatures rejoice when the sun rises and nasty things come out at night when the sun is not present. Early in his reign Akhenaten used art as a way of emphasising his intention of doing things very differently. Colossi and wall-reliefs from the Karnak Aten Temple are highly exaggerated and almost grotesque when viewed in the context of the formality and restraint which had characterised Egyptian royal and elite art for the millennium preceding Akhenaten's birth.
Although these seem striking and strangely beautiful today, it is hard for us to appreciate the profoundly shocking effect that such representations must have had on the senses of those who first viewed them and who would never have been exposed to anything other than traditional Egyptian art. With the move to Amarna the art becomes less exaggerated, but while it is often described as 'naturalistic' it remains highly stylised in its portrayal of the human figure.
The royal family are shown with elongated skulls and pear-shaped bodies with skinny torsos and arms but fuller hips, stomachs and thighs. The subject matter of royal art also changes. Although formal scenes of the king worshipping remain important there is an increasing emphasis on ordinary, day-to-day activities which include intimate portrayals of Akhenaten and Nefertiti playing with their daughters beneath the rays of the Aten.
Akhenaten's wife is believed to have, at the very least, been a relative and most likely his half-sister, Nefertiti. It was a common, and expected, tradition among ancient Egyptian pharaohs, for the ruler to marry the eldest daughter of his father. Some believe she was only 12 when she married Akhenaten. Regardless of her relation to him, Nefertiti, is famous in her own right and famed for her beauty.
While the pharaoh had other wives as well, depictions found inside temples indicate that Nefertiti was without a doubt his chief wife, at least for twelve or so years. The king eventually elevated Queen Nefertiti to divine status. Queen Nefertiti bore six daughters for King Akhenaten, while two sons, including the famous King Tutankhamun , are believed to be born to the Pharaoh and one of his sisters.
The other son, Smenkhkare, was crowned co-regent at only 16 years of age. King Tut was crowned King at the tender age of 8 or 9. Akehnaton succeeded to the thrown after his father's reign of 38 years and his subsequent death, only because Akehnaton's older brother had died of unknown and mysterious causes. Scholars have surmised that Akehnaton as a child was shunned by most of his family and the public.
He never received any honors and never appears in family portraits or was taken to public events. His mother, Queen Tiyee, however, favored him, which may have helped elevate him to the ultimate status he enjoyed. Hungarian Composer and Violinist Joseph Joachim. Greatest African Leaders of All Time.
Egyptian pharaoh akhenaten biography of rory and dean
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