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A HYMN TO AMEN AND ATEN

2011-02-07T20:14:00.008-05:00

BY

HER AND SUTI, OVERSEERS OF WORKS AT THEBES, IN THE REIGN OF AMENHETEP III

[British Museum Stele No. 475-9 1]

1. A Hymn of Praise to Amen when he riseth as Horus of the Two Horizons by Suti, the, Overseer of the Works of Amen, [and by] Her (Horus), the Overseer of the Works of Amen. They say:--Homage to thee, Ra, Beautiful (or Beneficent) One of every day! Thou shootest up

2. at sunrise (or dawn) without fail, Khepera, great one of works. Thy radiance is in thy face, [thou] Unknown. [As for] shining metal it doth not resemble thy splendours.

3. Being designed thou didst mould into form thy members; giving birth, but he was not born; One by himself by reason of his power or abilities), Traverser of Eternity, He who is over (or Chief of) the ways of millions of years, maintaining his Divine Form.

4. As are the beauties of the celestial regions even so are thy beauties. More brilliant is thy complexion than that of heaven. Thou sailest across the heavens, all faces (i.e., mankind) look at thee as thou goest, though thou thyself art hidden from their faces.

5. Thou showest thyself at break of day in beams of light, strong is thy Seqet Boat under Thy Majesty. In a little day thou journeyest over a road of millions and hundreds of thousands

6. of minutes (or moments). Thy (?) day with thee passeth, [thou] settest. The hours of the night likewise thou dost make to fulfil themselves. No interruption taketh place in thy toil. All eyes (i.e., mankind, or all peoples)

7. direct their gaze upon thee, they cease not to do so. When Thy Majesty setteth, thou makest haste (?) to rise up early in the morning, thy sparkling rays flash in the eyes (or penetrate the eyes).

8. Thou settest in Manu, whereupon [men] sleep after the manner of the dead.

Hail to thee, O ATEN of the day, thou Creator of mortals [and] Maker of their life (i.e., that on which they live)! [Hail]

9. thou Great Hawk whose feathers are many-coloured, thou god Kheprer, who didst raise thyself up [from non-existence]! He created himself, he was not born, Horus the Elder (or the Old Hawk), dweller in Nut (the sky). [Men] cry out joyfully at

10. his rising [and] at his setting likewise. [He is] the fashioner [of what] the ground produceth, Khnem Amen of the Henmemet, conqueror of the Two Lands, from the great one to the little one. [Thou] Mother splendid of

11. Gods and men, artificer, gracious one, exceedingly great, progressing (or flourishing) in her work. The cattle (?) cannot be counted. The strong herdsman, driving his strong beasts, thou art their byre. He

12. provideth their life (i.e., sustenance), springing up, traversing the course (?) of Khepera, planning (?) his birth, raising up his beautiful [form] in the womb of Nut. He illumineth the Two Lands (Egypt) with his Aten (or Disk), [he is] the primeval substance (or plasma) of the Two Lands. He made himself.

13. He looketh on what he hath made, the Lord ONE, bringing along into captivity countless lands every day, observing those who walk about upon the earth; shining (or shooting up) in the sky [he performeth] transformations by day (or, as Ra). He maketh the seasons from the months. He loveth the heat of summer.

14. He loveth the cold of winter. He maketh every member of the body to droop. He embraceth every land. The ape[s cry out] in adoration of him when he riseth daily.

15. Suti, overseer of works, [and] Her, overseer of works, [each] saith, "I was the director of thy throne [and] overseer of works in thy sanctuary [which], as was right thy beloved son, the Lord of the Two Lands, Nebmaatra, the giver of life, made for thee. My Lord appointed me to be the officer in charge of thy monuments.

16. I kept watch diligently, I served the office of director of thy monuments strenuously, performing the laws of thy heart. I knew how to make thee to rest upon Truth, making thee great to do it upon the earth.

17. I was performing it [and] thou didst make me great. Thou didst set the favours [or praises] of me on the earth in the Apts (Karnak). I was among thy followers when thou didst ascend the throne. I am truth who abominateth false words and deeds.

18. I never took pleasure in any conversation wherein were words of exaggeration and lies. My brother was like myself. I took pleasure in his affairs; he came forth from the womb with me on this (i.e., the same) day.

19. Suti, the overseer of the works of Amen in the Southern Apt (i.e., Luxor), and Her [the overseer of works], say:--I was director over the western side, and he was director over the eastern side; we two were directors of the great monuments

20. in the Apt, more particularly those of Thebes, the City of Amen. Grant thou to me an old age in thy city, and in thy beneficence make me a burial in Amentt, that place of rest of heart.

21. Let me be placed among thy favoured ones, departing in peace. Grant thou to me sweet air when . . . . [and] the wearing (or bearing) of bandlets on the day of the festival of Ug.

Akhenaten & Nefertiti VIDEO

2010-12-31T19:49:00.002-05:00

Our National Flag

2010-12-25T02:06:00.003-05:00

WE ARE GOD

2010-12-13T17:04:00.006-05:00

I wish to talk a little about Akhenaten. Akhenaten was born into the royal family of King Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. There is evidence suggesting that Akhenaten’s parents were elevating Aten as the supreme God of the Egyptian patheon over the god Amun. They may or may not have been true monotheists although it seems Queen Tiye had a tremendous influence over Akhenaten and His beliefs. That being said Akhenaten I believe was born with the knowledge of the true God and that He was truly the Son of God. I would also argue that Akhenaten was the first human being in history to become ONE WITH GOD. So Akhenaten was the first human to be God. As Atenists we know that there is NO CONFLICT between science and Atenism. We believe in the big bang theory of creation. We believe in the concept of EVOLUTION. We know that humans evolved from primitive apes millions of years ago. EVOLUTION for Atenists is a core concept of Atenism. We not only evolve physically as a species but also spiritually as potential Godlike beings. All living things have a soul, but there are different types or levels of being spirit wise . Animals for example have souls that are very primitve and earthbound while humans are more advanced in their spiritual evolution. Akhenaten was the most advanced human spiritually being the first that we know of to become God. Akhenaten and God are ONE. We as Atenists if we embrace the truth of Atenism completely it is very well possible to be ONE with God. Only a very few select people in the world are capable of evolving to the next spiritual level of Godhood. That is why there are so few Atenists in the world. For only Atenists can grasp the TRUTH. Even many who call themselves Atenists may not accept what I am revealing and thus are not ready to become God. I fully understand this paradox, since you may call yourselves Atenists but may not grasp the truth and remain blind in the darkness. Perhaps in the next life such people may evolve spiritually just enough to finally become ONE with GOD. Akhenaten stated something few understand in His legendary Hymn to Aten when he stated: “And there is no one that knows you (Aten) save your Son Akhenaten, who knows your plans and your might!”. He was declaring the truth, that in His time He was the only one to grasp the truth of His own Godhood, that He was an evolved being far in advance of the rest of the world’s human population. 3300 years later Atenism has returned to this world because evolution never ceases and we have today the capacity for Godhood if we so embrace it. WE ARE GOD; embrace that truism. The rest that mock our beliefs in this matter remain primitives lost in the darkness of their own ignorance.

Unity of Our Faith

2010-12-12T23:31:00.002-05:00

I was just reading some of the posts on our message board and a few things caught my attention. One was the disillusionment of many to Christianity and Judaism. It seems many have tried many different paths and have found them lacking. The belief in many gods just doesn’t make sense and it is universally agreed that monotheism is what is true. Also, people mentioning infighting in “other” groups which I must say is the result of disunity. As monotheists we believe in UNITY of the ONE. Since we are part of the Atenist community it is paramount that as we come closer to God and understanding which results from KNOWING we will all meet together in unity with the ONE TRUE GOD. As we approach closer to the LIGHT of GOD we finally become immersed as ONE with OUR GOD and become ONE together as one body. The result will be unity and not disunity.

Light Is Our Salvation

2010-12-11T23:34:00.001-05:00

What is the central core of our faith? Light is our salvation. It’s that simple really. Of course to understand what is meant by Light being our salvation we must understand that God is Light. Anything opposed to the Light is the material world. The material world is darkness. Our material existence is like a prison for the soul. The soul itself has many potential attributes for example an animal’s soul is very earthbound while an enlightened man like Akhenaten has a soul of pure Light which transcends the material world. Thus Akhenaten is not imprisoned in this material existence but can travel from the realm of Light to the material realm with ease. As Atenists we too want to attain a soul of pure Light. Such a being is not subject to the natural laws of material existence but is a free being. When a person dies, naturally if their soul is of this world, then they are bound to this world and cannot escape and is destined to be reborn a prisoner of the material plane of existence. A person whose soul is Light can transcend the bounds of death and is free to choose to be with God or to return to this world conscious of who they are and can decide what life they wish to live. So much misery in this world only because most people are ignorant of the Light and dwell in darkness. If people just knew that they have a choice to be like God and be free, their lives no matter where they dwell would be so much happier. Free will can only be attained by being one with God which is Light. If you can grasp that understanding you are on your way to freedom eternal.

Mystery of the Light

2010-12-10T22:56:00.003-05:00

I will try to dedicate a thought a day to my blog. In the beginning I will not post too much information. I will express my thoughts as they come when I feel inspired to do so. I would appreciate you leaving comments if possible or go over to my message board and post something. I would really like to know a little more about my audience and what your beliefs are in connection with Atenism. Briefly I would have to say my belief in Atenism is a "modern" one based on what Akhenaten taught in His hymns and showed us in His art. Akhenaten certainly was our prophet sent by God as a messenger of salvation. It is our duty to reflect on who Akhenaten was and embrace His message. One thing I can say for certain, Akhenaten was God in the flesh while He was on Earth and returned to God in His spirit form. All who embrace God with the knowingness of the Truth become God. This is the true gnosis, that understanding of who God really is and embracing that Truth to your fullest capacity. What I am stating is a mystery to the uninitiated but in time I am hopeful that all who seek the Light will “know” the Light and become the Light.

The Solar Aspect In Man: The True Gnosis

2010-12-05T00:40:00.001-05:00

Today’s Atenism is about bringing out the God within each one of us. This Solar Aspect is a potential we all have but few have expressed this in their lives. We are all gods in a sense if we embrace the Godhood of the One. When we embrace Aten In our lives and dedicate ourselves to His service we become as God knowing good and evil and receive the guidance of the infallible Lord of all. As an Atenist I am God in the flesh as you too as well are God in the flesh if you are willing to receive Him. Thus we become as little gods with that Golden Light and Solar Aspect. We become as Light reflects off the water glistening in the Sun. Those who do not embrace the Light are in darkness and are lost for without the Light in our lives how can we be saved in this life and the next. In darkness one cannot see. In the Light all things are visible. Thus as Atenists we bathe ourselves in the Light washing away all our sins and ignorance. We cloak ourselves in the Light which keeps us warm. The Light shines ever before us guiding our steps so that we may not stumble. This Light which is in the Disk and emanates there from is the true God. As Atenists we worship the Light so that we may become as the Light! The ancients worshipped different gods with solar aspects. The moderns worship not only the One God which is the Light, but we also worship ourselves and our Godlike potential. Thus we are replacing the gods of the heathen made of stone, wood or precious metals with living Gods, ourselves in fact we are the gods of the future. The is the true Gnosis.

Atenism: Ancient and Modern

2010-11-11T14:35:00.006-05:00

Oh living Aten eternal glorious God and Father of us all let your will, knowledge and might be known to your servants who faithfully observe your teachings! The One and Eternal Father whose Son you graciously imparted knowledge to, may that wisdom be shared to all who thirst and hunger for truth in such divine matters!

I will impart the will of the One in order that a complete understanding may be grasped. God is One. Yet the nature of the One is misunderstood. In the beginning of Egyptian history; the proto-Egyptians that is to say the people who inhabited the Nile Delta before the rise of the first dynasty of Egyptian history believed in various manifestations of the One God. This One God being identified with the Solar Disk. It was the belief in those times that all the various deities had a solar aspect to them that identified them as being the One in various forms. These early peoples were not polytheists for the most part because they understood that the Sun was their supreme deity and all gods were but various manifestations as such. In fact true polytheists were shunned in those days and banished from the region.

With the coming of the first Dynasty of Egyptian history in which the first Pharaoh united upper and lower Egypt into one Kingdom under One God, identified with the Sun-Disk, a formal governing power in the region arose under one organized religious system. Instead of abolishing the different solar aspects or gods as it were in favor of the One; the decision was made that God manifesting as the Solar Disk could be worshipped in His various forms. Indeed God does manifest in various forms for He is the sum of all things. Aten indeed manifested Himself in the human form of the Pharaohs of Egypt especially in the form of our wise King Akhenaten.

The question arises why did Akhenaten decide to abolish the various manifestations of God in the form of lesser gods? The reason was that the Priesthood of Amun was very powerful even rivaling the power of the Pharaoh in both wealth and influence. In fact those priests took advantage of the peoples ignorance of the truth of the One and promoted the heresy of polytheism to the ignorant masses. Egypt fell into heresy believing that the various gods could rival the power of Pharaoh. The various gods of course meaning the gods of the corrupt Priesthood, which gave them divine right to usurp the throne of Pharaoh for their own greedy grasp for power and control. Thus Akhenaten by force over threw the Priesthood and confiscated their wealth and stripped them of all their titles. In this fashion Akhenaten temporarily stopped the evil conspiracy against His throne.

Akhenaten did not stop there for he set out to reinvigorate the true religion of the ancient Egyptians and to make plain the nature of God and man’s relation to Him. For we are inseparable beings to the One God as well as to Nature. This plain truth which is self evident upon observation was not important in the eyes of the wicked. For regardless of what the truth was and is, man’s evil desire for gain at the expense of his neighbors was not satiated. As such the priesthood with the backing of the military under Horemheb reversed Akhenaten’s reforms at the time of His death and restored things to their former aspect with one exception! Egypt was forever changed for monotheism was not entirely abolished, for Amun not only regained his position as supreme deity but also became associated with the Sun as well as the rest of the legitimate gods with solar aspects.

Modern Atenism is an attempt at not only paying homage to Akhenaten and His teachings but to also clarify what these teachings are exactly. Thus we as modern Atenists will wrap ourselves in the beauty of Egyptian art, language and motifs and at the same time elucidate understanding in modern language the religion and philosophy of the Ancient Egyptians, primarily those whose understanding of the truth is self evident. It is not our intention to condemn all Egyptian history for the sake of the 17 years of Akhenaten’s reign but to incorporate as much as possible the entire span of Ancient Egyptian history and religion as is reasonably possible without degrading Atenism in any way shape or form, since if one studies carefully one can see Atenist thinking throughout the whole of Ancient Egyptian religion throughout it’s entire history.

MERYRE/MERARI IN THE BIBLE

2010-03-26T14:42:00.002-04:00

MERYRE/MERARI [ISBE]

MERARI - me-ra'-ri (merari, "bitter"; Mararei):

(1) The 3rd son of Levi, his brothers, Gershon and Kohath, being always mentioned together with him (Gen 46:11; Ex 6:16 ff). He was among those 70 who went down to Egypt with Jacob (Gen 46:8,11; compare 46:26 and Ex 1:5).

(2) The family of Merari, descendants of above, and always (with one exception, for which see MERARITES) spoken of as "sons of Merari" in numerous references, such as 1 Ch 6:1,16,19,29, which only repeat without additional information the references to be found in the body of this article. We early find them divided into two families, the Mahli and Mushi (Ex 6:19; Nu 3:17,20,33). At the exodus they numbered, under their chief Zuriel, 6,200, and they were assigned the north side of the tabernacle as a tenting-place (Nu 3:34,35), thus sharing in the honor of those who immediately surrounded the tabernacle--the south side being given to the Kohathites, the west to the Gershonites, and the east--toward the sun-rising--being reserved for Moses, Aaron and his sons (Nu 3:23,29,35,38). To the Merarites was entrusted the care of the boards, bars, pillars, sockets, vessels, pins and cords of the tabernacle (Nu 3:36,37; 4:29-33). They and the Gershonites were "under the hand" of Ithamar, son of Aaron, the sons of Gershon having charge of the softer material of the tabernacles --curtains, covers, hangings, etc. (Nu 3:25,26). When reckoned by the number fit for service, i.e. between 30 and 50 years, the sons of Merari were 3,200 strong (Nu 4:42-45). Because of the weight of the material in their charge they were allowed 4 wagons and 8 oxen for carriage (Nu 7:8). In marching, when the tabernacle was taken down, the standard of Judah went first (Nu 10:14); then followed the Merarites bearing the tabernacle (Nu 10:17), and after them came the standard of Reuben (Nu 10:18). After the settlement in Canaan they had 12 cities assigned them out of Gad, Reuben and Zebulun (Josh 21:7,34-40; 1 Ch 6:63,77-81), just as the other two branches of Levi's family had their 12 cities respectively assigned out of the other tribes (Josh 21). The names of these Merarite cities are given (loc. cit.), and among them is Ramoth-gilead, one of the cities of refuge (Josh 21:38). It is evident from 1 Ch 6:44-47; 16:41; 25:1,3,6,9,11,15,19,21 f; compare 15:6,17-19 that they had charge under Ethan or Jeduthun of the temple music in the service. In David's time Asaiah was their chief (1 Ch 15:6). Himself and 220 of the family helped David to bring up the Ark. David divided the Levites into courses among the Gershonites, Kohathites and Merarites (1 Ch 23:6; compare 23:21-23; 24:26-30). The functions of certain Merarites are described in 1 Ch 26:10-19. They also took part in cleansing the temple in Hezekiah's time (2 Ch 29:12) as well as in the days of Josiah (2 Ch 34:12), helping to repair the house of the Lord. Among the helpers of Ezra, too, we find some of them numbered (Ezr 8:18,19). The family seems to have played a very important part in keeping steady and true such faithfulness as remained in Israel.

(3) The father of Judith (Judith 8:1; 16:7).

Source

In Our Time: Akhenaten BBC Radio Broadcast

2009-10-08T20:11:00.002-04:00

Listen to the BBC radio broadcast about Akhenaten while it's still available:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00mwsly

Our Message Board

2009-09-18T18:33:00.001-04:00

In case you haven't noticed we do have a message board available for discussion at www.atenism.net.

Meryre

Meryre Speaks

2009-08-28T10:27:00.016-04:00

Hello and greetings visitor. If you have been here before welcome back or if you have stumbled upon this site welcome as well. What is Atenism anyway? I could explain to you the fundamentals of our faith but that is not why I am making this posting. Just do a search for the keywords ATENISM or AKHENATEN on your favorite search engine and you will find lot's of information. Some things that are said about our religion are good and some bad, but the point here is once you know the basics of Atenism you will see a viable religion if you look past the negativity surrounding Atenism and look at the core teachings of Akhenaten, which are mainly found in His hymn to Aten as well as the Amarna tablets which give us a small window into Akhenaten's world and His dealings with other Kings in the region.

I don't know who you are who is reading these words right now. You could be anyone, from someone who is learning about Atenism for the first time, to someone who has known for quite sometime about Atenism. You may be a believer or not. You could be somebody famous or someone who is a total unknown. You could be wealthy or you could be poor. You could be someone in a position of power or someone who is has no power over their lives, a creature of circumstance. Whoever you are be rest assured in one thing: Atenism is here to stay as long as I am alive.

I am a total unknown, a mystery of sorts. I call myself Meryre after Aten's High Priest. I could have called myself Akhenaten, but that would be pretentious on my part and would not serve the cause well. Whatever label I give to myself is not important, the only thing that is important is that Atenism flourish, and for me that is the goal and that is the prize.

For me, I am alone like Akhenaten was alone in His faith knowing that everyone for the most part was paying Him lip service and really did not believe except for a few. When Akhenaten died His enemies made sure that His name would be forgotten and that His religion be destroyed even though they failed in their actions because today over 3300 years later we read Akhenaten's words and see His image. I know His religion can be reconstructed with great precision if I had the resources of a Pharoah and Akhenaten's wisdom.

Whatever I call myself, I am a child of Aten and I am sure my efforts are not in vain because you are reading my words and whether you are a believer or not that is your choice, but if you do not believe why are you here? Some of you keep on returning time after time, but ask yourself why? If this is your first visit to this site, will you return? I am sure most of you will but it's like you are waiting for me to do something miraclous, or that there maybe great news that I am building a temple somewhere and Atenists are flocking to the site.

I ask myself sometimes why bother with an online presence for so long, many years in fact, without much success? I will tell you why, because I know Atenism is the truth and that there are others like me in this far flung world who believe and need a site like this to bring them hope or a place to meet other Atenists. We are a sparse group of people, spread across the world and the Internet is our only option for now.

I've considered taking a leadership role in Atenism, which I have refused for sometime always thinking of myself as just another Atenist, not any greater or any less than any other Atenist. You may be thinking, Is not Meryre taking a leading role by spreading the Word? Well, not really because I have not taken on any official title or claimed to be the sole representive of Aten on Earth. I've basically said to Atenists, practice Atenism in your own way and do not follow the dictates of others.

I believe that Atenism is lacking in structure both doctrinally and physically. Doctrinally, in the sense of basic tenets being carved into stone. Physically in the sense of a leadership role and perhaps even a physical temple being built. We see the Sun and we know it is there, but our religion isn't rooted because it's just an idea that we cannot touch or feel or see and doesn't seem real to many.

If I were to take on a leadership role would that help or hinder the spread of Atenism? I do not know. All I know is that changes need to be made in my approach in spreading the word and a little help from those of you who are capable would be appreciated. I think though I need to prove myself at least here online that Atenism is real and viable as a religion for the world.

May Aten bless you visitor and let Aten guide your steps.

Meryre

DNA tests tried on fetuses in King Tut's tomb

2009-07-14T17:06:00.001-04:00

Egyptian scientists are carrying out DNA tests on two mummified fetuses found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun to determine whether they are the young pharaoh's offspring, the antiquities authority said Wednesday.

The two tiny female fetuses, five to seven months in gestational age, were found in King Tut's tomb in Luxor when it was opened in 1922.

DNA samples from the fetuses “will be compared to each other, along with those of the mummy of King Tutankhamun,” the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said in a statement.

The testing is part of a wider program to check the DNA of hundreds of mummies to determine their identities and family relations. Dr. Hawass said the program could help determine Tutankhamun's family lineage, which has long been a source of mystery among Egyptologists.

The identity of Tut's parents is not firmly known. Many experts believe he is the son of Akhenaten – the 18th Dynasty pharaoh who tried to introduce monotheism to ancient Egypt – and one of Akhenaten's queens, Kiya. Others, however, have suggested that he was the son of a lesser known pharaoh who followed Akhenaten.

Scholars believe that at age 12, Tutankhamun married Ankhesenamun – a daughter of Akhenaten by his better known wife Nefertiti – but that the couple had no surviving children. There has been no archeological evidence that Tut, who died around the age of 19 under mysterious circumstances over 3,000 years ago, left any offspring.

Tutankhamun was one of the last kings of Egypt's 18th Dynasty and ruled during a crucial, turmoil-filled period when Akhenaten's monotheism was ended and powers were returned to the priests of ancient Egypt's multiple deities.

The council said that if the tiny mummies are unrelated to him, they may have been placed in his tomb to allow him to “live as a newborn in the afterlife.”

Ashraf Selim, a radiologist and member of the Egyptian team, said the tests could take several months. So far, the team has carried out CT scans on the two fetuses and taken samples for DNA tests.

“We want to find out the truth and facts relevant to the history of these kings,” Dr. Selim told The Associated Press.

Since they were found in King Tut's tomb, the mummified fetuses have been kept in storage at the Cairo School of Medicine and never publicly displayed or studied, Selim said.

Dr. Hawass has announced ambitious plans for DNA tests on Egyptian mummies, including tests on all royal mummies and the nearly two dozen unidentified ones stored in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. He has said the tests may show that some royal mummies on display are not who archeologists thought them to be.

One of his top goals is to find the mummy of Nefertiti, the queen legendary for her beauty.

Last year, Egypt announced that archeologists had identified the mummy of Hatshepsut, Egypt's most powerful queen and the only female pharaoh. But scientists later said they were still analyzing DNA from the bald, 3,500-year-old mummy to try to back up the claim.

Dr. Hawass has long rejected DNA testing on Egyptian mummies by foreign experts, and only recently allowed such projects on condition they be done exclusively by Egyptians. A $5-million DNA lab was created at the Egyptian Museum, with funding from the Discovery Channel.

But some experts have warned that Dr. Hawass is making claims like that of Hatshepsut too quickly, without submitting samples to a second lab to corroborate DNA tests or publishing the results in peer-reviewed journals, both common practice.

The council announced in its statement Wednesday that the government had agreed with Cairo University's Faculty of Medicine to open a second DNA testing lab, though it did not give details on funding for the lab or when it could begin work.

Abdel-Halim Nour el-Deen, a former head of the council and a leading Egyptologist said DNA testing on mummies thousands of years old is very difficult.

“It is doubtful that it could produce a scientific result to determine such important issues such as the lineage of pharaohs,” he AP.

He also criticized the antiquities authority for not making public the results of the tests already carried out.

Source

Thirty mummies found in Egyptian tomb

2009-02-15T13:03:00.006-05:00

Archaeologists have discovered dozens of mummies and several sarcophagi in a tomb estimated to be more than 4000 years old, says the Egyptian ministry of culture.

A storehouse of 30 Egyptians mummies has been unearthed inside a 2600-year-old tomb, in a new round of excavations at the vast necropolis of Saqqara outside Cairo.

The find was made at Gisr al-Moudir, west of Egypt's first ever pyramid at Saqqara, the step pyramid of Djoser built by architect Imhotep in around 2700 BC, the ministry says in a statement.

The mummies appear to vary in age. One dates from about 640 BC while the unopened sarcophagus, which is made of limestone and sealed with plaster, is probably much older.

"The tomb dates from the era of the sixth dynasty of the Old Kingdom, about 4300 years ago," says Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass.

"Thirty mummies and skeletons were discovered, including a wooden sarcophagus that has been sealed since the pharaonic era in the burial chamber at a depth of 11 metres."

Four other stone sarcophagi and another wooden one were also found in the tomb. Twenty of the mummies were stored in niches.

Another shaft leading to the burial chamber, thought to have been built around 640 BC, was also discovered.

The mud-brick tomb commemorates a priest who was also a choir leader, says Hawass.

Archaeologists say it is unusual to find intact burials in well-known necropolises such as Saqqara, which served the nearby city of Memphis, because thieves scoured the area in ancient times.

They expect to open it later this week and they may find amulets among the mummy wrappings.

Source

Cairo Demands Clarification on Nefertiti Bust

2009-02-15T12:53:00.004-05:00

Egypt may renew its official demand for the return of the famous Nefertiti bust after a newly-surfaced document claims German archaeologists tried to trick Egyptian experts about its importance in 1913. A chief archaeologist in Cairo is leading the charge.

"This time I mean it very seriously," is how Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, characterized his fresh demand for the bust of Queen Nefertiti, which German archaeologists brought home in 1913. He was reacting to SPIEGEL magazine piece that suggested the Germans had tricked Egyptian experts about the true nature of the now-legendary bust.

The bust of Nefertiti is almost 3,400 years old.

Hawass has long called on Berlin to return the bust of Nefertiti, which sits in the city's Egyptian Museum, but SPIEGEL revealed in this week's edition of the magazine that an obscure document from 1924 charged the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt with "cheating" to secure the bust for Germany.

"I immediately sent a letter to the German Oriental Institute demanding a copy of the document," Hawass told Agence France-Presse. "If it is authentic we will work with all our power with the German government to bring back the statue." He reiterated his position to the German radio station ARD and added, "This time I mean it very seriously."

The secretary of the German Oriental Institute reported in 1924 on a 1913 meeting between Borchardt and a senior Egyptian official. Egypt and Germany had an agreement to split antiquities found by Borchardt's team "à moitié exacte," or 50-50, but the secretary reported in his memo that Borchardt "wanted to save the bust for us."

The bust lay wrapped in a box in a dim room when the Egyptian official, chief antiquities inspector Gustave Lefébvre, looked over artifacts from the Borchardt dig. The secretary wrote that Borchardt presented Lefébvre with an unflattering photo of the bust and claimed it was made of gypsum, when in fact it has a limestone core under a layer of stucco.

Whether Lefébvre went to the trouble of lifting the bust out of the box isn't clear. But the secretary, who witnessed the meeting, claimed there was "cheating" involved, since the Germans misrepresented the material.

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has possession of the bust and rejects any charge of cheating. The idea that the antiquities were not divided according to the rules in 1913 "is false," the foundation has claimed in a statement. Lefébvre, in other words, just overlooked the importance of the piece.

The German Oriental Institute admits the existence of the document, but also maintains there was no serious breach of the rules. "Nefertiti was at the top of the exchange list," a spokesman for the company told SPIEGEL. "The inspector could have looked at everything closely.... It's not admissible to complain about the deal reached at the time."

The well-preserved Nefertiti bust depicts the queen of Sun King Akhenaten, who was pharaoh of ancient Egypt at the peak of its imperial power almost 3,400 years ago. Egypt has demanded it back from Germany for various reasons since the 1930s. It's now a star attraction at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, which receives half a million visitors per year.

Source

New pyramid find suggests it did double duty

2009-02-15T12:34:00.004-05:00

By Thomas H. Maugh II

In Egypt, apparently even pyramids can be recycled.

Archaeologists from the country's Supreme Council of Antiquities said this week they had discovered a cache of 30 mummies dating from the country's 26th Dynasty in a tomb constructed during the 6th Dynasty nearly 2,000 years earlier.

The 26th Dynasty was the last period of rule by Egyptian pharaohs before the country was conquered by the Persians and other foreigners, a time when it was becoming more difficult for rulers to muster the manpower necessary for more grandiose burial sites.

The 6th Dynasty pyramid is actually a mastaba tomb — a simpler precursor of a pyramid — of a man named Sennedjem. It is in Saqqara, about 12 miles south of Cairo, the final resting place of most of the Egyptian rulers who lived in the Old Kingdom capitol of Memphis.

The new cache was discovered at the end of a 36-foot shaft drilled into the side of the tomb during the 26th Dynasty. Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the council and director of the expedition, said the team had found 24 mummies placed in niches along the walls of the chamber and on shelves along one wall.

Some of the mummies were of children, and there was also the mummy of a dog. All were badly decomposed, hinting that they had not been adequately prepared for burial.

The team also found two sarcophagi of fine white limestone and four wooden coffins. One sarcophagus was still sealed.

When Hawass opened it, he found a body mummified in the style typical of the 26th Dynasty, covered in linen and resin. Hawass said he would remove the mummy temporarily for a CT scan because he believes there are funerary amulets hidden among the wrappings.

An inscription on the coffin identified the occupant as Padi-Heri, son of Djehuty-sesh-nub and grandson of Iru-ru, but gave no information about his station in life. But the fact that he was buried in a coffin made of limestone from Thebes suggested he was very wealthy, Hawass said.

Source

Keeper of the Collection

2009-02-13T20:34:00.004-05:00

Snellville’s Bonnie Speed oversees Emory’s prestigious museum

By Phylecia Wilson

Bonnie Ann Speed knew even as a child that art was what she wanted to do. Once she realized that she could talk about art better than she could make it, she soon gave up the idea of being an artist to pursue becoming an art historian, one that worked in a museum.

After receiving her BA in fine art/art education at the University of Southern Maine, Speed studied art history, received her MA from the University of Kansas, and began a distinguished career as a museum curator and then director who is well-known in the world of ancient art as one who works diligently to strengthen institutions’ artistic visions, build new audiences, and to form strategic partnerships.

Collaboration is a word the Snellville resident uses often as she explains how Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum, where she is Director, consistently procures outstanding permanent collections and successful exhibitions, including the King Tut exhibition, Tutankhamun: The Golden King and The Great Pharaohs currently showing at the Atlanta Civic Center.

A Funerary Figure

It was a relationship with the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo, Egypt through Dr. Peter Lacovara, an Egyptologist and archaeologist who serves as Senior Curator of ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum that resulted in the Carlos Museum hosting the King Tut exhibition.

“Two and a half years ago we received a phone call from Dr. Zahi Hawass saying he was organizing another King Tut exhibition and did we want to be a host,” Speed recalled. Dr. Hawass is Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt and a world-renowned archaeologist often seen on National Geographic. Dr. Hawass is also an honorary member of the Carlos Museum’s board.

“Our answer was ‘Yes!’, but the exhibition was much larger than our museum could handle,” she said. The answer was the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center where the exhibition opened in mid-November and will continue through May 25.

Model boat found in tomb

“It’s an amazing exhibition – over 25,000 square feet – with a colossal 10 foot sculpture of Tutankhamun and works of art representing 2,000 years of Egyptian history,” she stated. With an audio guide narrated by Harrison Ford, the exhibition addresses the greatest eras of Egyptian pharonic rule between 2600 and 660 BC. The exhibition includes extraordinary finds not only from the tomb of Tutankhamun but also from royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings and from temples and palaces from other ancient Egyptian sites.

The show will travel to Indianapolis from Atlanta and to a number of US cities, but Atlanta is the only city on the entire eastern seaboard to host it.

While King Tut is the largest, and probably most ambitious exhibition the Carlos Museum has ever undertaken, it is one of many that have brought incredible artifacts from ancient civilizations to Atlanta.

Neckalce with a triple-scarab pectoral

Recent exhibitions (normally twice a year to coordinate with academic semesters) include: Cradle of Christianity, a collaboration with the Israel Museum in Jerusalem; Buddha in Paradise, a show of Tibetan thangka paintings; Lost Kingdoms of the Nile, a show exploring ancient Nubia (present day Sudan), and; Domains of Wonder, a show of Indian miniature paintings. Their permanent collection of ancient art is one of the largest in the Southeast.

“Our collections are devoted primarily to art of the ancient world – Classical, Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Ancient American, Asian, and African art,” Speed explained. However, we do have a works on paper collection that spans from the Renaissance to Contemporary.

Though collections date from 1876 on the original Emory campus at Oxford, Georgia, the museum officially started in 1919 when Emory moved to Atlanta and has grown to become one of the Southeast’s premier art museums. However, Speed still hears it is the best kept secret in Atlanta. “I like the ‘best’ part, but we are working on the ‘secret,’ Speed said, smiling. “We are not able to market as much as other museums because our focus, and thus often, our money goes toward education programs and exhibitions. A lot is word of mouth and we get excellent reviews from AJC and other publications.”

Still, from 100,000 to 150,000 people, including 30,000 school children from Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina, visit the Museum annually.

That’s because of the Museum’s strong educational mission and the fact that educational outreach is one of Speed’s passions. “One of the ways we market is through our website www.carlos.emory.edu” she said. “Teachers from around the world, not just the U.S., use the site and can teach with the Museum’s collections by downloading educational programs on site’s education section, Odyssey Online.”

Speed came to Atlanta after being recruited by a headhunter from her position as Director of the Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas. She already knew about the Carlos Museum and its reputation for quality of exhibitions and programs.

She was excited about the move, but in 2002, Atlanta real estate was at its prime, so she started looking east of Emory and landed south of Highway 78 in Snellville, home to many horse farms. “I couldn’t afford to live close to Emory so I decided to live close to my horse,” she laughed.

Speed encourages everyone to take in the King Tut exhibition at the Atlanta Civic Center, but she also hopes that through this well-marketed exhibition people will learn more about Emory’s Michael C. Carlos Museum.

“I encourage people, especially parents, to become familiar with our website and to visit our museum,” she said.

“One of the most effective means of understanding ancient civilizations is by studying what they left behind. These ancient objects, whether everyday or ritual, are the artworks that now populate our museums forming the foundation of our education programs and scholarly research. I think our museum is doing some of the most exciting work to facilitate such learning.”

Source

Found in Iraq: "King Tut"

2009-02-13T20:30:00.006-05:00

Dohuk, Iraq - A Kurdish archaeological expedition announced on Thursday that it had found a small statue of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen in northern Iraq, a Kurdish news agency reported.

Hassan Ahmed, the director of the local antiquities authority, told the Kurdish news agency Akanews that archaeologists had found a 12-centimeter statue of the ancient Egyptian king in the valley of Dahuk, 470 kilometres north of Baghdad, near a site that locals have long called Pharaoh's Castle.

He said archaeologists from the Dahuk Antiquities Authority believe the statue dates from the mid-14th Century BC.

Ahmed said the statue of Tutankhamen showed 'the face of the ancient civilization of Kurdistan and cast light on the ancient relations between pharaonic Egypt and the state of Mitanni.'

The kingdom of Mittani occupied roughly the same territory spanning Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran in the 14th Century BC that many Kurds now hope will one day form an independent Kurdistan.

'Historical information indicates familial and political ties between Mittani and Egypt,' Ahmed said.

'The discovery of this statue shows us that the name of Pharaoh's Castle, was not invented out of vacuum, but rather arose out of historical fact,' Ahmed told Akanews. 'This calls for strengthening archaeological research ties between the territory of Kurdistan and the Arab Republic of Egypt.'

Source

Tutankhamun video

2009-02-12T21:48:00.000-05:00

How The Times reported the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb

A new Tutankhamun moment, and the old one

2009-02-12T21:34:00.002-05:00

Amid much fanfare, Egypt's head of archaeology, Zahi Hawass yesterday opened a newly discovered sarcophagus at Saqqara. The site at Saqqara in the south of Egypt, has been being excavated for 150 years and, according to Hawass, there is much more still to be found.

While there's plenty of excitement about the new finds, and the opening of the tomb was carried out in front of live cameras, yesterday didn't compare with the media exploitation of 87 years ago, when Howard Carter broke through the sealed door of Tutankhamun's tomb.

Of course one difference was the gold - "Egyptologists describe the discovery is beyond the dreams of avarice and value it at millions of pounds sterling," The Times reported - but perhaps, despite Dr Hawass's best efforts, archaeology just isn't the showbiz it used to be.

Germany conned Egypt out of ancient bust

2009-02-12T21:26:00.005-05:00

Recently found documents show that a German archaeologist had smuggled a unique 3,400-year-old Egyptian statue into Germany in 1913.

Discovered at the German Oriental Institute, the documents contain the account of a meeting between German archaeologist, Ludwig Borchhardt and a senior Egyptian official on January 20, 1913.

Borchhardt, who listed the bust of Queen Nefertiti among his finds in Egypt, hid the true value of the statue and described it as a worthless piece of gypsum, Timesonline reported.

He hid the bust in a poorly lit chamber to fool the chief antiquities inspector, Gustave Lefebvre and handed over a deliberately unflattering photograph.

Housed at Berlin's Egyptian Museum, the limestone bust of Queen Nefertiti - wife of the Sun King Akhenaten - attracts over half a million visitors every year.

Egyptian curators have drawn up petitions against the trickery and the secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt, Zahi Hawass, has said that the country “will make the lives of these [German] museums miserable."

Germans however insist on keeping the relic as a German property and blame Egyptians for not being careful about their ancient relics.

"It is not right to complain now about a deal that was struck long ago," said a spokesman for the Oriental Institute

http://www.haber27.com/news_detail.php?id=22576

Akhenaten and the Amarna Period

2009-02-10T17:48:00.000-05:00

By Dr Kate Spence

Akhenaten is a source of endless fascination and speculation - this often masks the fact that we actually know very little about him. Dr Kate Spence explores the enigmatic story of Egypt's 'heretic' king.

Akhenaten from one of his colossi at Karnak

The appeal of the Amarna period

Some people are drawn by interest in Akhenaten himself or his religion, others by a fascination with the unusual art which appeals strongly to the tastes of modern viewers and provides a sense of immediacy rarely felt with traditional Egyptian representation. The radical changes Akhenaten made have led to his characterisation as the 'first individual in human history' and this in turn has led to endless speculation about his background and motivation; he is cast as hero or villain according to the viewpoint of the commentator.

Akhenaten came to the throne of Egypt around 1353 BC. The reign of his father, Amenhotep III, had been long and prosperous with international diplomacy largely replacing the relentless military campaigning of his predecessors. The reign culminated in a series of magnificent jubilee pageants celebrated in Thebes (modern Luxor), the religious capital of Egypt at the time and home to the state god Amun-Re. The new king was crowned as Amenhotep IV (meaning 'Amun is content') and temple construction and decoration projects began immediately in the name of the new king. The earliest work of his reign is stylistically similar to the art of his predecessors, but within a year or two he was building temples to the Aten or divinised sun-disk at Karnak in a very different artistic style and had changed his name to Akhenaten in honour of this god.

'The radical changes Akhenaten made have led to his characterisation as the 'first individual in human history'...'

Akhenaten's 'great king's wife' was Nefertiti and they had six daughters. There were also other wives, including the enigmatic Kiya who may have been the mother of Tutankhamun. Royal women play an unusually prominent role in the art of the period and this is particularly true of Nefertiti who is frequently depicted alongside her husband. Nefertiti disappears from the archaeological record around year 12 and some have argued that she reappears as the enigmatic co-regent Smenkhkare towards the end of Akhenaten's reign.

Religious reforms

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.

'Akhenaten raised the Aten to the position of 'sole god'...'

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. Tel el Amarna, Aten Temple

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 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.

The art of the Amarna period

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.

'The royal family are shown with elongated skulls and pear-shaped bodies...'

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. Animals and birds are shown frolicking beneath the rays of the rising sun in the decoration of the royal tomb. While traditional Egyptian art tends to emphasise the eternal, Amarna art focuses on the minutiae of life which only occur because of the light - and life-giving power of the sun.

Akhenaten and Nefertiti play with their daughters beneath the Aten (sun disk)

In addition to the changes he made to religious practices and art, Akhenaten also instigated changes in temple architecture and building methods: stone structures were now built from much smaller blocks of stone set in a strong mortar. Even official inscriptions changed, moving away from the old-fashioned language traditional to monumental texts to reflect the spoken language of the time.

Horizon of the Aten

'In the cliffs around the boundaries of the city the king left a series of monumental inscriptions...'

Akhenaten decided that the worship of the Aten required a location uncontaminated by the cults of traditional gods and to this end chose a site in Middle Egypt for a new capital city which he called Akhetaten, 'Horizon of the Aten'. It is a desert site surrounded on three sides by cliffs and to the west by the Nile and is known today as el-Amarna. In the cliffs around the boundaries of the city the king left a series of monumental inscriptions in which he outlined his reasons for the move and his architectural intentions for the city in the form of lists of buildings.

To the east of the city is a valley leading into the desert in which the king began excavating tombs for the royal family. On the plain near the river massive temples to the Aten were constructed: these were open to the sky and the rays of the sun and were probably influenced by the design of much earlier solar temples dedicated to the cult of Re. Other sites of religious importance are located on the edges of the desert plain. There were also at least four palaces in the city which vary considerably in form, plus all the administrative facilities, storage and workshops necessary to support the royal family, court and the temple cults.

The ruins of Amarna

Akhetaten is sometimes described as if it were some sort of broad Utopian project. However, while temple and palace areas of the city are clearly planned, there is actually no evidence that Akhenaten showed any interest in the living arrangements of his people and residential areas suggest organic urban development. The wealthy seem to have enclosed an area of land with a high wall and built their spacious houses and ancillary structures within, while the houses and shacks of those that followed the court are crammed in between these luxurious walled estates. The city was probably less dense than other urban centres of the day but this was only because it was inhabited for such a short time and processes of infilling were in their infancy. Amarna is one of the few sites where we have a significant amount of archaeological information about how people actually lived in ancient Egypt.

The aftermath

Akhenaten died in his seventeenth year on the throne and his reforms did not survive for long in his absence. His co-regent Smenkhkare, about whom we know virtually nothing, appears not to have remained in power for long after Akhenaten's death. The throne passed to a child, Tutankhamun (originally Tutankhaten) who was probably the son of Akhenaten and Kiya. The regents administering the country on behalf of the child soon abandoned the city of Akhetaten and the worship of the Aten and returned to Egypt's traditional gods and religious centres. The temples and cults of the gods were restored and people shut up their houses and returned to the old capitals at Thebes and Memphis.

'His image and names were removed from monuments.'

Over time, the process of restoration of traditional cults turned to whole-scale obliteration of all things associated with Akhenaten. His image and names were removed from monuments. His temples were dismantled and the stone reused in the foundations of other more orthodox royal building projects. The city of Akhetaten gradually crumbled back into the desert. His name and those of his immediate successors were omitted from official king-lists so that they remained virtually unknown until the archaeological discoveries at Akhetaten and in the tomb of Tutankhamun made these kings amongst the most famous of all rulers of ancient Egypt.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/akhenaten_01.shtml

4,300-year-old pharaonic tombs unveiled near Cairo

2009-02-10T17:44:00.000-05:00

Associated Press -

SAQQARA, Egypt -- A pair of 4,300-year-old pharaonic tombs discovered at Saqqara indicate that the sprawling necropolis south of Cairo is even larger than previously thought, Egypt's top archaeologist said Monday. The rock-cut tombs were built for high officials - one responsible for the quarries used to build the nearby pyramids and another for a woman in charge of procuring entertainers for the pharaohs.

"We announce today a major, important discovery at Saqqara, the discovery of two new tombs dating back to 4,300 years ago," said Zahi Hawass, as he showed reporters around the site Monday. "The discovery of the two tombs are the beginning of a big, large cemetery."

The discovery indicates that there is even more to the vast necropolis of Saqqara, located 12 miles south of the capital, Cairo, he added.

In the past, excavations have focused on just one side of the two nearby pyramids - the Step Pyramid of King Djoser and that of Unas, the last king of the 5th Dynasty. The area where the two tombs were found, to the southwest, has been largely untouched.

"This means the royal cemetery is bigger than we thought," said Saleh Suleiman, the archaeologist responsible for the excavation of the two tombs.

Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said excavations will continue and further finds should shed light on the 5th and 6th dynasties of the Old Kingdom, which ruled over 4,000 years ago.

One of the tombs, about a yard wide and 2.75 yards long, has a description above the entrance about the man, Yaamat, for whom it was built. The second tomb is twice the size and includes inscriptions and an image of a seated woman.

Aidan Dodson, a research fellow at the University of Bristol's Department of Archaeology and Anthropology in Bristol, England, who was not involved in the dig, said that while the tombs themselves aren't especially significant, the possibility of a much larger cemetery is.

"It shows that the blank areas of the maps of Saqqara aren't really empty at all. It's just that archaeologists haven't got round to digging them," he said.

Excavations have been going on at Saqqara for about 150 years, uncovering a vast necropolis of pyramids, tombs and funerary complexes mostly from the Old Kingdom, but including sites as recent as the Roman era.

But despite the years of excavation, new finds are constantly being made. In November, Hawass announced the discovery of a new pyramid at Saqqara, the 118th in Egypt, and the 12th to be found just in Saqqara.

According to Hawass, only 30 percent of Egypt's monuments have been uncovered, with the rest still under the sand.

Hawass also said that a bust of Pharoah Amenhotep III that has been outside the country for about 15 years was returned to the Egypt on Sunday after a lengthy legal battle with an antiquities dealer in Britain.

Hawass said Egypt and the dealer were eventually able to resolve the question of the bust's ownership out of court without Egypt paying the dealer any money.

Egypt has been actively trying to recover artifacts stolen or looted over the years. The bust is one of about 5,000 pieces retrieved by Egypt since 2002. Hawass said he also expects the return of four statues from Sweden in the next two weeks.

The bust is one of the great statues of Amenhotep III, the ninth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, who ruled for almost 40 years during the 14th century B.C. and who is considered one of the most important rulers of ancient Egypt, said Hawass.

Amenhotep was the father of Akhenaten, who attempted to make Egypt worship a single god, the sun, making him one of the first known proponents of monotheism.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/special_reports/38753282.html

King Tut is the Son of Akhenaton by Zahi Hawass

2009-02-10T14:52:00.002-05:00

I had an exceptional adventure recently in Middle Egypt at a site known as El Ashmunein. In Greek the site was known as Hermopolis after the Greek god Hermes – the ancient Egyptian god Thoth, the god of wisdom. The site contained a temple dedicated to Thoth and a large statue of Thoth in the form of a baboon still can be seen today. I hold El Ashmunein close to my heart because forty years ago I started my career as an inspector of antiquities, only a few kilometers away, at Tuna El Gebel.

I spent two incredible years in Tuna El Gebel. I stayed in a beautiful rest house in the desert. In the evenings, I was completely alone with my thoughts and dreams, in this mysterious large house surrounded by desert. Everyday, I would sit in the garden and look up at the sky. I was not a patient man, but living in this spectacular isolation taught me the virtue of patience and I started to write. I kept a diary and recorded my memories and I wrote letters everyday to my girlfriend that I left behind in Alexandria.

Near my rest house was another rest house that was built for our great man Taha Hussein when he was the minister of education. He used to come in the winter and everyday he would visit the tomb of Isadora, a lady who lived during the Roman Period. Isadora drowned in the Nile and her lover built a beautiful tomb for her. Her lover used to travel about 50 kilometers from Sheikh Abada, on the east of the Nile, to Tuna El Gebel, on the west of the Nile, to light a pottery lamp in her memory. When Taha Hussein was in residence, he would light this lamp everyday.

In El Ashmunein, during the last century, a limestone block that was broken into two pieces was found. The first piece of the block has an inscription that reads: the king’s son of his body Tutankhaton. On the other piece of the block the inscription reads: the daughter of the king, of his body, his great desire of the king of Two Lands, Ankhesenpaaton. Scholars suggest that this inscription is not only one of the few pieces of evidence showing Tut is from Tell El Amarna but also showing Akhenaton is the father of Tut because Tut is mentioned as the son along with the well-known daughter of Akhenaton, Ankhesenpaaton. Ankhesenpaaton was the third daughter of Akhenaton and Nefertiti and she was the wife of Tut.

When I began to study the family of king Tut and investigate the identity of his biological father and mother, I knew that it was important to find this block. The block is not registered in the registry book for the magazine in El Ashmunein. Therefore, I started to ask scholars who had discussed this block in their work about the location of the block – and no one knew where it was! I called Adel Hassan, the director of Minya, and asked him to search for the block. After a few days, he informed me that they had found it. I went to El Ashmunein and entered the storeroom and learned that they only had the side of the block that mentioned Tut’s name but not his wife, Ankhesenpaaton. We immediately started to search, among the numerous stones from the Aton Temple that were reused by Ramesses II in a temple at El Ashmunein in hopes of finding the other half of the block. And we were happily surprised when we located it. Brando Quilici, who is shooting a documentary about the family of Tut and accompanied me to the storeroom, was surprised and thrilled that we rediscovered this important piece of evidence.

Some people believe that Tut is the son of Amenhotep III because he is mentioned in the monuments found at Thebes. Also, the hieroglyph “king’s son” can be translated as son-in-law or grandfather. But it is important to understand that when Tut became king and moved to Thebes, he could not mention the name Akhenaton. The priests of Amun hated Akhenaton for changing the religion to only worship the one god, Aton and for moving the capital from Thebes to Tell El Amarna. After the death of Akhenaton, the religion returned to the old ways and the priests of Amun regained their power. Therefore it is most probable that Tut, on his monuments wanted to identify himself with his powerful grandfather Amenhotep III. Hence, the hieroglyphs on the monuments found in Thebes that read: “son of king” can be translated as “grandson of king”.

The block from Tell El Amarna is an accurate piece of evidence that proves Tut lived in Tell El Amarna with Akhenaton and he married his wife, Ankhesenpaaton while living in Tell El Amarna. On the block and while he lived in Tell El Amarna, his name was Tutankhaton, honoring Aton, but when he became king and moved to Thebes he changed his name to Tutankamun, honoring Amun. This block can also be seen as evidence that Tut is in fact the son of Akhenaton. I am sure this archaeological evidence will instigate much discussion and debate among Egyptologists.

http://www.guardians.net/hawass/articles/tut_akhenaten.htm

AKHETATEN FELLOWSHIP FORUMS @ WWW.ATENISM.NET

2008-03-21T20:11:00.007-04:00

Forum is back up, sorry for the inconvenience.

Akhenaten and the Amarna Period

2008-03-21T20:05:00.003-04:00

Akhenaten is a source of endless fascination and speculation - this often masks the fact that we actually know very little about him.

The appeal of the Amarna period

Some people are drawn by interest in Akhenaten himself or his religion, others by a fascination with the unusual art which appeals strongly to the tastes of modern viewers and provides a sense of immediacy rarely felt with traditional Egyptian representation. The radical changes Akhenaten made have led to his characterisation as the 'first individual in human history' and this in turn has led to endless speculation about his background and motivation; he is cast as hero or villain according to the viewpoint of the commentator.

Akhenaten came to the throne of Egypt around 1353 BC. The reign of his father, Amenhotep III, had been long and prosperous with international diplomacy largely replacing the relentless military campaigning of his predecessors. The reign culminated in a series of magnificent jubilee pageants celebrated in Thebes (modern Luxor), the religious capital of Egypt at the time and home to the state god Amun-Re. The new king was crowned as Amenhotep IV (meaning 'Amun is content') and temple construction and decoration projects began immediately in the name of the new king. The earliest work of his reign is stylistically similar to the art of his predecessors, but within a year or two he was building temples to the Aten or divinised sun-disk at Karnak in a very different artistic style and had changed his name to Akhenaten in honour of this god.

'The radical changes Akhenaten made have led to his characterisation as the 'first individual in human history'...'
Akhenaten's 'great king's wife' was Nefertiti and they had six daughters. There were also other wives, including the enigmatic Kiya who may have been the mother of Tutankhamun. Royal women play an unusually prominent role in the art of the period and this is particularly true of Nefertiti who is frequently depicted alongside her husband. Nefertiti disappears from the archaeological record around year 12 and some have argued that she reappears as the enigmatic co-regent Smenkhkare towards the end of Akhenaten's reign.

Religious reforms

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.

'Akhenaten raised the Aten to the position of 'sole god'...'

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.

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 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.

The art of the Amarna period

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.
'The royal family are shown with elongated skulls and pear-shaped bodies...'

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. Animals and birds are shown frolicking beneath the rays of the rising sun in the decoration of the royal tomb. While traditional Egyptian art tends to emphasise the eternal, Amarna art focuses on the minutiae of life which only occur because of the light - and life-giving power of the sun.

In addition to the changes he made to religious practices and art, Akhenaten also instigated changes in temple architecture and building methods: stone structures were now built from much smaller blocks of stone set in a strong mortar. Even official inscriptions changed, moving away from the old-fashioned language traditional to monumental texts to reflect the spoken language of the time.

Horizon of the Aten

'In the cliffs around the boundaries of the city the king left a series of monumental inscriptions...'
Akhenaten decided that the worship of the Aten required a location uncontaminated by the cults of traditional gods and to this end chose a site in Middle Egypt for a new capital city which he called Akhetaten, 'Horizon of the Aten'. It is a desert site surrounded on three sides by cliffs and to the west by the Nile and is known today as el-Amarna. In the cliffs around the boundaries of the city the king left a series of monumental inscriptions in which he outlined his reasons for the move and his architectural intentions for the city in the form of lists of buildings.
To the east of the city is a valley leading into the desert in which the king began excavating tombs for the royal family. On the plain near the river massive temples to the Aten were constructed: these were open to the sky and the rays of the sun and were probably influenced by the design of much earlier solar temples dedicated to the cult of Re. Other sites of religious importance are located on the edges of the desert plain. There were also at least four palaces in the city which vary considerably in form, plus all the administrative facilities, storage and workshops necessary to support the royal family, court and the temple cults.

Akhetaten is sometimes described as if it were some sort of broad Utopian project. However, while temple and palace areas of the city are clearly planned, there is actually no evidence that Akhenaten showed any interest in the living arrangements of his people and residential areas suggest organic urban development. The wealthy seem to have enclosed an area of land with a high wall and built their spacious houses and ancillary structures within, while the houses and shacks of those that followed the court are crammed in between these luxurious walled estates. The city was probably less dense than other urban centres of the day but this was only because it was inhabited for such a short time and processes of infilling were in their infancy. Amarna is one of the few sites where we have a significant amount of archaeological information about how people actually lived in ancient Egypt.

The aftermath

Akhenaten died in his seventeenth year on the throne and his reforms did not survive for long in his absence. His co-regent Smenkhkare, about whom we know virtually nothing, appears not to have remained in power for long after Akhenaten's death. The throne passed to a child, Tutankhamun (originally Tutankhaten) who was probably the son of Akhenaten and Kiya. The regents administering the country on behalf of the child soon abandoned the city of Akhetaten and the worship of the Aten and returned to Egypt's traditional gods and religious centres. The temples and cults of the gods were restored and people shut up their houses and returned to the old capitals at Thebes and Memphis.

'His image and names were removed from monuments.'

Over time, the process of restoration of traditional cults turned to whole-scale obliteration of all things associated with Akhenaten. His image and names were removed from monuments. His temples were dismantled and the stone reused in the foundations of other more orthodox royal building projects. The city of Akhetaten gradually crumbled back into the desert. His name and those of his immediate successors were omitted from official king-lists so that they remained virtually unknown until the archaeological discoveries at Akhetaten and in the tomb of Tutankhamun made these kings amongst the most famous of all rulers of ancient Egypt.

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AKHENATEN IS LORD

2008-03-16T12:54:00.003-04:00

Akhenaten(or rarely alt: Ikhnaton) meaning Effective spirit of Aten, first known as Amenhotep IV (sometimes read as Amenophis IV and meaning Amun is Satisfied) before his first year (died 1336 BC or 1334 BC), was a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. He is especially noted for attempting to compel the Egyptian population in the monotheistic worship of Aten, although there are doubts as to how successful he was at this. He was born to Amenhotep III and his Chief Queen Tiye and was their younger son. Akhenaten was not originally designated as the successor to the throne until the untimely death of his older brother, Thutmose.

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, made world-famous by the discovery of her exquisitely moulded and painted bust, now displayed in the Altes Museum of Berlin, and among the most recognised works of art surviving from the ancient world.

The Implementation of Atenism

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 eight marked the beginning of construction on his 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 shifting religious perspective. Very soon afterward he centralized Egyptian religious practices in Akhetaten, though construction of the city seems to have continued for several more years. In honor 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.

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 images, 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.

Akhenaten's international relations

Important evidence about Akhenaten's reign and foreign policy 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 various subject rulers through Egyptian military outposts, and from the foreign rulers (recognized as "Great Kings") of Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria and Hatti. The governors and kings of Egypt's subject domains also wrote frequently to plead for gold from Pharaoh, and also complained of being snubbed and cheated by him.

Early on in his reign, Akhenaten fell out with the king of Mitanni, Tushratta, who had been courting favor with his father against the Hittites. Tushratta complains in numerous letters that Akhenaten had sent him gold plated statues rather than statues made of solid gold; the statues formed part of the bride price which Tushratta received for letting his daughter Tadukhepa be married to Amenhotep III and then Akhenaten. Amarna letter EA 27 preserves a complaint by Tushratta to Akhenaten about the situation

I...asked your father, Mimmureya, for statues of solid cast gold, one of myself and a second statue, a statue of Tadu-Heba (Tadukhepa), my daughter, and your father said, "Don't talk of giving statues just of solid cast gold. I will give you ones made also of lapis lazuli. I will give you, too, along with the statues, much additional gold and (other) goods beyond measure." Every one of my messengers that were staying in Egypt saw the gold for the statues with their own eyes. Your father himself recast the statues [i]n the presence of my messengers, and he made them entirely of pure gold....He showed much additional gold, which was beyond measure and which he was sending to me. He said to my messengers, "See with your own eyes, here the statues, there much gold and goods beyond measure, which I am sending to my brother." And my messengers did see with their own eyes! But my brother (ie: Akhenaten) has not sent the solid (gold) statues that your father was going to send. You have sent plated ones of wood. Nor have you sent me the goods that your father was going to send me, but you have reduced (them) greatly. Yet there is nothing I know of in which I have failed my brother. Any day that I hear the greetings of my brother, that day I make a festive occasion...May my brother send me much gold. [At] the kim[ru fe]ast...[...with] many goods [may my] brother honor me. In my brother's country gold is as plentiful as dust. May my brother cause me no distress. May he send me much gold in order that my brother [with the gold and m]any [good]s, may honor me.(EA 27)

While Akhenaten was certainly not a close friend of Tushratta, he was evidently concerned at the expanding power of the Hittite Empire under its powerful ruler Suppiluliuma I. A successful Hittite attack on Mitanni and its ruler Tushratta would have disrupted the entire international balance of power in the Ancient Middle East at a time when Egypt had made peace with Mitanni; this would cause some of Egypt's vassals to switch their allegiances to the Hittites, as time would prove. A group of Egypt's allies who attempted to rebel against the Hittites were captured, and wrote letters begging Akhenaten for troops, but he did not respond to most of 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-Heba of Jerusalem, which required the Pharaoh to intervene in the area by dispatching Medjay troops northwards. Akhenaten pointedly refused to save his vassal Rib-Hadda of Byblos whose kingdom was being besieged by the expanding state of Amurru under Abdi-Ashirta and later Aziru, son of Abdi-Ashirta, despite Rib-Hadda's numerous pleas for help from the pharaoh. Rib-Hadda wrote a total of 60 letters to Akhenaten pleading for aid from the pharaoh. Akhenaten wearied of Rib-Hadda's constant correspondences and once told Rib-Hadda: "You are the one that writes to me more than all the (other) mayors" or Egyptian vassals in EA 124. What Rib-Hadda did not comprehend was that the Egyptian king would not organize and dispatch an entire army north just to preserve the political status quo of several minor city states on the fringes of Egypt's Asiatic Empire. Rib-Hadda would pay the ultimate price; his exile from Byblos due to a coup led by his brother Ilirabih is mentioned in one letter. When Rib-Hadda appealed in vain for aid to Akhenaten and then turned to Aziru, his sworn enemy to place him back on the throne of his city, Aziru promptly had him dispatched to the king of Sidon where Rib-Hadda was almost certainly executed.

William L. Moran notes that the Amarna corpus of 380+ letters counters the conventional view that Akhenaten neglected Egypt's foreign territories in favour of his internal reforms. There are several letters from Egyptian vassals notifying Pharaoh that the king's instructions have been followed:

To the king, my lord, my god, my Sun, the Sun from the sky: Message of Yapahu, the ruler of Gazru, your servant, the dirt at your feet. I indeed prostrate myself at the feet of the king, my lord, my god, my Sun...7 times and 7 times, on the stomach and on the back. I am indeed guarding the place of the king, my lord, the Sun of the sky, where I am, and all the things the king, my lord, has written me, I am indeed carrying out--everything! Who am I, a dog, and what is my house...and what is anything I have, that the orders of the king, my lord, the Sun from the sky, should not obey constantly? (EA 378)

When the loyal but unfortunate Rib-Hadda was killed at the instigation of Aziru, Akhenaten sent an angry letter to Aziru containing a barely veiled accusation of outright treachery on the latter's part. Akhenaten wrote:

Say to Aziru, ruler of Amurru: Thus the king, your lord (ie: Akhenaten), saying: The ruler of Gubla (ie: Byblos), whose brother had cast him away at the gate, said to you, "Take me and get me into the city. There is much silver, and I will give it to you. Indeed there is an abundance of everything, but not with me [here]." Thus did the ruler (Rib-Hadda) speak to you. Did you not write to the king, my lord saying, "I am your servant like all the previous mayors (ie: vassals) in his city"? Yet you acted delinquently by taking the mayor whose brother had cast him away at the gate, from his city.

He (Rib-Hadda) was residing in Sidon and, following your own judgment, you gave him to (some) mayors. Were you ignorant of the treacherousness of the men? If you really are the king's servant, why did you not denounce him before the king, your lord, saying, "This mayor has written to me saying, 'Take me to yourself and get me into my city'"? And if you did act loyally, still all the things you wrote were not true. In fact, the king has reflected on them as follows, "Everything you have said is not friendly." Now the king has heard as follows, "You are at peace with the ruler of Qidsa. (Kadesh) The two of you take food and strong drink together." And it is true. Why do you act so? Why are you at peace with a ruler whom the king is fighting? And even if you did act loyally, you considered your own judgment, and his judgment did not count. You have paid no attention to the things that you did earlier. What happened to you among them that you are not on the side of the king, your lord? Consider the people that are training you for their own advantage. They want to throw you into the fire....If for any reason whatsoever you prefer to do evil, and if you plot evil, treacherous things, then you, together with your entire family, shall die by the axe of the king. So perform your service for the king, your lord, and you will live. You yourself know that the king does not fail when he rages against all of Canaan. And when you wrote saying, 'May the king, my Lord, give me leave this year, and then I will go next year to the king, my Lord. (ie: to Egypt) If this is impossible, I will send my son in my place'--the king, your Lord, let you off this year in accordance with what you said. Come yourself, or send your son [now], and you will see the king at whose sight all lands live."(EA 162)

This letter shows that Akhenaten paid close attention to the affairs of his vassals in Canaan and Syria. Akhenaten commanded Aziru to come to Egypt and proceeded to detain him there for at least one year. In the end, Akhenaten was forced to release Aziru back to his homeland when the Hittites advanced southwards into Amki thereby threatening Egypt's series of Asiatic vassal states including Amurru. Sometime after his return to Amurru, Aziru defected to the Hittite side with his kingdom. While it is known from an Amarna letter by Rib-Hadda that the Hittites "seized all the countries that were vassals of the king of Mitanni", Akhenaten managed to preserve Egypt's control over the core of her Near Eastern Empire which consisted of present day Palestine as well as the Phoenician coast while avoiding conflict with the increasingly powerful Hittite Empire of Suppiluliuma I. Only the Egyptian border province of Amurru in Syria around the Orontes river was permanently lost to the Hittites when its ruler Aziru defected to the Hittites. Finally, contrary to the conventional view of a ruler who neglected Egypt's international relations, Akhenaten is known to have initiated at least one campaign into Nubia in his regnal Year 12.

Plague and pandemic

This Amarna period is also associated with a serious outbreak of a pandemic, possibly the plague, or polio, or perhaps the world's first recorded outbreak of influenza, which came from Egypt and spread throughout the Middle East, killing Suppiluliuma I, the Hittite King. Influenza is a disease associated with the close proximity of water fowl, pigs and humans, and its origin as a pandemic disease may be due to the development of agricultural systems that allow the mixing of these animals and their wastes. Some of the first archaeological evidence for this agricultural system is during the Amarna period of Ancient Egypt, and the pandemic that followed this period throughout the Ancient Near East may have been the earliest recorded outbreak of influenza. However, the precise nature of this Egyptian plague remains unknown and Asia has also been suggested as a possible site of origin of pandemic influenza in humans. 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. The black plague has also been suggested by Zahi Hawass due to the fact that at Amarna the traces of the plague have been found.

Pharaoh and family depictions

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 an elongated face, slender limbs, a protruding belly, wide hips, and an overall pear-shaped body. It has been suggested that the pharaoh had himself depicted in this way for religious reasons. Until Akhenaten's mummy is located and identified, proposals of actual physical abnormalities are likely to remain speculative, though there is a strong possibility that Akhenaten may have had Marfan's Syndrome.

Following Akhenaten's death, a 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.

Family and relations

Amenhotep IV was married to Nefertiti at the very beginning of his reign, and the couple had six known daughters and possibly two sons (the sons with his other wife Kiya). This is a list with suggested years of birth: Smenkhkare?– year 35 or 36 of Amenhotep III's reign (though not of Nefertiti) Meritaten – year 1. Meketaten – year 3, possibly earlier. Ankhesenpaaten, later Queen of Tutankhamun – year 4. Neferneferuaten Tasherit – year 8. Neferneferure – year 9. Setepenre – year 9. Tutankhaten–year 8 or 9 – renamed himself Tutankhamun later. His known consorts were: Nefertiti, his Great Royal Wife early in his reign. Kiya, a lesser Royal Wife. Also suggested as his consorts were his daughters: Meritaten, recorded as Great Royal Wife late in his reign, though it is more likely that she got this title due to her marriage to Smenkhkare, Akhenaten's co-regent; Meketaten, Akhenaten's second daughter. The reason for this assumption is Meketaten's death due to childbirth in the fourteenth year of Akhenaten's reign. Ankhesenpaaten, his third daughter. After his death, Ankhesenpaaten married Akhenaten's successor Tutankhamun. Both Meritaten and Ankhesenpaaten apparently had children – Meritaten-ta-sherit and Ankhesenpaaten-ta-sherit, respectively –, but there are doubts not only regarding their parentage but their existence as well. Both appear only in texts which had belonged to Kiya, and were usurped by the princesses later, and it was suggested that they might have been the daughters of Kiya, or were fictional, replacing Kiya's daughter in those scenes. 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 Tiye the model for his mother/wife Jocasta.

Burial and succession

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. He was buried In 1336 B.C., in a pink granite sarcophagus.

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. Other literature by Donald Redford, William Murnane, Alan Gardiner and more recently by Lawrence Berman in 1998 contests the view of any coregency whatsoever between Akhenaten and his father.

Similarly, although it is accepted that Akhenaten himself died in Year 17 of his reign, the question of whether Smenkhkare became co-regent perhaps 2 or 3 years earlier or enjoyed a brief independent reign is unclear. If Smenkhkare outlived Akhenaten, and became sole Pharaoh, he likely ruled Egypt 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, and possibly Kiya although one scholar has suggested that Tutankhamun may have been a son of Smenkhkare instead. 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 favor. 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.

Speculative theories

Akhenaten's status as a religious revolutionary has led to much speculation, ranging from the mainstream to New Age esotericism.

First "individual"

Akhenaten has been called by historian James Henry Breasted "the first individual in history", as well as the first monotheist, first scientist, and first romantic. As early as 1899 Flinders Petrie 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".

Criticism

On the contrary, Nicholas Reeves in his book Akhenaten: Egypt´s False Prophet is alluding totally different image of Pharaoh, seeing his religious reformations as mere attempts for centralizing power and solidify his role as "divine monarch".

Moses and Akhenaten

The idea of Akhenaten as the pioneer of a monotheistic religion that later became Judaism has been considered by some scholars. One of the first to mention this was Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in his book Moses and Monotheism. Freud argued that Moses had been an Atenist priest forced to leave Egypt with his followers after Akhenaten's death. Freud argued that Akhenaton was striving to promote monotheism, something that the biblical Moses was able to achieve. Following his book, the concept entered popular consciousness and serious research.

Other scholars and mainstream Egyptologists point out that there are direct connections between early Judaism and other Semitic religious traditions. They also state that two of the three principal Judaic terms for God, Yahweh, Elohim (meaning roughly "the lofty one", morphologically plural), and Adonai (meaning "our lord", also morphologically plural) have no connection to Aten.[citation needed] Freud commented on the connection between Adonai, the Egyptian Aten and the Syrian divine name of Adonis as a primeval unity of language between the factions; in this he was following the argument of Egyptologist Arthur Weigall, but the argument was groundless as 'Aten' and 'Adonai' are not, in fact, linguistically related.

Akhenaten appears in history almost two-centuries before the first archaeological and written evidence for Judaism and Israelite culture is found in the Levant. Abundant visual imagery of the Aten disk was central to Atenism, which celebrated the natural world, while such imagery is not a feature of early Israelite culture, Although pottery found throughout Judea dated to the end of the 8th century BC have seals resembling a winged sun disk burned on their handles, presumedly thought to be the royal seal of the Judean Kingdom. Ahmed Osman has 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 this form is found widespread in ancient Near Eastern hymnology both before and after the period and whether this implies a direct influence or a common literary convention remains in dispute.

Oedipus theory

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 incestuous relationship with his mother, Tiye. 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. This point seems to be disproved, however, in that Akhenaten in fact mummified and buried his father in the honorable traditional Egyptian fashion prior to beginning his monotheistic revolution.

Akhenaten's genetic make-up

The rather strange and eccentric portrayals of Akhenaten, with a sagging stomach, thick thighs, larger breasts, and long, thin face - so different from the athletic norm in the portrayal of Pharaohs - has led certain Egyptologists to suppose that Akhenaten suffered some kind of genetic abnormality. Various illnesses have been put forward. On the basis of his longer jaw and his feminine appearance, Cyril Aldred suggested he may be suffering from Froelich's Syndrome. However, this is unlikely because this disorder results in sterility and Akhenaten is believed to have fathered numerous children - at least six daughters by Nefertiti, and possibly his successor Tutankhamen by a minor wife.

Another suggestion by Burridge is that Akhenaten may have suffered from Marfan's Syndrome. Marfan's syndrome, unlike Froelich's, does not result in any lack of intelligence or sterility. It is associated with a sunken chest, long curved spider-like fingers (arachnodactyly), occasional congenital heart difficuties, a high curved or slightly cleft palate, and a highly curved cornea or dislocated lens of the eye, with the requirement for bright light to see well. Marfan's sufferers tend towards being taller than average, with a long, thin face, and elongated skull, overgrown ribs, a funnel or pigeon chest, and larger pelvis, with enlarged thighs and spindly calves. Marfan's syndrome is a dominant characteristic, and sufferers have a 50% chance of passing it on to their children. All of these symptoms appear in depictions of Akhenaten and of his children. It is interesting that recent CT scans of Tutankhamun report a cleft palate and a longer head than normal.

A third alternative relates to some form of religious symbolism. Because the god Aten was referred to as "The mother and father of all human kind," it has been suggested that Akhenaten was made to look androgynous in artwork as a symbol of the androgyny of the god. Akhenaten did refer to himself as "The Unique One of Re," and it maybe that he used his control of the artistic expression to distance himself from the populace and the common people, though such a radical departure from the idealised traditional representation of the image of the Pharaoh would be truly extraordinary. It should be observed that representations of other persons than Akhenaten in the 'Amarna style' are equally less than flattering - a carving of his father Amenhotep III as a languid, overweight figure may be noted.[citation needed] Equally, Nefertiti is shown in some statues as well past her prime, with a severe face and a stomach swollen by repeated pregnancies.

AKHETATEN FELLOWSHIP FORUMS @ WWW.ATENISM.NET

2008-02-24T14:28:00.006-05:00

I've been debating which service to use for our message board. As our community grows we need a message board that is robust and is full of features; a message board for the long term. I have made my decision; taking into account the input from our beloved brothers and sisters of our priestly order. I thank you all for your input and support. Visit http://www.atenism.net/ to access our PERMANENT message board. I've been debating which web address to use since we have multiple ownership of domain names that are Atenist related. Maybe http://www.atenism.info/ (which is presently pointed the our message boards portal) might be used instead of http://www.atenism.net/ but either way BOTH urls will point to our message board; which we have chosen to be our permanent Atenist site for our religious discussions and a way to build our community online. Also remember http://www.atenism.org/ will always point to our OFFICIAL website; whether it be this blog or another site, but this blog serves our purposes well so we have no immediate need to change this aspect of our online presence. May Aten bless you all.

Meryre

INTRODUCTION TO ATENISM

2007-12-31T19:24:00.001-05:00

Roughly fourteen hundred years before Christ, at the time Egypt was at the height of her power, King Akhenaten ruled over that great country for a few years.

Akhenaten was a thinker; Akhenaten was an artist; Akhenaten was a saint--the worlds first rationalist, and the oldest Prince of Peace. Through the visible disk of the Sun--Aten--Akhenaten worshipped "the Energy within the Disk"--the ultimate Reality which men of all creeds still seek, knowingly or unknowingly, under a thousand names and through a thousand paths. And Akhenaten styled himself as the Son of that unseen, everlasting Source of all life. "Thou art in my heart," Akhenaten said in one of his hymns, "and no one knoweth Thee save I, Thy Son." And Akhenaten's words, long forgotten, have come down to us, recorded upon the walls of a noblemans tomb--these amazing words in what is perhaps the earliest poem which can be ascribed with certainty to any particular author: "I, Thy Son. . . ."

Akhenaten is one of the very few men who ever put forth such a bold claim. The aim of this website is to show that, in doing so, Akhenaten was no less justified than any other teacher of the truth, however impressive may appear the success of the latter contrasted with his defeat; however widespread may be his fame, contrasted with the total oblivion in which has lain the Egyptian king, Akhenaten, for the last thirty-three hundred years.

The aim of this website is to show that Akhenaten was one of those few men, and the earliest known, perhaps, among those whose life can be dated.

The failure of Atenism to survive Akhenaten as an established religion can be regarded as one of the tragedies of history. We can explain it; we can even try to redeem it. But the bitter fact remains, for nothing can undo the past.

Other great souls have had disciples to preach their message, martyrs to bear testimony to their greatness in torture and death, missionaries to carry their name and domination to the limits of the earth; they have had commentators, admirers, detractors- -philosophers, poets, artists--to keep their memory alive century after century. But Akhenaten's fate was different. Akhenaten had no sooner died than the fervour of his followers seems to have been spent out. Within a few years, Akhenaten's name was anathematised, Akhenaten's new city, Akhetaten, pulled down stone by stone, Akhenaten's remains profaned and Akhenaten's memory systematically destroyed, without, apparently, a single cry of protest on the part of any of those eighty thousand or more who had, in their zeal, left Thebes with Akhenaten, thirteen years before. Ever since then, until a part of Akhenaten's foreign correspondence and fragments of Akhenaten's hymns were brought to light, some 100 years ago, there was not a man on earth who knew of Akhenaten's existence. And to this very day, notwithstanding the genuine admiration of a learned few for Akhenaten's rational religion of Atenism, there are hardly any people in the world whose daily life Akhenaten fills with his presence.

Why?

Men who are in the habit of judging in haste will at once infer that Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism cannot have been as perfect as those that have become the nucleus of living faiths.

A religion should be judged in itself, independently of its real or apparent influence upon any society, apart from its success or failure among men. And its founder--when it has a founder--is the only man whose life and personality one should consider when speaking of it. Judged in that manner, from the sole standpoint of its inner beauty, Akhenaten's simple and rational religion of Atenism, of which hardly anybody knows, can be compared advantageously with recognised faiths professed by millions of men. And its promoter, Akhenaten, with perhaps not more than one or two living disciples, can nevertheless be ranked among the divine souls that honoured this earth--among those whom we call "incarnations" or "Sons of God."

We can now try to explain why Atenism failed to endure as an organised collective cult. From the little that can be gathered of Atenism through the existing fragments of Akhenaten's hymns and through the history of Akhenaten's life, one can assert, to say the least, that Atenism was far in advance of the time in which Atenism appeared.

The towering superiority of Akhenaten over his fellow-men has no parallel in the mechanical sphere. "Were Atenism invented to satisfy our modern scientific conceptions, Akhenaten's religion of Atenism could not be logically improved upon at the present day," writes Sir Flinders Petrie. Could we imagine a man of the fourteenth century B.C. in possession of the secret of our modern aeroplanes, we would then realise what would have been the mechanical equivalent of Akhenaten's religious revolution. The very idea of it shatters us by its enormity. But, while our imaginary inventor could have safely conquered the world with the help of a single aircraft, Akhenaten failed to convince a minimum number of disciples capable of carrying on his work. Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism "suitable for our own times," met little response in his. Those who could easily have gathered Atenism from Akhenaten's lips and transmitted Atenism to posterity in all its details, were not moved to do so. And we, who would have done so, were not yet born. That is the main reason why nothing was left of Atenism after the thirteen glorious years during which Atenism flourished.

There are other reasons for Atenism's extinction.

One of them is that the religion of Atenism was too rational to appeal to the average people of any time. Another is that Akhenaten himself was too good--and perhaps too farsighted, also--to establish Atenism by means of violence.

Three elements seem to have contributed to the propagation of every widespread religion: a mythology; miracles; and a more or less definite doctrine concerning the hereafter.

But the religion of Atenism seems to have been devoid of all three from the start. That is perhaps why some modern authors have called Atenism a philosophy rather than a religion. But Atenism did possess that stamp of devotion that distinguishes a religion from a philosophy. Atenism was not purely a philosophy, whatever one may say. Atenism even comprised a daily ritual, with hymns and music, incense and flowers. Atenism was a religion, but one which offered its followers, at the same time, rational thought, the warmth of devotion, and a stately display of sensuous beauty.

But there were no marvellous tales connected with Atenism. The one theme that could have become the centre of a whole literature, had the religion of Atenism lasted a little longer, was the life of its Founder, Akhenaten. And that was too simple, too human, too obviously natural to impress the coarse imagination of the commoners.

Akhenaten, in his love of truth, seems to have deliberately stripped himself of all the mystery that had helped his fathers to appear as gods in the eyes of their prostrate people. Akhenaten was of unconventional manners and of kindly approach. Akhenaten's divinity was not the showy privilege of a Sun-born king, or of a prophet, asserted by external signs, but rather the innermost perfection of a man whose heart, will and understanding were in complete harmony with the eternal laws of life (Atenism); of a man who had fulfilled mans divine purpose as naturally as others drift away from it. Akhenaten felt therefore no need of ascertaining Atenism by a fastidious pomp, any more than by strange renunciations. There was no excess in Akhenaten; nothing that the vulgar eye could look upon as "striking," nothing that popular enthusiasm could catch hold of and magnify. Akhenaten wrought no extraordinary deeds, as other teachers are said to have done. The only wonder of which Akhenaten spoke was the everlasting miracle of order and of fertility--the rhythm of day and night, the growth of a bird or of a baby.

And Akhenaten brought with him, apparently, no new ideas about death, and put no stress upon the ones that were common in Egypt in Akhenaten's time. From the beautiful prayer inlaid upon Akhenaten's coffin, and probably composed by Akhenaten Himself, one infers that Akhenaten believed in the eternal life of the soul. But that is all. No allusion to the nature of that life beyond death, and especially not a single reference to sin, reward and punishment can be found in at least what has survived of the young king Akhenaten's hymns, or in the inscriptions in the tombs of the nobles who boast of having "hearkened to Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism." Not that the religion of Atenism was in any way devoid of a moral character, as some of its modern judges have supposed--a gratuitous assumption, contradicted by the very motto of Akhenaten's life: "Living in Truth." But Atenism's morality concerned what one was rather than what one did. Atenism was the inherent character of a harmonious life rather than the outcome of any catalogue of "dos" and "donts." As all natural things are, Atenism was foreign to the idea of promises and threats. And that was a reason for Atenism not to appeal to a number of followers. Most men do not want true morality any more than true religion. They want mythologies and miracles to wonder at, and police regulations to abide by; illusions in this world, and punishments and rewards in eternity. In one word, they want eternity made small and exciting to suit the measure of average life. They do not want life simply stripped of its shallowness and made divine--"life in truth." And as Akhenaten had nothing else but that to offer them, Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism left them indifferent. Atenism did not spread beyond the narrow circle of courtiers.

The one means by which Akhenaten could have secured Atenism's success as an international creed was violence.

The religion of Atenism was, indeed, far in advance of its time and of many future ages. And Atenism lacked the elements that generally make a creed popular. Men would, no doubt, have misinterpreted Atenism, misused Atenism, and degraded Atenism within a few years. But Atenism would have spread. Force of money and force of arms can make any people accept any faith, even one that does not suit them. And Akhenaten was both the most powerful and the richest king of his days. We are convinced that, had Akhenaten chosen to use his strength to impose his new cult of Atenism upon the world, Akhenaten would probably have largely succeeded.

But Akhenaten felt too deeply and he knew too much to sacrifice the spirit of his doctrine of Atenism to an illusory triumph. Far from using violence to propagate his religion of Atenism, Akhenaten did not even persecute those who tried to destroy it. As a result, it is they who enjoyed the thrill of triumph--for the time being. It is they who imposed their will upon the world. They wanted Akhenaten to be cursed, and so Akhenaten was; they wanted Akhenaten to be forgotten, and so Akhenaten was; it was their will that never, never again the world should hear the name of Akhenaten, and for over three millenniums the world did not.

But Akhenaten's beautiful, rational teaching of Atenism, however incompletely known, remains unstained by superstition, unmarred by compromise, unconnected with any of the crimes committed, in course of time, in the name of many a successful religion; pure, whole, as its Founder Akhenaten conceived it--a thing of beauty for all ages to come.

But if there are psychological reasons for which Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism had little chances of becoming one of the widespread creeds of the world, Atenism could have remained, at least, the religion of an elite. Atenism could have; and Atenism most probably would have, in different surroundings. One of Atenism's main features is the diversity of Atenism's appeal. Atenism satisfies reason; Atenism fulfils our highest aspirations towards the beautiful; Atenism implies love, not of man alone, but of all creatures. In the midst of general superstition and strife, the better men could have sought in Atenism an ideal to live up to. A pious tradition could have kept the name of Akhenaten sacred to the few who are worthy to know of him.

But such a tradition was never started, or at least never permitted to develop. Egypt, in the fourteenth century B.C., was already too deeply engrossed in formalism to respond to the forgotten message of living life (Atenism). And the countries around her were either too barbaric or too decadent to understand Atenism. Strangled at home by priestly fanaticism and by popular indifference, the new religion of Atenism was submerged, abroad, amidst a crowd of conflicting practical faiths that promised men tangible advantages in this world as well as in the next. Persecuted as an organised cult, Atenism soon ceased to exist even as a secret worship. To keep Atenism alive, Atenism would have needed an atmosphere of earnestness and of toleration, a truly religious atmosphere as it was difficult to find anywhere on earth for many centuries, except perhaps among a minority of Hindus.

We believe that no teaching would meet, better than Akhenaten's, the exigencies of the critical modern mind. Yet, it is not our intention to try to revive Atenism on a broad scale, as the basis of a public cult. We do not think it desirable to attempt what its Founder Akhenaten himself does not seem to have aimed at--he who, though fully conscious of Atenism's universal value, did not try to explain Atenism to the many. With all their pride in progress, our times are no less foolish and no less barbaric than Akhenaten's. We now use electric fans, while in Thebes they did not; that is about all the difference. The resuscitated religion of Cosmic Energy (Atenism), would soon offer, in the hands of any crowd, as ludicrous a sight as that of the great "living" faiths of to-day. We do not wish to rob the other world-teachers of a few millions of insignificant admirers in order to give a noisy following to the great man (Akhenaten) who is dear to us. We know too well, through daily experience, what the quality of that following would be.

We also wish to make the name and teaching of Akhenaten popular among the best of our contemporaries--among those who really represent the higher tendencies of our sceptical and at the same time mystical age; among those to whom dogmas no longer appeal, whom wonders no longer impress, whom religion without a background of positive knowledge, and science without the feeling of the seriousness of life, leave equally unsatisfied. It is among such people that we earnestly wish to revive the spirit of Akhenaten who, a thousand years before Socrates and nearly nine hundred years before the Buddha, united the boldest rationalistic views to the deep intuitive certitude of the oneness of God, the oneness of Life, and the brotherhood of all creatures.

Modern scholars have already recognised Akhenaten's undeniable greatness. The earliest and most eminent of all those specialists who have laboured to revive Akhenaten's memory among the learned, Sir W. Flinders Petrie, has paid Akhenaten a magnificent tribute. But what we want also is that Akhenaten's name be held sacred by all those who, without being scholars, can think in terms of truth and feel in terms of beauty and who are capable of modelling their lives on Akhenaten's immortal example of living perfection.

More so, if few be likely to live up to the spirit of Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism, let all at least know that there has been such a man as Akhenaten, once, long long ago. Let them remain superstitious, vulgar and violent, if they will; but let them know that there has been a man (Akhenaten) in whose life religion and reason walked hand in hand; a man (Akhenaten) whose very being was harmony, balance, supreme elegance, and who lost an empire for the sake of Atenism. Few meditate upon the beauty of the Sun; yet all behold it. Above mans unchanging mediocrity Akhenaten shines in glory. In a similar manner, worshipped by a few, but familiar to all after thirty-three hundred years of silence, we want the name of Akhenaten, Son of the Sun, young for ever, to live once more in the consciousness of our modern world. Praise Akhenaten!

FACEBOOK ATENISM GROUP

2007-12-26T10:33:00.000-05:00

Set up an account on www.FACEBOOK.com and search for the group 'Akhetaten Fellowship' and join.

New Message Board Available

2007-04-11T00:40:00.000-04:00

I am making available a message board for general discussion for those of you who are interested.

http://atenism.proboards83.com/

Inner Teachings of Atenism

2007-03-09T13:00:00.000-05:00

We think it's time to reveal some portion of the inner teachings of Atenism for those of you who need more understanding on what we stand for and what we believe in. There is the external aspect of Atenism which is somewhat well known and understood by many in that we believe in One God Aten and no other god. We are true monotheists, not the monotheism of Judaism, Christianity and Islam which believe in two or more gods, the good God Jehovah or Yahweh, also known simply as God or Lord, and Satan which is supposedly this evil god that used to be an archangel. We as Atenists do not believe in any god but the One true God, and his earthly representative Akhenaten who was in essence Aten in the flesh, or God's voice on Earth. Through Akhenaten, Aten spoke His word and gave Akhenaten His full authority and wisdom. Aten's Spirit dwelt within Akhenaten's flesh form, so in essence Akhenaten was a vessel filled with God's Mind and Spirit. Simply put, when Akhenaten was alive "physically", Aten was worshipped through Akhenaten, because He chose Akhenaten to be His Spiritual vessel. So Akhenaten was cohabitating with Aten in the same body and they became as One, a Father and Son union. This represents the outer teaching or understanding of what Atenism is all about.

Now, there is an inner teaching of Atenism that very few know about, and that includes Egyptologists. Egyptologists in general know very little about the inner teachings of Atenism that have been passed down generation after generation, by many different religions and philosophies, including Judaism, which in itself is a corruption of Atenism. Many believe that Moses was Akhenaten or that he learned Atenism at the feet of the Master Himself, then over time the true history of Atenism eventually became corrupted, by the Hebrews. We can say truly that the members of our Order, have the true knowledge of the inner teachings of Atenism, and we intend to prove it over time by making some of these inner teachings available to the general public.

If you are interested in knowing more about these inner teachings of Atenism, we will be presenting through the use of our Atenism blog, in piecemeal, some but not all of our knowledge, concerning these inner teachings. We hope by doing so, we will whet your appetite and curiosity for more knowledge concerning these teachings. It is also our hope that by sharing some of our inner teachings, Atenism will spread more readily and the truth that has been hidden from public view for over 3000 years will finally be revealed.

Reminder: If you are impressed by our efforts in bringing Atenism to the world, we would suggest that you share your discovery with others.

New Comment

2007-03-08T00:01:00.000-05:00

HowardRSD has left a new comment on your post "Posting To/Joining This Blog":

It is all so familiar and truly wonderful.
NO LONGER WILL IT BE 'THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GO I' BUT 'THERE GO I'.
YOURS IN MA'AT AND BEAUTY

A girl from Hungary said...

2007-02-09T16:53:00.000-05:00

1 Comment -
A girl from Hungary said...
Dear All,I was moved so much by Your home page. Thank you for having it done, it is gorgeous. I would like to ask You if You think it possible that Akhenaten lives here among us today in an other body.Wishing You the best,
6:33 AM

OPEN INVITATION TO JOIN THIS BLOG

2006-12-15T16:34:00.000-05:00

YOU ARE OPENLY INVITED TO JOIN OUR BLOG BY SENDING YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS TO INVITE@ATENISM.ORG.

Anonymous said......And my response!

2006-12-14T18:58:00.000-05:00

Anonymous said...

THE OBVIOUS CONNECTIONS BETWEEN AKHENATEN AND MOSES AS FREUD POSTULATED IN HIS MOSES AND MONOTHEISM MAKE IT ESSENTIAL THAT THE PRESENT WORLD RE-LEARN ATENISM AS THE SPIRITUAL FOUNDATION OF ISRAEL, JUDAISM, ORTHODOX CHRISTIANISM, ISLAM, CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM...IN OTHER WORDS MOST OF THE MODERN WORLD. PERHAPS THEN THE MYTHS AND HARMFUL FICTIONS OF 'THE OTHER' WILL BE REDEEMED IN THE GLORIOUS LIGHT OF THE ATEN...AS INDEED AKHENATEN AND NEFERTITTI INTENDED.
NO LONGER WILL IT BE 'THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GO I' BUT 'THERE GO I'.
YOURS IN MA'AT AND BEAUTY

2:59 PM

-------------------

My response to the above comment left by Anonymous is this - those of you out there who are in agreement with the above statement should speak out loud and clear and join our cause. Let the silence cease! Join our cause and let's become a community of Atenists on the web. All are welcome who accept the religion of Atenism as the true faith. Maybe Atenism will shake the foundations of all monotheistic religions, since we as Atenists all know that Atenism is the only true monotheistic religion, all others believe in a good God and an Evil God as opposing forces. We know there is no Satan and that evil is only the absence of what is good, just like darkness is the absence of light.

Amenhotep IV video

2006-11-23T21:22:00.000-05:00

I thought you may, perhaps, enjoy this lill' Amenhotep IV video I made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7iQRFP_e90

by TOR Hershman

Akhenaten and Nefertiti

2006-09-08T17:18:00.000-04:00

Akhenaten is probably the most interesting of Egyptian pharoahs. He was strange in a number of ways, an oddity that upsets the normal course of Ancient Egyptian history and gives rise to theories that are still being argued about amongst archaeologists. It is not for me to enter this great debate; I merely suggest a scenario that fits as well as any other to the known facts.
Akhenaten’s reign (about 1353 BC - 1336 BC) was a hiccup in the great tradition of the pharoahs. For centuries before and after him, little changed in the style of Egyptian art and their beliefs; tradition dictated and the pharoahs followed. Only Akhenaten dared to be different. In his reign art became suddenly more realistic and family-centered. The stiff and formalized depictions that we are so used to in Egyptian art loosened up and we are allowed a glimpse into a more human and natural world.

It is for this reason that we can be fairly certain that the pharoah and his wife, Nefertiti, are accurately portrayed by their artists. And Akhenaton looked weird, to say the least. His body was pear-shaped and his limbs thin and elongated; his face too was long and narrow. There has been much speculation on the cause of these apparent deformities, most settling for Marfan’s Syndrome, a genetic disorder that fits closely with what we observe.

Yet there is something very noble and intelligent in the features portrayed in Akhenaten's statues. And this fits very well with Akhenaten’s attempt to turn Egypt from its old gods to accept a form of monotheism. This began as an elevation of the sun god, Aten, to pre-eminence and developed into a genuine assertion of there being one god only. It is as if Akhenaten was groping towards an understanding that was later to emerge in the great monotheist religions of today.

Again, historians are still debating whether this was a personal aberration of Akhenaten’s or whether he was influenced by outside forces, perhaps the result of his ancestry being riddled with Mitannic princesses. The Mitanni were a people of northern Mesopotamia and it is possible that their rulers practised a type of monotheism.

This is where Akhenaten’s wife, Nefertiti, may enter the equation, for she is reputed to have Mitannic ancestry too. Indeed, she supported and encouraged Akhenaten’s reforms and may well have continued them beyond his death. One begins to suspect that we have a true ancient love story here, a romance evidenced by the softening of art forms and the joint effort to change the religion of Egypt. They stood together against the might of Egyptian tradition.

Nefertiti was very beautiful, if the famous bust of her is true to life. It is easy to imagine that Akhenaten was in love with her and that they developed his reforms together. For the brief period of Akhenaten’s reign, a mere seventeen years, they must have discussed and enlarged upon their ideas, always conscious that they were opposed by the establishment, the priests and nobility who depended upon the status quo for their existence both in this world and the next. Their determination speaks aloud of their reliance upon each other, suggesting much more than the usual formal relationship between pharoah and queen.

After Akhenaten’s death, history becomes vague and confusing. A succession of pharoah’s followed, culminating in the boy king, Tutankhamun, who may have been related to Akhenaten. All turned against the new religion however, expunging any mention of it and Akhenaten himself from inscriptions and official documents. Egypt went back to being what it had always been and memory of Akhenaten’s revolution in thought faded into the sands of time.

Yet a faint whisper is left to us. Over the thousands of years comes the suggestion of a human story that is exceptional amongst the formalized accounts of other pharoahs’ greatness and achievements. It is entirely appropriate that we should view the tale of Akhenaten and the beautiful Nefertiti as one of the great romances of history.

ATEN

2006-09-08T16:37:00.000-04:00

Viewing Aten as Akhenaten's god is actually a simplification. Aten was the focus of Akhenaten's religion. Aten is the name given to represent the solar disk. The term Aten is used to designate a Supreme Being. Aten expresses indirectly the life-giving force of light. The full title of Akhenaten's god was Re-Horus, who rejoices in the horizon in his name of the light which is in the sun disk. (This is the title of the god as it appears on the numerous stelae which were placed to mark the boundaries of Akhenaten's new capital at Amarna.) This lengthy name was often shortened to Re-Horus-Aten or just Aten in many texts, but the god Akhenaten had raised to supremacy was in fact a synthesis of very ancient ones viewed in a new and different way. In particular, it was not depicted in anthropomorphic (human) form, but as rays of light extending from the sun's disk. Furthermore, the god's name came to be written within a cartouche, along with the titles normally given to a Pharaoh, another break with ancient tradition.

Aten first appears in texts dating to the 12th dynasty, in The Story of Sinuhe. Re-Horus is a synthesis of two other gods, both of which are attested from very early on. During the Amarna period, this synthesis was seen as the invisible source of energy of the sun god, of which the visible manifestation was Aten, the solar disk. Thus Re-Horus-Aten was a development of old ideas which came gradually. The real change is the apparent abandonment of all other gods following the advent of Akhenaten. This is readily apparent in the Great Hymn to Aten.

Contrast With Traditional Egyptian Religion

2006-09-04T23:26:00.000-04:00

The impact of Akhenaten's religious reform, albeit introduced in steps, is hard to overstate; it is equivalent perhaps to a new Pope declaring an obscure African deity the supreme God of Catholicism, building a new Vatican City somewhere in Canada, and abolishing all bishops as well as banning the symbol of the Cross, defacing all churches to remove all reference to Jesus, and banning any personal veneration of Jesus. It is a measure both of Pharaoh's great power, and of the extraordinary circumstances of the time that an equally shocking and dramatic transformation was achieved even temporarily, for about twenty years. The context appears to have been an Egypt hit by catastrophe, seeming abandoned by the old gods: a series of pandemics is known to have occurred throughout the Near East of this period, and some speculate that it could coincide with the eruption of the volcano of Thera, which would have covered much of Egypt in a layer of destructive ash, killing crops and livestock. Certainly, Amenhotep III's construction of over 700 statues to the god of destruction, Set, suggests Atenism as being more than merely the personal whim of Akhenaten, but at least in part a desperate measure on the part of a Pharaoh responsible for the well-being of his kingdom, above all by ensuring a good relationship with the gods.

In this context, Akhenaten carried out a radical program of religious reform which, for a period of about twenty years, largely supplanted the age-old beliefs and practices of the Egyptian state religion, and deposed its religious hierarchy, headed by the powerful priesthood of Amun at Thebes. For fifteen centuries the Egyptians had worshipped and sacrificed to an extended family of gods and goddesses, each of which had its own elaborate system of priests, temples, shrines and rituals. A key feature of these cults was the veneration of images and statues of the gods, which were worshipped in the dark confines of the temples. The pinnacle of this religious hierarchy was the Pharaoh, who was both king and living god, and the administration of the Egyptian kingdom was thus inextricably bound up with, and largely controlled by, the power and influence of the priests and scribes. Like the abolition of the Russian Orthodox Church in early Communist Russia, Akhenaten's reforms cut away both the philosophical and economic bases of priestly power, abolishing the cults of multiple deities, and with them the large and lucrative industry of sacrifices and tributes that the priests controlled.

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. Indeed Aten is the name given to the solar disk, whereas the full title of Akhenaten's god was Ra-Horus, who rejoices in the horizon in his name of the light which is in the sun disk. (This is the title of the god as it appears on the numerous stelae which were placed to mark the boundaries of Akhenaten's new capital at Akhetaten.) However in Year 9 of his reign Akhenaten declared a more radical version of his new religion by declaring Aten not merely the supreme god, but the only god, and that he, Akhenaten, was the only intermediary between the Aten and his people. He even staged the ritual regicide of Amun, and ordered the defacing of Amun's temples throughout Egypt.

In contrast to the old gods, Aten appears primarily to have been seen as a loving and protective god, whose primary goal was not to punish and demand allegiance and sacrifice but support his people through his presence. Key features of Atenism included a ban on idols and other images of the Aten, 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. New temples were constructed, in which the Aten was worshipped in the open sunlight, rather than in dark temple enclosures, as the old gods had been. Although idols were banned - even in people's homes - these were typically replaced by functionally equivalent representations of Akhenaten and his family venerating the Aten, and receiving the ankh (breath of life) from him. The radicalisation of Year 9 (including spelling Aten phonetically instead of using the rayed solar disc) may be due to a determination on the part of Akhenaten to enforce a probable misconception among the common people that Aten was really a type of sun god like Ra. Instead, the idea was reinforced that such representations were representations above all of concepts - of Aten's universal presence - not of physical beings or things.

The early stage of Atenism appears a kind of henotheism familiar in Egyptian religion, but the later form suggests a proto-monotheism. The idea of Akhenaten as the pioneer of monotheistic religion was promoted by Sigmund Freud (the founder of psychoanalysis) in his book Moses and Monotheism and thereby entered popular consciousness.

Posting To/Joining This Blog

2006-08-21T14:37:00.000-04:00

To post to this blog, without being a member, just send your posting to blog@atenism.org. Once you have posted a few times and we get to know you a little better we will send you an invitation to join. All non-member postings will be reviewed beforehand by one of our moderators so expect a delay.

HYMNS OF AKHENATEN TO ATEN

2006-08-13T18:55:00.000-04:00

LONGER HYMN

Thy appearing is beautiful in the horizon of heaven,

The Living Aten1, the beginning of life;

Thou risest in the horizon of the east,

Thou fillest every land with thy beauty.

Thou art very beautiful, brilliant and exalted above earth,

Thy beams encompass all lands which thou hast made.

Thou art the sun, thou settest their bounds,

Thou bindest them with thy love.

Thou art afar off, but thy beams are upon the land;

Thou art on high, but the day passes with thy going.

Thou restest in the western horizon of heaven,

And the land is in darkness like the dead.

They lie in their houses, their heads are covered,

Their breath is shut up, and eye sees not to eye;

Their things are taken, even from under their heads, and they know it not.

Every lion cometh forth from his den,

And all the serpents then bite;

The night shines with its lights,

The land lies in silence;

For he who made them is in his horizon.

The land brightens, for thou risest in the horizon,

Shining as the Aten in the day;

The darkness flees, for thou givest thy beams,

Both lands are rejoicing every day.

Men awake and stand upon their feet,

For thou liftest them up;

They bathe their limbs, they clothe themselves,

They lift their heads in adoration of thy rising,

Throughout the land they do their labours.

The cattle all rest in their pastures,

Where grow the trees and herbs;

The birds fly in their haunts,

Their wings adoring thy ka,

All the flocks leap upon their feet,

The small birds live when thou risest upon them.

The ships go forth north and south,

For every way opens at thy rising.

The fishes in the river swim up to greet thee,

Thy beams are within the depth of the great sea.

Thou createst conception in women, making the issue of mankind;

Thou makest the son to live in the body of his mother,

Thou quietest him that he should not mourn,

Nursing him in the body, giving the spirit that all his growth may live.

When he cometh forth on the day of his birth,

Thou openest his mouth to speak, thou doest what he needs.

The small bird in the egg, sounding within the shell,

Thou givest to it breath within the egg,

To give life to that which thou makest.

It gathers itself to break forth from the egg,

It cometh from the egg, and chirps with all its might,

It runneth on its feet, when it has come forth.

How many are the things which thou hast made!

Thou createst the land by thy will, thou alone,

With peoples, herds and flocks,

Everything on the face of the earth that walketh on its feet,

Everything in the air that flieth with its wings.

In the hills from Syria to Kush, and the plain of Egypt,

Thou givest to every one his place, thou framest their lives,

To every one his belongings, reckoning his length of days;

Their tongues are diverse in their speech,

Their natures in the colour of their skin.

As the divider thou dividest the strange peoples.

When thou hast made the Nile beneath the earth,

Thou bringest it according to thy will to make the people to live:

Even as thou hast formed them unto thyself,

Thou art throughout their lord, even in their weakness.

O lord of the land that risest for them.

Aten of the day, revered by every distant land, thou makest their life,

Thou placest a Nile in heaven that it may rain upon them,

That it may make waters upon the hills like the great sea,

Watering their fields amongst their cities.

How excellent are thy ways!

O Lord of eternity, the Nile in Heaven is for the strange people,

And all wild beasts that go upon their feet.

The Nile that cometh from below the earth is for the land of Egypt,

That it may nourish every field.

Thou shinest and they live by thee.

Thou makest the seasons of the year to create all thy works;

The winter making them cool, the summer giving warmth.

Thou makest the far-off heaven, that thou mayest rise in it,

That thou mayest see all that thou madest when thou wast alone.

Rising in thy forms as the living Aten,

Shining afar off and returning.

The villages, the cities, and the tribes, on the road and the river,

All eyes see thee before them,

Thou art the Aten of the day over all the land.

Thou art in my heart, there is none who knoweth thee,

excepting thy son Nefer . kheperu . ra .ua . en . ra;

Thou causest that he should have understanding, in thy ways and in thy might.

The land is in thy hand, even as thou hast made them;

Thou shinest and they live, and when thou settest they die;

For by thee the people live, they look on thy excellencies until thy setting;

They lay down all their labours when thou settest in the west,

And when thou risest, they grow. . . .

Since the day that thou laidest the foundations of the earth,

Thou raisest them up for thy son who came forth from thy substance,

The king of Egypt, living in Truth, lord of both lands,

Nefer . kheperu . ra . ua . en . ra,

Son of the sun, living in Truth, Akhenaten, great in his duration;

Nefer . neferu . Aten

Nefer . iti, living and flourishing for ever eternally.

1 The name of the Solar Disk is written Aten by some authors, such as Sir Flinders Petrie, Sir Wallis Budge, Griffith, etc., and Aton by others, such as A. Weigall and J. Breasted. All through this blog we have written Aten.

Translated by Griffith, quoted by Sir Flinders Petrie in A History of Egypt (Edit. 1899), Vol. II, pp. 215-218.

SHORTER HYMN

A Hymn of Praise to the living Horus of the Two Horizons, who rejoiceth in the horizon in his name of "Shu, who-is-in-the-Aten"-(i.e., Disk), the Giver of Life for ever and ever, by the King who liveth in Truth, the Lord of the Two Lands, NEFER-KHEPERU-RA UA-EN-RA, Son of Ra, who liveth in Truth, Lord of the Crowns, AAKHUNATEN, great in the duration of his life, Giver of Life for ever and ever.

(He saith)

Thou risest gloriously, O thou Living Aten, Lord of Eternity! Thou art sparkling (or coruscating), beautiful, (and) mighty. Thy love is mighty and great . . . thy light, of diverse colours, leadeth captive (or, bewitcheth) all faces. Thy skin shineth brightly to make all hearts to live. Thou fillest the Two Lands with thy love, O thou god, who did(st) build (thy)self. Maker of every land, Creator of whatsoever there is upon it, (viz.) men and women, cattle, beasts of every kind, and trees of every kind that grow on the land. They live when thou shinest upon them. Thou art the mother (and) father of what thou hast made; their eyes, when thou risest, turn their gaze upon thee. Thy rays at dawn light up the whole earth. Every heart beateth high at the sight of thee, (for) thou risest as their Lord.

Thou settest in the western horizon of heaven, they lie down in the same way as those who are dead. Their heads are wrapped up in cloth, their nostrils are blocked, until thy rising taketh place at dawn in the eastern horizon of heaven. Their hands then are lifted up in adoration of thy Ka; thou vivifiest hearts with thy beauties (or, beneficent acts), which are life. Thou sendest forth thy beams, (and) every land is in festival. Singing men, singing women (and) chorus men make joyful noises in the Hall of the House of the Benben Obelisk, (and) in every temple in (the city of) Aakhut-Aten, the Seat of Truth, wherewith thy heart is satisfied. Within it are dedicated offerings of rich food (?).

Thy son is sanctified (or, ceremonially pure) to perform the things which thou willest, O thou Aten, when he showeth himself in the appointed processions.

Every creature that thou hast made skippeth towards thee, thy honoured son (rejoiceth), his heart is glad, O thou Living Aten, who (appearest) in heaven every day. He hath brought forth his honoured son, UA-EN-RA, like his own form, never ceasing so to do. The son of Ra supporteth his beauties (or beneficent acts).

NEFER-KHEPERU-RA UA-EN-RA (saith)

I am thy son, satisfying thee, exalting thy name. Thy strength (and) thy power are established in my heart. Thou art the Living Disk, eternity is thine emanation (or, attribute). Thou hast made the heavens to be remote so that thou mightest shine therein and gaze upon everything that thou hast made. Thou thyself art Alone, but there are millions of (powers of) life in thee to make them (i.e., thy creatures) live. Breath of life is it to (their) nostrils to see thy beams. Buds burst into flower (and) the plants which grow on the waste lands send up shoots at thy rising; they drink themselves drunk before thy face. All the beasts frisk about on their feet; all the feathered fowl rise up from their nests and flap their wings with joy, and circle round in praise of the Living Aten. . . .

LONGER HYMN

A hymn of praise of Her-aakhuti, the living one, exalted in the Eastern Horizon in his name of Shu-who-is-in-the-Aten, who liveth for ever and ever, the living and great Aten, he who is in the Set-Festival, the Lord of the Circle, the Lord of the Disk, the Lord of heaven, the Lord of earth, the Lord of the House of the Aten in Aakhut-Aten (of) the King of the South and the North, who liveth in Truth, Lord of the Two Lands (i.e., Egypt),

NEFER-KHEPERU-RA UA-EN-RA, the son of Ra, who liveth in Truth, Lord of Crowns, AAKHUNATEN, great in the period of his life (and of) the great royal woman (or wife) whom he loveth, Lady of the Two Lands, NEFER-NEFERU-ATEN NEFERTITI, who liveth in health and youth for ever and ever.

He saith:

Thy rising (is) beautiful in the horizon of heaven, O Aten, ordainer of life. Thou dost shoot up in the horizon of the East, thou fillest every land with thy beneficence. Thou art beautiful and great and sparkling, and exalted above every land. Thy arrows (i.e., rays) envelop (i.e., penetrate) everywhere all the lands which thou hast made.

Thou art as Ra. Thou bringest (them) according to their number, thou subduest them for thy beloved son. Thou thyself art afar off, but thy beams are upon the earth; thou art in their faces, they (admire) thy goings.

Thou settest in the horizon of the west, the earth is in darkness, in the form of death. Men lie down in a booth wrapped up in cloths, one eye cannot see its fellow. If all their possessions, which are under their heads, be carried away, they perceive it not.

Every lion emergeth from his lair, all the creeping things bite, darkness (is) a warm retreat. The land is in silence. He who made them hath set in his horizon.

The earth becometh light, thou shootest up in the horizon, shining in the Aten in the day, thou scatterest the darkness. Thou sendest out thine arrows (i.e., rays), the Two Lands make festival, (men) wake up, stand upon their feet, it is thou who raisest them up. (They) wash their members, they take (their apparel), and array themselves therein, their hands are (stretched out) in praise at thy rising, throughout the land they do their works.

Beasts and cattle of all kinds settle down upon the pastures, shrubs and vegetables flourish, the feathered fowl fly about over their marshes, their feathers praising thy Ka. All the cattle rise up on their legs, creatures that fly and insects of all kinds spring into life when thou risest up on them.

The boats drop down and sail up the river, likewise every road openeth (or showeth itself) at thy rising, the fish in the river swim towards thy face, thy beams are in the depths of the Great Green (i.e., the Mediterranean and Red Seas).

Thou makest offspring to take form in women, creating seed in men. Thou makest the son to live in the womb of his mother, making him to be quiet that he crieth not; thou art a nurse in the womb, giving breath to vivify that which he hath made. (When) he droppeth from the womb . . . on the day of his birth (he) openeth his mouth in the (ordinary) manner, thou providest his sustenance.

The young bird in the egg speaketh in the shell, thou givest breath to him inside it to make him to live. Thou makest for him his mature form so that he can crack the shell (being) inside the egg. He cometh forth from the egg, he chirpeth with all his might, when he hath come forth from it (the egg) he walketh on his two feet.

O how many are the things which thou hast made!

They are hidden from the face, O thou One God, like whom there is no other. Thou didst create the earth by thy heart (or will), thou alone existing, men and women, cattle, beasts of every kind that are upon the earth, and that move upon feet (or legs), all the creatures that are in the sky and that fly with their wings, (and) the deserts of Syria and Kesh (Nubia) and the Land of Egypt.

Thou settest every person in his place. Thou providest their daily food, every man having the portion allotted to him, (thou) dost compute the duration of his life. Their tongues are different in speech, their characteristics (or forms) and likewise their skins (in colour), giving distinguishing marks to the dwellers in foreign lands.

Thou makest Hapi (the Nile) in the Tuat (Underworld), thou bringest it when thou wishest to make mortals live, inasmuch as thou hast made them for thyself, their Lord who dost support them to the uttermost, O thou Lord of every land, thou shinest upon them, O ATEN of the day, thou great one of majesty.

Thou makest the life of all remote lands. Thou settest a Nile in heaven, which cometh down to them.

It maketh a flood on the mountains like the Great Green Sea, it maketh to be watered their fields in their villages. How beneficent are thy plans, O Lord of Eternity! A Nile in heaven art thou for the dwellers in the foreign lands (or deserts), and for all the beasts of the desert that go upon feet (or legs). Hapi (the Nile) cometh from the Tuat for the land of Egypt. Thy beams nourish every field; thou risest up (and) they live, they germinate for thee.

Thou makest the Seasons to develop everything that thou hast made:

The season Pert (i.e., November 16 to March 16) so that they may refresh themselves, and the season Heh (i.e., March 16 to November 16) in order to taste thee. Thou hast made the heaven which is remote that thou mayest shine therein and look upon everything that thou hast made. Thy being is one, thou shinest (or, shootest up) among thy creatures as the LIVING ATEN, rising, shining, departing afar off, returning. Thou hast made millions of creations (or, evolutions) from thy one self, (viz.) towns and cities, villages, fields, roads and rivers. Every eye (i.e., all men) beholdeth thee confronting it. Thou art the Aten of the day at its zenith.

At thy departure thine eye . . . thou didst create their faces so that thou mightest not see . . . ONE thou didst make . . . Thou art in my heart. There is no other who knoweth thee except thy son Nefer-kheperu-Ra Ua-en-Ra. Thou hast made him wise to understand thy plans (and) thy power. The earth came into being by thy hand, even as thou hast created them (i.e., men). Thou risest, they live; thou settest, they die. As for thee, there is duration of life in thy members, life is in thee. (All) eyes (gaze upon) thy beauties until thou settest, (when) all labours are relinquished. Thou settest in the West, thou risest, making to flourish . . . for the King. Every man who (standeth on his) foot, since thou didst lay the foundation of the earth, thou hast raised up for thy son who came forth from thy body, the King of the South and the North, Living in Truth, Lord of Crowns, Aakhun-Aten, great in the duration of his life (and for) the Royal Wife, great of Majesty, Lady of the Two Lands, Nefer-neferu-Aten Nefertiti, living (and) young for ever and ever.

Translated by Sir E. Wallis Budge, in Tutankhamen, Amenism, Atenism, and Egyptian Monotheism. London, 1923, pp. 116-135.

LONGER HYMN

Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of the sky,

O living Aton, Beginning of life!

When thou risest in the Eastern horizon,

Thou fillest every land with thy beauty.

Thou art beautiful, great, glittering, high above every land,

Thy rays, they encompass the lands, even all that thou hast made.

Thou art Re, and thou carriest them all away captive;

Thou bindest them by thy love.

Though thou art far away, thy rays are upon earth;

Though thou art on high, thy footprints are the day.

When thou settest in the western horizon of the sky,

The earth is in darkness like the dead;

They sleep in their chambers,

Their heads are wrapped up,

Their nostrils are stopped,

And none seeth the other,

While all their things are stolen

Which are under their heads,

And they know it not.

Every lion cometh forth from his den,

All serpents, they sting.

Darkness . . .The world is in silence,

He that made them restest in his horizon.

Bright is the earth when thou risest in the horizon.

When thou shinest as Aton by day

Thou drivest away the darkness.

When thou sendest forth thy rays,

The Two Lands (Egypt) are in daily festivity,

Awake and standing upon their feet

When thou hast raised them up.

Their limbs bathed, they take their clothing,

Their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning.

(Then) in all the world they do their work.

All cattle rest upon their pasturage,

The trees and the plants flourish,

The birds flutter in their marshes,

Their wings uplifted in adoration to thee.

All the sheep dance upon their feet,

All winged things fly,

They live when thou hast shone upon them.

The barques sail up-stream and down-stream alike.

Every highway is open because thou dawnest.

The fish in the river leap up before thee.

Thy rays are in the midst of the great green sea.

Creator of the germ in woman,

Maker of seed in man,

Giving life to the son in the body of his mother,

Soothing him that he may not weep,

Nurse (even) in the womb,

Giver of breath to animate every one that he maketh!

When he cometh forth from the body . . . on the day of his birth,

Thou openest his mouth in speech,

Thou suppliest his necessities.

When the fledgling in the egg chirps in the shell,

Thou givest him breath therein to preserve him alive.

When thou hast brought him together

To (the point of) bursting it in the egg,

He cometh forth from the egg

To chirp with all his might.

He goeth about upon his two feet

When he hath come forth therefrom.

How manifold are thy works!

They are hidden from before (us),

O sole God, whose powers no other poessesseth.

Thou didst create the earth according to thy heart

While thou wast alone:

Men, all cattle large and small,

All that are upon the earth,

That go about upon their feet;

(All) that are on high,

That fly with their wings.

The foreign countries, Syria and Kush,

The land of Egypt;

Thou settest every man into his place,

Thou suppliest their necessities.

Every one has his possessions,

And his days are reckoned.

Their tongues are diverse in speech,

Their forms likewise and their skins are distinguished.

(For) thou makest different the strangers.

Thou makest the Nile in the Nether World,

Thou bringest it as thou desirest,

To preserve alive the people.

For thou hast made them for thyself,

The lord of every land, who risest for them,

Thou Sun of day, great in majesty.

All the distant countries,

Thou makest (also) their life,

Thou hast set a Nile in the sky;

When it falleth for them,

It maketh waves upon the mountains,

Like the great green sea,

Watering the fields in their towns.

How excellent are thy designs, O lord of eternity!

There is a Nile in the sky for the strangers

And for the cattle of every country that go upon their feet.

(But) the Nile, it cometh from the Nether World for Egypt.

Thy rays nourish every garden;

When thou risest they live,

They grow by thee.

Thou makest the seasons

In order to create all thy work:

Winter to bring them coolness,

And heat that they may taste thee.

Thou didst make the distant sky to rise therein,

In order to behold all that thou hast made,

Thou alone, shining in thy form as living Aton,

Dawning, glittering, going afar and returning.

Thou makest millions of forms

Through thyself alone;

Cities, towns, and tribes, highways and rivers.

All eyes see thee before them,

For thou art Aton of the day over the earth.

Thou art in my heart,

There is no other that knoweth thee

Save thy son Ikhnaton1.

Thou hast made him wise

In thy designs and in thy might.

The world is in thy hand,

Even as thou hast made them.

When thou hast risen they live,

When thou settest, they die;

For thou art length of life of thyself,

Men live through thee,

While (their) eyes are upon thy beauty

Until thou settest.

All labour is put away

When thou settest in the west.

Thou didst establish the world,

And raise them up for thy son,

Who came forth from thy limbs,

The King of Upper and Lower Egypt,

Living in Truth, Lord of the Two Lands,

Nefer-khepru-Re, Wan-Re (Ikhnaton),

Son of Re, living in Truth, lord of diadems,

Ikhnaton, whose life is long;

(And for) the chief royal wife, his beloved,

Mistress of the Two Lands, Nefer-nefru-Aton, Nofretete

Living and flourishing for ever and ever.

1 The King’s name is given different spellings by different Egyptologists. Sir Flinders Petrie writes it Akhenaten; Sir Wallis Budge, Aakhun-Aten; J. H. Breasted, Ikhnaton; and Arthur Weigall, Akhnaton. The Order Of The Aten Temple has adopted the universally accepted spelling of Akhenaten.

Translated by J. H. Breasted, in Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, Chicago, 1912, pp. 324-328.

Moses and Nefertiti - Film Production early 2006

2006-08-13T18:07:00.000-04:00

Courtesy of : Variety International Sunday, May 1, 2005

Nefertiti is about to be resurrected, writes Gamal Nkrumah, and together with the Egyptian Media Production City, producer John Heyman holds the key.

It all began with an indescribably beautiful woman falling for a chivalrous and powerfully-built beau. But everything went so horribly wrong so soon. She was to be betrothed to another — a poet, the proverbial philosopher-king. (He was unique among the Pharaohs of Egypt — the man credited with introducing the very notion of monotheism to the world. A pathetically forlorn figure, he set out to destroy all traces of the religion of his ancestors. He moved the country's capital, made his favourite queen his equal and systematically razed the temples of the fearful gods — to the consternation of the hitherto powerful priesthood).

An almost impossible task lay ahead for Nefertiti, for her dashing paramour was none other than the Pharaoh's own commander-in-chief. The king, not quite as physically appealing as the head of his army, may have had big ideas of his own. But, so much to Nefertiti's distaste, perhaps, he was not the least interested in military matters.

Many of the kings of the 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt were most remarkable, but Akhenaton was arguably the most remarkable of them all. Branded as the heretical king of antiquity, he was much maligned after his death. This is the tale that Ahmed Osman, the Egyptian-born London-based writer, spun. And a top Hollywood producer and owner of the worldwide distribution company — Black Rain, Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Star Treck (Paramount); Greystoke, The Legend of Tarzan (Warner); Home Alone, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Fox); The Trail of the Pink Panther (MGM); and The Odessa File (Columbia) — was ready to buy the idea.

Based on Osman's controversial best-seller Moses and Akhenaten, this is to be the latest of John Heyman's projects. The characters are time-tested stereotypes, hot box-office attractions, sexy, larger-than-life, with a fighting spirit and an intellect to match. And there is plenty of political intrigue and romantic escapades to spice up the plot. This new film promises to be a blockbuster of huge proportions.

It is also the movie that may finally put the Egyptian Media Production City (EMPC) on the map of international cinema production. Since its inauguration some 10 years ago, many have described the multi-million dollar project as a "white elephant" incapable of drawing international film production — such as the Moroccan's have — and remaining basically confined to limited budget local production.

While on holiday in Cyprus, Heyman decided to embark on a historical detour to Egypt to inspect the facilities at the EMPC, to discuss production options for the film, Nefertiti, and to enjoy. Nor was he disappointed with the EMPC's infrastructure and state-of-the-art facilities, after all.

"It's fun. It's big and it's a statement," Heyman told Al- Ahram Weekly. "It's a wonderful exercise in roots," he chuckled. With a lined brow, the septuagenarian looks more severe than avuncular. However, it is obvious that he has a genius for box-office hits. Nefertiti was firmly ensconced in popular mythology — not only in Egypt, but around the world. She is upheld as the most beautiful woman in history, and her glamorous depiction is bound to prove profitable.

As Heyman sits down and begins telling the story of Nefertiti, some of the old fire can be heard crackling again. All things considered, in fact, the viewer is compelled to ponder Nefertiti's relevance to contemporary questions. "This is a deep movie," Heyman noted. He had first read the script on a flight from London to New York, he recounts. No sooner did he land in JFK international airport, New York, than he phoned scriptwriter Michael Austin to tell him he was won over: "Nefertiti was no loser."

The secret of the contemporary world's fascination with Akhenaten was that he rejected virtually every ancient Egyptian tradition. He worshipped the god that had no image, that could not be depicted in stone. Aten, as Akhenaten called his god, was the creative force of the universe and as such was symbolised by the sun disc with rays radiating outward. Aten was not the sun, which was merely the symbol of divine energy, might and power.

Akhenaten had so angered the priesthood in Thebes, the traditional capital of ancient Egypt, that he had to relocate to his own capital. In the fourth year of his reign, Akhenaten gathered his courtiers and moved 370km north of Luxor, where he found the perfect piece of land; nobody claimed it, and the peasants who lived there owed allegiance to no particular god. The cliff-encircled plain was soon transformed into a most elegant city with sumptuous palaces, impressive temples and broad boulevards. And he called his new capital Akhetaten —The Horizon of Aten.

Akhenaten was christened Amenhotep, the Beloved of Amun, chief god of Thebes, when he ascended the Egyptian throne. He promptly proceeded to change his name to Akhenaten in the fourth year of his reign. And he had, if not a revulsion towards the pagan priesthood, then a fear of them and their devotion to their heathen religion. He was the first of the monotheists. For a subject to publicly admit his adherence to the old faith would have cast doubt on his allegiance to the Amarna monarch.

Akhenaten also discarded the rigid art forms of his forefathers. His artists experimented with romanticism and expressionism. The famous bust of Nefertiti and the funerary regalia of Tutankhamun are testament to the beauty of the art of the Amarna period. Akhenaten's artists were given free reign while he was in power. And he too recited poetry in honour of the new god. In exile, he composed the sad, sweet songs of home, perhaps forerunners of the Psalms.

The film is conceived of more as a guide to Nefertiti's inner life than as an exploration of a lost city. "People are fascinated by conflict. The script is focussed on conflict —a battle of wills, a conflict of interests and conflicts of the mind," Osman noted. In death Akhenaten has achieved what he failed to achieve in life. His reign was marked by intrigue and espionage, as the Amarna letters clearly indicate. But the reverie of high politics and diplomatic play was suffused with the melancholy of private grief and unrequited love. Austin, who collaborated with Osman to produce the script in an attempt to construct the characters in the spirit of their times, is eager to highlight the historical importance not only of the characters but the period.

"The spiritual and cultural roots of Western civilisation are found in Egypt. People in Egypt do not always understand why tourists visit the country, why they find it so fascinating," Osman points out. "It is because they are returning to their cultural and spiritual roots. Their visits are actually pilgrimages," he explains. "In Egypt we come to the roots of our common cultural heritage. Egypt brings us all together. Books," he added, "have a limited mass impact. Films are different. The appeal of film is on an entirely different scale."

Osman begins poring over a pile of computer printouts. After picking up a call on his mobile phone, he glances at his watch. "Akhenaten's trajectory demonstrates an unswerving determination to defend one's beliefs. Egypt was the original Holy Land," he stresses. "In the fourth century AD, Palestine was arbitrarily chosen as a new, make-believe Holy Land. It was a deliberate political shift."

And be that as it may, it was in Thebes that Horemheb's iron fist began to show, following Akhenaten's exile to the Sinai wilderness. Horemheb's velvet glove was all very well in itself, but the iron hand inside was considerably stronger and nastier than Nefertiti could imagine. He murdered Tutankhamun, her son, and the scales fell off her eyes: she now saw him the way he was — a ruthless and power-hungry despot.

The queen was caught up in political corruption of the highest order. Tutankhamun's death fuelled a residual anger that only revenge could appease. The film capitalises on this cycle of abuse and rage. But all's well that ends well. They planned to marry, but this treacherous murder cuts across any permanent liaison. She flees the Nile Valley and ends up in the desolate wastes of Sinai, where her husband went into hiding. And in the utter desolation of the desert, Akhenaten declares his unfettered love.

Before he surveyed the facilities at the EMPC, Heyman was concerned that Egypt might not have the necessary technical expertise to handle a film of such a scale. He also feared that red tape might ruin his venture. "I was terribly concerned. What the Americans have, nobody else has. They are the only people who can afford to make a movie of that scale and nature," he shrugged his shoulders and pulled a face. "They command 70 per cent of the box office throughout the world," he noted. "These days they don't shoot in studios except for TV. The old studios were cumbersome and the infrastructure huge and ungainly. But I was very impressed with the facilities at the Sixth of October City. We're in the business of illusion," he went on, "and the Media City won't let our imagination down. The mobility and convenience of its facilities are very seductive. It has something of the compact nature of old studios. I could even smell the atmosphere of the big screen."

"Akhenaten was wronged in ancient times," Osman, who is involved in the production as a historical advisor, explains. "His name was erased from king lists, his image and reputation tarnished. In modern times, too, he was accused of preposterous and unqualified outrages —heresy and homosexuality. He is sometimes depicted as a sun-worshipper and called the False Prophet of Egypt," he went on, adding that Austin is currently busy "sexing up" the script, and that he is working with him to ensure historical accuracy. "Hollywood often changes historical facts. Hollywood concentrates on action. Action is the selling point. We need a delicate balance of action, physical conflict, and intellectual or philosophical conflict. And we have a message: we all share a common cultural heritage, and the roots of our monotheistic faiths are to be found in Egypt, in Akhenaten's creed."

Others concur. "The film is played out against the backdrop of the so-called clash of civilisations," Nabil Osman, former State Information Service (SIS) chairman and currently the head of international relations at the EMPC told the Weekly. "The film proves that Western and Eastern cultures have the same roots. Akhenaten was the first man in recorded history to worship one god. He instituted a monotheistic doctrine as the state religion."

But this does not prevent the story from retaining all the attributes of a box-office hit: the private melancholy of a failed marriage, the romantic fetishisation of ruin and solitude, the melodrama of unrequited love, the pomp and ceremony of royalty, and the rage of revenge. It demonstrates the collective yearning for the divine and the bittersweet recognition of spiritual lack among the followers of all monotheistic religions —Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And the film's biggest star of all, Egypt, is as old as art itself.

EMPC has the most advanced digital film editing technologies in the Middle East, Osman goes on to say; its printing facilities are unparalleled throughout the region. The cameras, for example, are Arriflex 535 Bs, working at a three-shot speed. "Our outdoor shooting spaces are ideal for filming a movie like Nefertiti."

Indeed that part of Media City designated as the Pharaonic Area is perhaps the most beautiful. It covers some 165,000 sq m and is an exact replica of Tel Al-Amarna, the city built by Akhenaten as his new capital and destroyed after his death by the priests of the Amun Temple. It includes military barracks, an avenue of sphinxes and royal palaces.

"None of the Cleopatra movies were filmed in Egypt," Osman points out. "With Nefertiti, the producer was looking for authenticity, for historical accuracy. And the genuineness of the geographical settings was important.

The EMPC is especially designed to provide that much sought after authenticity." Osman stressed that the EMPC has an unmatched team of set decorators, set designers, painters and other craftsmen and technicians. He took Heyman to see the carpenters, painters and upholsters at work. "The EMPC even has its own power generators. And these pre-production facilities are the backbone of any film production. This visit by an internationally-acclaimed producer of the calibre of John Heyman is testament to the potential of the EMPC. This is a breakthrough. Up till now we've had no major international movie filmed in our studios. With Nefertiti we are finally and hopefully irrevocably breaking the barrier of fear that prevents people from working here."

"We have excellent dubbing and translating divisions. The EMPC has dubbed many Latin American productions before selling them to Arab, African and East Asian countries." In fact this lightening-speed tour of Media City was something of an eye-opener for Heyman. "The Media City is a free trade zone," Osman noted. "My main goal is that world cinema returns to Egypt. We want the standards set by Omar Sharif," he noted, recounting that Heyman met Egyptian actors like Hani Salama, Mona Zaki, Dalia El-Beheiri and Khaled El-Nabawi: "He met them because he wants Egyptian actors to play dynamic supporting roles in the movie." The lead roles in Nefertiti are reserved for Hollywood stars, yet, the careers of individual Egyptian actors notwithstanding, "this remains the greatest publicity exercise for Egypt."

Akhenaten Film Overview

2006-08-13T12:40:00.000-04:00

Renowned British producer John Heyman's next movie epic, about the love affair between pharaonic Queen Nefertiti and the Biblical Prophet Moses is based on Ahmed's 1990 book "Moses and Akhenaten:The Secret History of Egypt at the Time of the Exodus." Production crews will soon to begin shooting in Egypt. Heyman is no stranger to religious-themed films, having produced the 1979 motion picture "Jesus," filmed on location in biblical settings in Israel.

"Egypt's history is greatly ignored by the film industry besides 'Cleopatra' and 'The Ten Commandments' and that's it," said Heyman, referring to the two epic Hollywood blockbusters released more than 40 years ago.

British director Hugh Hudson, the acclaimed director of "Chariots of Fire", will direct the movie.

The shoot will begin in early 2006 and locations will be in studios and along the Nile in Upper Egypt.

Child Of The Living Aten

2006-08-13T01:50:00.000-04:00

Akhenaten was born in Thebes, in about 1395 B.C. in a world already as old, as civilised and as sophisticated as our own. And Akhenaten was the son of the greatest monarch of that world, Amenhotep the Third; the last offspring, in direct descent, of a long and glorious line of warriors over-loaded with the spoils of conquest; the heir of an empire that stretched, in modern words, from the Sudan to the borders of Armenia, and of a culture more than four thousand years old.

When Akhenaten was a child, the famous Pyramids of Gizeh were nearly as ancient as the Roman remains in England are today, and the first empire-builder of whom we know something definite--Sargon of Agade--was already as remote in time as Nebuchadnezzar is now. And beyond the glories of which the oldest monuments bore witness, and beyond the mighty shadows of half-forgotten heroes and king-gods lost in the midst of legend, a still remoter antiquity, with its immemorial art and wisdom, extended over centuries, down to the dim beginnings of the Neolithic Age, and further still. Crete and the Ægean Isles had flourished for over two thousand years, and Babylonia and Elam for several millenniums more, while, unaware of each other and of the rest of mankind, distant India and China counted long centuries of polished life.

If, indeed, instead of letting ourselves be over-impressed by the few hundreds of years that separate us from Akhenaten, we stop to consider the endless length of time that separates both Akhenaten and ourselves from the mysterious origins of civilisation, we might well look upon Akhenaten as a man of yesterday, almost as one of our contemporaries.

Akhenaten was the tenth Pharaoh of that glorious Eighteenth Dynasty which opens the period known in history as the "New Kingdom."

Akhenaten's ancestors, the kings of Thebes, had freed Egypt from foreign domination; his great-great-grandfather had made her the head of an empire; his father had made her the abode of unprecedented splendour.

Sporadic revolts in Nubia and in Syria had been utterly crushed, and peace had at last succeeded the unceasing struggles of the former reigns. From all parts of the immense empire, tribute in gold and silver, in ivory and slaves and cedar wood, poured in regularly. King Amenhotep the Third, whom some modern writers have rightly called Amenhotep the Magnificent, lived a life of pleasure in the midst of every kind of luxury, with a number of beautiful wives and concubines collected from every country of the known world.

The granaries were full and the people content. Thousands of foreign slaves--the prize of war--were toiling for the welfare of Egypt: tilling the fields, digging or repairing canals, extracting gold from the Nubian mines, dragging down the Nile huge barges loaded with granite, building temples and palaces and keeping the highways in good condition. And the faraway kings of Babylon and of Mitanni--the Pharaoh’s brothers-in-law--and the king of the Hittites and the king of barbaric Assyria wrote with equal greedy envy, in their despatches to Amenhotep the Third: "Verily, in thy land, gold is as common as dust."

Every refinement in pleasure, every treasure of art, every subtlety of thought, every comfort, every delicacy, every brilliancy was to be found in Thebes. Nothing equalled the beauty of its monuments, the pomp of its festivities, the wealth of its priests who enjoyed throughout the world a reputation of mysterious powers and of hidden wisdom. Its temples, of which the gigantic ruins still stir the admiration of travellers, stood then in all their glory. Their half-dark halls inspired something of that sacred awe that one feels in the cave-temples of medieval India; and their rows of mighty pillars with lotus-shaped capitals displayed already that harmony of proportions, that grace blended with majesty, that perfect elegance that was one day to distinguish the art of Periclean Greece.

Thebes was not merely the metropolis of the greatest empire then existing, not merely one of the largest and most sumptuous cities that the world had ever seen; it was the masterpiece in which the genius of the Near and Middle East had finally expressed itself, after having groped for centuries in quest of perfection. It seemed as though nothing could be added to its beauty.

It seemed, also, as though nothing could be added to its glory.

Along with the words of praise to all the gods, that covered the walls and columns, the crowds of worshippers that thronged the halls of the temple of Karnak could read in golden hieroglyphics, on a slab of black granite, the song of war and triumph of King Thutmosis the Third, the words of the Theban god to the maker of Egypt’s greatness:

"I have come; I have granted thee to trample over the great ones of Syria; I have hurled them beneath thy sandals in their lands . . ."

It is one of the most beautiful hymns of victory of all times. Its echo had run through the world from the Nile Valley to the Black Sea and to the Persian Gulf, from the Libyan Desert to the boundaries of India. And as he beheld the solemn words, the Egyptian pilgrim was filled with national pride. What song would ever efface the glory of that one?

Thus, in wealth, in splendour and in warrior-like fame stood Thebes, the capital of the first nation of the earth, the seat of divine royalty, the proud City of Amun, the mighty god. Millenniums of culture had created it; the skill of all known lands had adorned it. And the sword of its kings had spread far and wide the glory of its name and the terror of its local deity whom the priests had boldly identified with Re, the immemorial Sun-god of the Egyptians.

It is then that Akhenaten came.

On the western bank of the Nile, upon a site which to this day retains its loveliness, was built the Charuk palace, the residence of the Pharaoh Amenhotep the Third.

It was a light but beautiful structure of brick and precious wood, decorated with exquisite paintings and surrounded by immense gardens full of shade and full of peace.

From the terraces of the palace one beheld to the east, beyond the Nile and its palm-groves, white walls contrasted with dark shadows, flat roofs of different levels, flights of steps, broad avenues and gardens and monumental gates: all that glory that was Thebes. In the foreground, the towering pylons of the great temple of Amun emerged above the outer walls of the sacred enclosure that stretched over miles. And the gilded tops of innumerable obelisks glittered in the dazzling light or glowed like red-hot embers in the purple of sunset. One could distinguish many other temples dedicated to all the gods of Upper and Lower Egypt, temples with doors of bronze and gates of granite, of which the humblest would have been the pride of any other city.

To the west, the eye wandered over the vastness of the desert.

It is in that palace that Akhenaten was born.

His mother, Queen Tiye, was the chief wife of Amenhotep the Third, and one of the ablest women of all times. While her weary lord, after experiencing in his long life of pleasure the vanity of all pursuits, had gradually brushed aside the tiresome duties of kingship, it was she who received the foreign ambassadors, gave orders to provincial governors and drafted the despatches that messengers were to carry to Babylon or to the faraway capital of the Hittites. It was she who, through a well-organised network of informers, kept an eye on the restless vassal princelings of Syria as well as on the movements of the unconquered tribes below the Fourth Cataract of the Nile; she who saw to it that the public officers did their work well, and that the taxes came in without delay.

Consort of the mightiest monarch, and the virtual ruler of his empire no less than the head of his "house of women," she had enjoyed all through her twenty-six years of married life every pleasure, every luxury and every glory that a woman can imagine in her wildest dreams. For her the gardens around the Charuk palace had been extended and adorned at great cost with an artificial lake. For her the priests of the oldest Sun-god, Re--which they also called Aten, the Disk, in the sacred city of On, his abode--enjoyed favour at court in spite of the secret jealousy of the powerful priests of Amun, for the god of On was Tiye’s favourite god. In pomp and power the queen’s years had drifted away. She was fairly past thirty-five, and perhaps not far from forty, when at last she bore the little prince, Akhenaten, her only son.

The babe’s coming into the world was greeted by the joy of a whole nation. Sacrifices of thanksgiving were offered to the gods of Egypt; distant vassals from North and South welcomed through their messengers the child, Akhenaten, who was one day to be their lord, and allied monarchs congratulated the king, his father, in friendly despatches.

But the birth of Akhenaten was a greater event than anyone in his days could realise. The world was already old, as we have said--as old as it is now. Men had already invented many arts and many gods, and built up many kingdoms. The infant, Akhenaten, who, in the Charuk palace, now smiled for the first time to the Sun, was, in a few years, to transcend the very idea of nation, to preach the oneness and universality of the Principle of all existence, and to show men the way of life in truth, which is also life in beauty--life divine upon earth. That Akhenaten was to proclaim--less by his words than by his deeds, less by his deeds than by his attitude towards things--which the weary world had dimly sought, age after age; which those who know not Akhenaten are still seeking: the synthesis of total knowledge and perfect love.

Akhenaten's life, which had just begun, was to last very little indeed: less than three decades. Yet, in that short span of time, Akhenaten was to be what neither the victories of his fathers, nor the wealth and wisdom of his country, nor the arts and glories of all the ancient kingdoms had succeeded in producing: a perfect Individual of equal genius and sanctity--a divine Man.

Akhenaten's mother, Queen Tiye, who had grown-up daughters but no male child, may well have looked upon Akhenaten's birth as the fulfilment of her long, active and sumptuous life. It was, in no less manner, the culmination of a long evolution towards the rational and the beautiful, the ultimate achievement of the oldest cultures of the world, already so fruitful in outstanding creations. Like unto the cactus-tree which, so they say, blooms after a hundred years into one resplendent flower that lasts less than a day, Egypt had lived and dreamt and toiled four thousand years--and mankind perhaps fifty times longer--in order to produce Akhenaten whose life was to remain in history only a flash--but a flash of unsurpassed beauty.

Atenist Revolution

2006-08-13T01:46:00.000-04:00

The Aten, the god of Atenism, first appears in texts dating to the 12th dynasty, in The Story of Sinuhe. However, he was considered a relatively obscure sun god and without the Atenist period would barely figure in Egyptian history. Although there are indications that the Aten was becoming more important in the eighteenth dynasty period - notably Amenhotep III's naming of his royal barge as Spirit of the Aten - it was Amenhotep IV who introduced the Atenist revolution, in a series of steps culminating in the official instalment of the Aten as the sole god.

Amenhotep IV initially introduced Atenism in Year 4 of his reign, raising the Aten to the status of supreme god, but permitting the continued worship of the traditional gods. To emphasise the change, Aten's name was written in the cartouche form normally reserved for Pharaohs, an innovation of Atenism. This religious reformation appears to coincide with the proclamation of a Sed-festival, a sort of royal jubilee intended to reinforce the Pharaoh's divine powers of kingship. Traditionally held in the thirtieth year of the Pharaoh's reign, this is likely to have been a festival in honour of Amenhotep III, who many Egyptologists think had a co-regency with his son Amenhotep IV of two to twelve years.

Year 4 is also believed to mark the beginning of Amenhotep IV's construction of a new capital, Akhetaten (Horizon of the Aten), at the site known today as Amarna. In Year 5 of his reign Amenhotep IV officially changed his name to Akhenaten (Glorious Spirit of the Aten) as evidence of his new worship. The date given for the event has been estimated to fall around January 2 of that year. In Year 7 of his reign the capital was moved from Thebes to Akhetaten (near modern Amarna) in the western desert, though construction of the city seems to have continued for two more years. In shifting his court from the traditional ceremonial centres on the east bank of the Nile, Akhenaten was signalling a dramatic transformation in the locus of religious and political power. It separated the Pharaoh and his court from the influence of the priesthood and from the traditional centres of worship, but his decree had deeper religious significance too -- the western shore of the Nile was the resting place of the Pharaohs, traditionally associated with death and the afterlife, so this was undoubtedly a powerfully symbolic act. Taken in conjunction with his name change, it is possible that the move to Amarna was also meant as a signal of Akhenaten's symbolic death and rebirth. It may also have coincided with the death of his co-regent and father, Amenhotep III. In addition to constructing a new capital in honor of Aten, Akhenaten also oversaw the construction of some of the most massive temple complexes in ancient Egypt, including one at Karnak and one at Thebes, close to the old temple of Amun.

In Year 9 Akhenaten strengthened the Atenist regime, declaring the Aten not merely the supreme god but actually the only god, a universal deity, and forbidding worship of all others, including the veneration of idols, even privately in people's homes - an arena the Egyptian state had previously not touched in religious terms. Akhenaten even staged the ritual regicide of the old supreme god Amun, and ordered the defacing of Amun's temples throughout Egypt, and of all the old gods. The word for `gods' (plural) was proscribed, and inscriptions have been found in which even the hieroglyph of the word for "mother" has been excised and re-written in alphabetic signs, because it had the same sound in ancient Egyptian as the sound of name of the Theban goddess Mut. Aten's name is also written differently after Year 9, to emphasise the radicalism of the new regime. No longer is the Aten written using the symbol of a rayed solar disc, but instead it is spelt phonetically.

ORDER OF THE ATEN TEMPLE @ WWW.ATENISM.ORG

2006-08-13T01:40:00.000-04:00

http://www.atenism.org/

MOSES AND AKHENATEN

2006-08-12T14:47:00.000-04:00

One And The Same Person

First Monotheist

Akhenaten is the most mysterious and interesting of all the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. He created a revolution in religion, philosophy, and art that resulted in the introduction of the first monotheistic form of worship known in history. Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, was the first to suggest a connection between Moses and Akhenaten. In his last book, Moses and Monotheism, published in 1939, Freud argued that the biblical Moses was an official in the court of Akhenaten, and an adherent of the Aten religion. After the death of Akhenaten, Freud's theory goes, Moses selected the Israelite tribe living east of the Nile Delta to be his chosen people, took them out of Egypt at the time of the Exodus, and passed on to them the tenets of Akhenaten's religion. When modern archaeologists came across the strangely-drawn figure of Akhenaten in the ruins of Tell el-Amarna in the middle of the 19th century, they were not sure what to make of him. Some thought he was a woman disguised as a king. By the early years of the 20th century when the city of Amarna had been excavated and more became known about him and his family, Akhenaten became a focus of interest for Egyptologists, who saw him as a visionary humanitarian as well as the first monotheist.

In my attempt to pursue Freud's theory through the examination of recent archaeological findings, I came to the conclusion that Moses was Akhenaten himself. The son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye (daughter of Yuya, whom I have identified as Joseph the patriarch), Akhenaten had an Egyptian father and an Israelite mother. Yuya had been appointed by Tuthmosis IV to be the Master of the King's Horses and Deputy of the Royal Chariotry. On coming to the throne, and according to Egyptian customs, Amenhotep III married his sister Sitamun, who was just a child of three years at the time. However, in his Year 2, Amenhotep decided to also marry Yuya's daughter Tiye, the girl whom he loved, and made her, rather than Sitamun, his Great Royal Wife, his queen. (According to Egyptian customs the king could marry as many women as he desired, however the queen, whose children would follow him on the throne, had to be his sister, the heiress.) As a wedding present, Amenhotep presented Tiye with the frontier fortress of Zarw, in the area of modern Kantara in north Sinai, the capital of the Land of Goshen, mentioned by the Bible as the area where the Israelites dwelled in Egypt. Here he built a summer palace for her. To commemorate his marriage with Tiye, the king issued a large scarab and sent copies of it to foreign kings and princes.

The Birth of Moses

Amenhotep, who was later known as Akhenaten and Moses, was born in Year 12 of his father Amenhotep III, 1394 BC, in the summer royal palace in the border city of Zarw in northern Sinai. Zarw, modern Kantara East, was the center of the land of Goshen where the Israelites dwelt, and in the same location where the biblical Moses was born. But contrary to the biblical account, Moses was born inside the royal palace. His mother Queen Tiye had an elder son, Tuthmosis, who died a short time before Amenhotep's birth. Tuthmosis had been educated and trained at the royal residence in Memphis before he mysteriously disappeared—believed to have been kidnapped and assassinated by the Amun priests. Fearing for his safety, Tiye sent her son, the infant Amenhotep, by water to the safekeeping of her father's Israelite family outside the walls of Zarw. (Which was the origin of the biblical baby-in-the-bulrushes story.)

The reason for the priests' hostility to the young prince was the fact that Tiye, his mother, an Israelite, was not the legitimate heiress to the throne. She couldn't therefore be accepted as a consort for the state god Amun. If Tiye's son acceded to the throne, this would be regarded as forming a new dynasty of non-Amunite kings over Egypt. During his early years, his mother kept Amenhotep away from both the royal residences at Memphis and Thebes. He spent his childhood at the border city of Zarw, nursed by the wife of the queen's younger brother, General Aye. Later, Amenhotep was moved to Heliopolis, north of Cairo, to receive his education under the supervision of Anen, the priest of Ra, who was the elder brother of Queen Tiye.

Young Amenhotep first appeared at the capital city of Thebes when he reached the age of sixteen. There he met Nefertiti, his half-sister, daughter of Sitamun, and fell in love with her. Tiye, his mother, encouraged this relationship, realizing that his marriage to Nefertiti, the heiress, was the only way he could gain the right to follow his father on the throne.

Akhenaten Co-Regent

Following his marriage to Nefertiti, Amenhotep III decided to make Amenhotep his co-regent which upset the priests of Amun. The conflict between Amenhotep III and the priests had started sixteen years earlier as a result of his marriage to Tiye, an Israelite, daughter of Yuya and Tuya. During his reign, Nefertiti was active in supporting her husband, Amenhotep, and was more prominently seen at official occasions as well as on all monuments. However, the climate of hostility that surrounded Amenhotep at the time of his birth surfaced again after his appointment as co-regent. On joining his father on the throne Amenhotep became Amenhotep IV. The Amun priesthood opposed this appointment, and openly challenged Amenhotep III's decision.

When the priests of Amun objected to his appointment, the young co-regent responded by building temples to his new God, Aten. He built three temples for Aten: one at the back end of the Karnak complex, another at Luxor near the Nile bank, and the third at Memphis. Amenhotep lV snubbed the Amun priests by not inviting them to any of the festivities in the early part of his co-regency and, in his fourth year, when he celebrated his sed festival jubilee, he banned all deities but his own God from the occasion. Twelve months later he made a further break with tradition by changing his name to Akhenaten in honor of his new deity. To the resentful Egyptian establishment, Aten was seen as a challenger who would replace the powerful State god, Amun, not falling under his domination. In the tense climate that prevailed, Tiye arranged a compromise by persuading her son to leave Thebes and establish a new capital at Amarna in Middle Egypt, on the east bank of the Nile.

A New City for Aten

The situation calmed down following Akhenaten's departure, while Amenhotep III ruled alone in Thebes. For the site of his new city at Amarna, Akhenaten chose a land that belonged to no god or goddess. The building started in his Year 4 and ended in Year 8; however he and his family moved from Thebes to Amarna in Year 6. At that point of land, the cliffs of the high desert receded from the river, leaving a great semi-circle about eight miles long and three miles broad. Here Akhenaten built his new capital, Akhetaten, the Horizon of Aten, where he and his followers would be free to worship their God. Huge boundary stelae, marking the limits of the city and recording the story of its foundation, were carved in the surrounding cliffs. Akhetaten was a capital city possessed of both dignity and architectural harmony. Its main streets ran parallel to the Nile with the most important of them, the King's Way, connecting the city's most prominent buildings, including the King's House, where Akhenaten and his family had their private residence. To the south of the house was the king's private temple to Aten.

Military Coup

Following the death of his father, Amenhotep III, in Akhenaten's Year 12, he organized a great celebration at Amarna for foreign princes bearing tribute because of his assumption to sole rule. Akhenaten and Nefertiti appeared to receive the tribute of foreign missions coming from Syria, Palestine, Nubia, and the Mediterranean islands, who offered them their gifts. It was at that time the king decided to abolish the worship of all gods in Egypt—except Aten.
Akhenaten gave orders to his troops, instructing them to close all the temples, confiscate their estates, and sack the priests, leaving only Aten's temples throughout the country. Units were dispatched to excise the names of the ancient gods wherever they were found written or engraved, a course that can only have created mounting new opposition to his already rejected authority. This persecution, which entailed the closing of the temples, the confiscation of property, the dispatch of artisans who hacked out the names of the deities from inscriptions, the banishment of the clergy, and the excommunication of Amun's name, was supervised by the army. Each time a squad of workmen entered a temple or tomb to destroy the name of Amun, it was supported by a squad of soldiers who came to see that the royal decree was carried out without opposition.

The persecution of the old gods, however, proved to be hateful to the majority of Egyptians, including the members of the army. Ultimately, the harshness of the persecution had a certain reaction upon the soldiers who, themselves, had been raised in the old beliefs. After all, the officers and soldiers themselves believed in the same gods whose images the king ordered them to destroy; they worshipped in the very temples that they were ordered to close. A conflict arose between the king and his army. Horemheb, Pa-Ramses, and Seti planned a military coup against the king, and ordered their troops from the north and south to move toward Amarna. When the army and chariots came face to face at Amarna's borders, Aye advised the king to abdicate the throne to his son, Tutankhaten, in order to save the dynasty and avoid a wholesale defection and perhaps even a civil war. Akhenaten agreed to abdicate and left Amarna with Pa-Nehesy, the high priest of Aten, and a few of his followers, to live in exile in the area of Sarabit El-Khadem in southern Sinai. When Tutankhaten took the throne, he changed his name to Tutankhamun to appease the priesthood of the powerful State god Amun. He did not, however, renounce the Atenist religion of his father.

Back From Exile

The root of the name Moses is in the Egyptian word Mos which means "child." But this word also had a wider legal meaning—"the rightful son and heir." As it was punishable by death to mention Akhenaten's name after his banishment, a code name was established through which his followers could refer to him. Therefore they called him Mos, the son, to indicate that he was the legitimate son of Amenhotep III and the rightful heir to his father's throne. The ancient Egyptian language had no written vowels, although the vowels were pronounced. The written word meaning a child or son consisted of two consonants, m and s, It is therefore easy to see that the Hebrew word, Moses, was derived from the Egyptian, Mos. The final 's' of Moses derives from the Greek translation of the biblical name.

Following his abdication, Akhenaten/Moses lived with his followers in exile in southern Sinai for about twenty-five years, during the reigns of Tutankhamun, Aye, and Horemheb. Here, Akhenaten/Moses lived among the Shasu (Midianites) Bedouins with whom he formed an alliance. On hearing of Horemheb's death, Akhenaten/Moses decided to leave his exile in Sinai and come back to Egypt, in order to reclaim his throne.

In his rough Bedouin clothes, Akhenaten/Moses arrived with his allies at General Pa-Ramses' residence in the border city of Zarw, his birthplace, which had now been turned into a prison for his followers. Pa-Ramses, by now an old man, was making arrangements for his coronation and getting ready to become the first ruler of a new 19th Ramesside dynasty when he was informed of Akhenaten/Moses arrival.

Akhenaten/Moses challenged Pa-Ramses' right to the throne. The general, taken by surprise, decided to call a meeting of the wise men of Egypt to decide between them. At the gathering, Akhenaten/Moses produced his scepter of royal power, which he had taken with him to exile, and performed secret rituals that only the king could have had knowledge of. Once they saw the scepter of royal authority and Akhenaten/Moses' performance of the rituals, the wise men fell down in adoration in front of him and declared him to be the legitimate king of Egypt. Pa-Ramses, however, who was in control of the army, used his power to frustrate the verdict of the priests and elders and retained the right to rule by force—a coup d'etat.
General Pa-Ramses ascended to the Egyptain throne as Ramses I, the first Pharoah of the 19th dynasty. Left with no choice but to flee from Egypt with his followers—the Israelites and Egyptians who embraced the Atenist faith—Akhenaten/Moses began the Exodus toward the Sinai via the marshy area to the south of Zarw and north of Lake Temsah, as this watery route would hinder the pursuit of Egyptian chariots. After a time Akhenaten/Moses then marched north toward Gaza and attempted to storm the city with his Shasu allies. Seti I, son of Ramses, led an army against Akhenaten/Moses, the Israelites, and the Shasu, and defeated them, with great slaughter, at many locations on the Horus Road as well as central Sinai.

It is likely that Akhenaten/Moses was killed by Seti I himself in the course of these military operations.

What Is Atenism?

2006-08-12T13:51:00.000-04:00

Atenism is the monotheistic religion associated above all with the eighteenth dynasty Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, better known under the name he later adopted, Akhenaten. In the 14th century BC it was Egypt's state religion for around 20 years, before a return to the traditional gods so comprehensive that the heretic Pharaohs associated with Atenism were erased from Egyptian records.