Recent discussions of the reign of Amenhotep III have suggested that he was deified during his lifetime, not only in Nubia, where he built a cult temple for himself, but also in Egypt proper. Raymond Johnson has argued that Amenhotep Ill’s insistent identification with the sun-god in his monumental iconography and inscriptions should be understood as his deification, and he further contends that Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten (1352-1336 bc) transformed his deified father into the disembodied solar disc Aten, thereby worshipping the living Amenhotep 111 as the sole god of the world. The view that Amenhotep IV worshipped his father as the Aten (albeit after his death) was earlier espoused by Donald Redford. It must be observed that, at the same time, such a transmogrification would have deprived the father of both his physical existence and his name, and it would also have forced Amenhotep III to participate in the ruination of the god celebrated in his own name, Amun. Although the interpretation of Amenhotep III as his son’s god carries within it the unmistakable influence of modem Freudian psychology, Egyptian notions of the king’s relationship to the gods might support the basis of this idea.
While there is at present no text or iconography within Egypt proper that identifies Amenhotep III as a cult deity during his lifetime, all kings (whom Jaromir Malek describes in Chapter 5 as netjeru neferu, ‘junior gods’) were considered to be major gods at their decease and were frequently invoked as intercessors by their successors and by private persons as well. Moreover, it is arguable that Amenhotep III intended to be identified with the sun-god from the time of his first jubilee in years 30-31, since scenes representing that festival show him taking the specific role of Ra riding in his solar boat. The degree to which Amenhotep III was associat< d with the sun-god on monuments might well have encouraged the view that, having merged with the sun, as the king was expected to do after death, he was present in Akhenaten’s deity, the solar disc Aten. To claim that this was Akhenaten’s intention remains a psychologically informed speculation.
It is also noteworthy that Amenhotep III named his own palace complex ‘the gleaming Aten’ and used stamp seals for commodities that may be read ‘Nebmaatra [his prenomen] is the gleaming Aten’. Of course, sealings are economic documents and could as such refer to the palace complex itself; they might, therefore, have been intended to be read as ‘the gleaming Aten of Nebmaatra’. What is certain is that the association of the Aten with Amenhotep III was well established in his own documentation prior to the reign of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten.
It is impossible at this point to prove or disprove Johnson’s argument. There are no stelae or statues that were, with certainty, dedicated to Amenhotep III as a major deity within Egypt in his lifetime—much less as the Aten. The deification of Rameses II, some loo years later, was accompanied by significant numbers of monuments, both royal and private, that identified the god Rameses in a number of cult locations within Egypt proper. These monuments date from the reign of Rameses himself and do not refer to the king as ‘beloved of X-deity’ (as the numerous monuments of Amenhotep III do). They name Rameses himself as the god and show him being offered to, usually as a statue. Nothing of this type exists for Amenhotep III in Egypt, and the examples that most closely parallel monuments offered to gods cannot be safely assigned to the king’s lifetime. One stele from Amarna shows Amenhotep and Tiye receiving food offerings under the bathing rays of the Aten. While this might be seen to contradict Johnson’s thesis that Amenhotep III was the Aten, it is perhaps significant that it derives from the late years of Akhenaten’s reign. It therefore raises the question as to whether the king and queen were still alive, or whether the stele, from a private house owner’s shrine, venerated the deceased royal couple to invite their intercession. Such votive stelae offered to deceased kings were common in houses at Deir el-Medina both earlier and later than the Amarna Period.
A major obstacle is our inability to ascertain whether Amenhotep III and his son Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten ruled as co-regents for an appreciable length of time. Were this proposition (supported by Johnson’s thesis) to be demonstrated, then objects venerating Amenhotep III and made in Akhenaten’s reign coidd be seen as worship of him as a living deity, but not necessarily as the Aten. Co-regency was rare enough in ancient Egypt that scholars remain uncertain as to whether it had consistent hallmarks (see Chapters i, 7, and 10). After years of debate, we are no closer to a resolution of the debate about co-regency or about the deification of Amenhotep III as the Aten. It might not be unfair to suggest, however, that Amenhotep III would have been pleased that, 3,350 years after his death, it is difficult to ascertain whether he ruled as a living god or merely strived to give that impression.
World History
