What has been suggested here and in previous chapters is that Akhenaten’s religion went through several stages of development. It began with some sort of theophany (very early in the king’s reign, or even possibly while still a young prince) and the development of the first didactic name. The royal announcement from the ioth Pylon blocks seem to advance the idea that something had gone wrong with the current religious order and the gods themselves (see Chapter 5, section “The Death of the Gods”). The Sed-festival of Amenhotep IV and Aten resulted in the establishment of Aten as king (his names appear in cartouches) and the change of his name (perhaps at the same time or shortly thereafter), in which “Amun” was dropped from his name. The search for and discovery of the new holy city for Aten, Akhet-Aten, marked the abandonment of Amun’s realm, which seems to closely coincide with the iconoclasm against Amun, other deities and the “gods” (see Chapter 6). When these factors are tallied and we consider the fact that Akhenaten and the royal family are only ever shown adoring and making offerings to Aten, this certainly looks like monotheism. There is yet another corpus of material to consider that permits one to plumb the depths of Atenism, and that is the Aten Hymns from the tombs of Akhenaten’s officials at Amarna. These might be considered a monotheistic manifesto, the subject of the next chapter.
The Great Hymn to the Aten is an eloquent and beautiful statement of the doctrine of the one god.
MIRIAM LIcHTHEIM992
World History
