There can be little doubt that Amenhotep IV was officially crowned by Amun of Thebes, for he is described as ‘the one whom Amun has chosen (to appear in glory for millions of years)’ on some scarabs from the beginning of his reign, but this token reference to Amun cannot conceal the fact that the new king was clearly determined right from his accession to go his own way. When exactly this accession took place is still the subject of controversy; clearly Amenhotep was not originally meant to succeed his father, for a crown prince Thutmose is known from earlier in Amenhotep Ill’s reign. Amenhotep IV is mentioned as ‘real king’s son’ on one of the many mud jar sealings found in his father’s palace at Malkata, most of which are associated with the three sed-festivals (jubilees) celebrated by Amenhotep III during the last seven years of his reign. Opinions are divided over the issue of a possible co-regency between Amenhotep III and IV; some scholars have opted for such a period of joint rule lasting for some twelve years, others have at best admitted the possibility of a short overlap of one or two years, whereas the majority of scholars reject it entirely.
Amenhotep IV began his reign with a major building programme at Karnak, the very centre of the cult of Amun. The exact location of these temples is unknown, but some, perhaps all of them, were situated to the east of the Amun precinct and orientated towards the east—that is, to the place of sunrise. The temples that he started to build here and elsewhere were dedicated not to Amun, however, but to a new form of the sun-god whose official name was ‘The living one, Ra-Horus of the horizon who rejoices in the horizon in his identity of light which is in the sun-disc’, a long formula that was soon enclosed in two cartouches just like the names of a king, and that was often preceded in royal inscriptions by the words ‘my father lives’. The name of the god could be shortened to ‘the living sun-disc’ or simply ‘the sun-disc’ (or, to use the Egyptian word, the Aten). The word itself was not new; it had previously been used to refer to the visible celestial body of the sun. During the reign of Amenhotep III this aspect of the sun-god had become increasingly important, especially in the later years of his reign. During the king’s sed-festivals, his deified self had been identified with the sun-disc and in several inscriptions, most clearly in one on the back pillar of a recently discovered statue, the king calls himself ‘the dazzling Aten’. Originally this ‘new’ form of the sun-god was depicted in the traditional manner, as a man with a falcon’s head surmounted by a sun-disc, but early in the reign of Amenhotep IV this iconography was abandoned in favour of a radically new way of depicting a god—as a disc with rays ending in hands that touch the king and his family, extending symbols of life and power towards them and receiving their offerings. Although the Aten clearly takes precedence over the other gods, he does not yet replace them entirely.
One of the Karnak temples is devoted to a sed-festival, a remarkable fact because kings did not normally celebrate their first jubilee until their thirtieth regnal year. Unfortunately there is no indication of the exact date of this festival of Amenhotep IV, but it must have taken place within the first five years of the reign, possibly around years 2 or 3; if so, it might well have come at the regular interval of three years after the last sed-festival of Amenhotep III, which had been celebrated not long before the latter’s death. This would provide an additional argument against the assumption of a co-regency between Amenhotep III and IV. The Aten, who is present in every single episode of the jubilee rituals depicted on the walls of the new temple, is now evidently identical with the deceased solarized Amenhotep III, and the sed-festival celebrated by his son is as much a festival for the Aten as for the new king, even though the latter is of necessity the chief actor in the rituals. The Aten is the ‘divine father’ who rules Egypt as the celestial co-regent of his earthly incarnation, his son. That the Karnak jubilee was not considered to be Amenhotep IV’s own official first sed-festival is proved by a later inscription in which a courtier at Amarna includes a wish to see the king ‘in his first jubilee’ in his funerary prayers, clearly indicating that such a festival had not yet taken place.
Another extraordinary feature of the Karnak buildings of Amenhotep IV is the unprecedented prominence of the king’s wife, Nefertiti, in their decoration, and hence in the rituals that took place in them. One
Structure is devoted entirely to her alone, her royal husband being absent from the reliefs. Nefertiti is given a new name, Neferneferua-ten, and she, often accompanied by her eldest daughter, Meritaten, performs many rituals that had until then been reserved for the king, including those of ‘presenting Maat’ (maintaining the order of the universe) and ‘smiting the enemy’ (subduing the powers of chaos). At this early stage of the reign it is not so much that she is acting as an official co-regent of her husband, but rather that the royal couple together now represent the mythical twins that in the traditional religion were called Shu and Tefnut, the first pair of divinities to issue from the androgynous creator-god Atum. The original triad consisting of Atum, the primeval father, his son Shu and his daughter Tefnut is now replaced by a triad consisting of the Aten as the father and the living king and queen as his children. The unique iconography of both royals as displayed in statuary and reliefs reflects this new interpretation of their divine status.
World History
