Why is egyptian pharaoh akhenaten significant

Amarna period, c BCE. Courtesy the Neues Museum, Berlin. Out of the many gods of ancient Egypt an inspired Pharaoh created a monotheistic faith.

What was Atenism and why did it fail? More than 3, years ago, ancient Egypt, with its myriad gods and goddesses, saw the founding of two monotheistic religions within a century of each other. The other burst on to the scene around BCE, flourished for a moment, and was then eclipsed when its founder died in BCE. We call the religion Atenism. Where did it come from? In the 4th millennium BCE, there were two distinct cultures in Egypt: one in the Delta north region, the other in the south.

This geographical and political dualism had its counterpart in religion. In the north, the most powerful god in the Egyptian pantheon was Re, the sun god. The pyramids and obelisks still familiar today owe their shape and symbolic significance to this ancient solar image. By his agency, Re created other gods, over which he was chief, as well as humans. Meanwhile, in the southern town of Thebes modern Luxor , the god Amen emerged as the most powerful religious force.

Around BCE, then, there were two dominant deities in Egypt: Re, who reigned in the north, and Amen, who ruled the south. Northern and southern Egypt were embroiled in civil war between c and BCE. Rival pharaohs ruled Egypt, resulting in parallel kingships based in Memphis in the north and Thebes in the south. He was the first to incorporate Amen into his name. In a unifying gesture, Amenemhet moved the capital north, back to the Memphis area where Upper and Lower Egypt meet, with his devotion to Amen intact.

Karnak mushroomed into the largest temple complex in ancient Egypt as ruler after ruler honoured this god, his consort, Mut, and Khonsu, their son. The Karnak complex expanded significantly between and BCE when the 18th-dynasty monarchs ruled. While Memphis remained the political capital, Thebes was considered the imperial capital.

From Karnak, divine oracles directed the kings to conquer neighbouring lands, and they duly obliged. Tribute and booty poured into Egypt during this century and a half, with Karnak Temple and its powerful priesthood the major recipients. Egypt and its god Amen-Re had reached the zenith of power.

But no one could have foreseen how quickly things would change with the death of Amenhotep III. However, the prince died unexpectedly, leaving the succession to his younger brother. This prince, also called Amenhotep, might have been only in his mid-teens when his father died in the 38th year of kingship, around BCE, when he became Amenhotep IV.

His youth is demonstrated in a carved scene in the tomb of a high-ranking official named Kheruef where the new king is shown making offerings to the gods under the watchful auspices of his mother, rather than standing alone or with his queen, the famous Nefertiti. The gods to which he is depicted making offers are Atum and Re-Horakhty both solar deities. It appears that, from the outset, Amenhotep IV had an affinity for traditional sun-gods. He was not yet a monotheist.

Based on an inscription dated to regnal year 1 of Amenhotep IV at the sandstone quarry of Gebel el-Silsileh south of Luxor , we learn that here the new king began his first building project.

No earlier form of the sun-god employed such a lengthy name. So this is new. Only a handful of decorated and inscribed blocks have survived, and some remain partially visible in the 10th Pylon or gateway at Karnak. Only the head of the falcon is preserved. This initial representation of the sun-god looks just like the solar deity, Re-Horakhty.

On the right side of the scene, the king himself is depicted and above him the lower portion of a sun-disc is preserved. It has cobras on both sides, and hanging from their necks is an ankh -sign, the so-called key of life.

Three more ankh s are connected to the underside of the Sun. Another block believed to be from this same temple preserves only a portion of a larger scene. It too contains the creedal name, but it depicts the image of the god Shu, whose name occurs in the creedal formula, along with his wife, Tefnut. It is clear from this early temple block that the introduction of this new form of the sun-god did not preclude mentioning primordial deities such as Shu and Tefnut.

Relief showing Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti worshipping the Aten. Other gods still existed and are mentioned in inscriptions although these tend to be other solar gods or personifications of abstract concepts; even the names of the Aten, which are written in cartouches like king's names, consist of a theological statement describing the Aten in terms of other gods. The majority of traditional gods were not tolerated, however, and teams of workmen were sent around the temples of Egypt where they chiselled out the names and images of these gods wherever they occurred.

A number of hymns to the Aten were composed during Akhenaten's reign and these provide a glimpse of what James Allen has described as the 'natural philosophy' of Akhenaten's religion. The wonders of the natural world are described to extol the universal power of the sun; all creatures rejoice when the sun rises and nasty things come out at night when the sun is not present. Early in his reign Akhenaten used art as a way of emphasising his intention of doing things very differently.

Colossi and wall-reliefs from the Karnak Aten Temple are highly exaggerated and almost grotesque when viewed in the context of the formality and restraint which had characterised Egyptian royal and elite art for the millennium preceding Akhenaten's birth. Although these seem striking and strangely beautiful today, it is hard for us to appreciate the profoundly shocking effect that such representations must have had on the senses of those who first viewed them and who would never have been exposed to anything other than traditional Egyptian art.

With the move to Amarna the art becomes less exaggerated, but while it is often described as 'naturalistic' it remains highly stylised in its portrayal of the human figure. The royal family are shown with elongated skulls and pear-shaped bodies with skinny torsos and arms but fuller hips, stomachs and thighs. The subject matter of royal art also changes.

Although formal scenes of the king worshipping remain important there is an increasing emphasis on ordinary, day-to-day activities which include intimate portrayals of Akhenaten and Nefertiti playing with their daughters beneath the rays of the Aten. 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. Even official inscriptions changed, moving away from the old-fashioned language traditional to monumental texts to reflect the spoken language of the time. 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. 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.

He is one of a kind, on the edge. He wants you to feel uncomfortable and yet — as conveyed through the relaxed poses and overt affection for his family as found in some of the art to love him at the same time. Regardless of whether or not Akhenaten wanted people to love him, recent research shows that the people who built his new city, out in the desert, paid a steep price.

Recent research published in the journal Antiquity shows that the common people at Amarna suffered from nutritional deficiencies and a high juvenile mortality rate, even by the standards of the time. The children had stunted growth, and many of the bones were porous due to nutritional deficiency, probably because the commoners lived on a diet of mostly bread and beer, archaeologist Anna Stevens told LiveScience in an interview at the time the research was published.

Researchers also found that more than three-quarters of the adults had degenerative joint disease, likely from hauling heavy loads, and about two-thirds of these adults had at least one broken bone as reported in the LiveScience story. It has been speculated that she may have fallen out of favor with Akhenaten, or that her name was changed so that she became a co-ruler of Egypt. However, a recent discovery challenges all of this.

Within a few years of his death which occurred around B. A boy king, he had originally been named Tutankhaten, in honor of the Aten, but his name was changed to honor Amun, the god whom his father had tried to have wiped out. The message was clear, Akhenaten, through his radical religious changes, had turned his back on the gods and so offended them.

Tutankhamun and his successors would restore things to how they had been before.