Akhenaten

Akhenaten, also spelled Akhenaton, Akhnaton, Ikhnaton, or Echnaton (meaning "Effective Spirit of Aten"), and known before the fifth year of his reign as Amenhotep IV (sometimes given its Greek form, Amenophis IV, meaning "Amun is Satisfied"), was a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, who ruled for 17 years and died in 1336 BC or 1334 BC. He is especially noted for abandoning traditional Egyptian polytheism and introducing worship centered on the Aten, which is sometimes described as monotheistic or henotheistic. Later official language avoids calling the Aten a god, giving the solar deity a status above mere gods.

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• How manifold it is, what thou hast made!
  They are hidden from the face.
  O sole god, like whom there is no other!
  Thou didst create the world according to thy desire,
  Whilst thou wert alone: All men, cattle, and wild beasts,
  Whatever is on earth, going upon feet,
  And what is on high, flying with its wings.
  • Great Hymn to the Aten, as translated in The Ancient Near East, Vol. 1 : An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (1958) by James B. Pritchard, p. 227

• Everyone has his food, and his time of life is reckoned.
  Their tongues are separate in speech,
  And their natures as well;
  Their skins are distinguished,
  As thou distinguishest the foreign peoples.
  Thou makest a Nile in the underworld,
  Thou bringest forth as thou desirest
  To maintain the people
  According as thou madest them for thyself,
  The lord of all of them, wearying with them,
  The lord of every land, rising for them,
  The Aton of the day, great of majesty.
  • Great Hymn to the Aten, as translated in The Ancient Near East, Vol. 1 : An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (1958) by James B. Pritchard, p. 227

• One must be moved with involuntary admiration for the young king who in such an age found such thoughts in his heart.
  • J. H. Breasted, History of Egypt (1905)

• Without the basis for proper diagnosis, the charge of madness is best avoided … but clearly Akhenaten had an original mind. He developed a vision of how God should be honoured, and had the determination and means to turn that vision into reality.
  • Barry Kemp, as quoted in "Akhenaten: mad, bad, or brilliant?" by Alastair Sooke, in The Telegraph (9 January 2014)

• The origins of diplomacy date back at least to the Bronze Age in the Near East. Caches of documents from the Euphrates kingdom in the mid–eighteenth century bc and from Akhenaten’s Egypt four centuries later reveal a regular exchange of envoys with neighboring states, prompted by the need for trade and the danger of war. This was hardly a fully fledged diplomatic “system.” Envoys were not resident ambassadors and they were not protected by agreed rules of immunity—but it was a recognizable form of diplomacy.
  • David Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings that Changed the Twentieth Century (2007), p. 11

• Rebel, tyrant, and prophet of arguably the world’s earliest monotheistic religion, Akhenaten has been called history’s first individual. His impact upon ancient Egyptian customs and beliefs stretching back for centuries was so alarming that, in the generations following his death in 1336 BC, he was branded a heretic. Official king lists omitted his name.
  For my money, this makes him the most fascinating and controversial figure in Egyptian history.
  • Alastair Sooke, in "Akhenaten: mad, bad, or brilliant?" in The Telegraph (9 January 2014)

• Akhenaten’s temples incorporated vast open-air courts with offering tables and unroofed shrines. The cult image, of course, was no longer a statue hidden deep in the sanctuary, but the Aten above.
  • Anna Stevens, as quoted in "Akhenaten: mad, bad, or brilliant?" by Alastair Sooke, in The Telegraph (9 January 2014)

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Akhenaten

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Akhenaten

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