Called the first individual in history by historian James Henry Breasted, Akhenaten's widespread religious and political reforms were marked by an era of illness (possibly the plague, polio or influenza) which the Egyptian people attributed to the pharaoh's lack of worship of the other Gods of Egypt.
Early Life of Akhenaten
The younger son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, he was known in his childhood as Amenhotep IV. He was not originally the successor to his father's throne as he had an older brother named Thutmose who died as a child. Therefore his early education would have been focused on him one day entering the priesthood. Akhenaten's reign began in either 1353 or 1351 BC after a one or two year co-regency with his father.
The Rise of Atenism
It has been said that one day early in his reign, Akhenaten had a vision of a sun disc between two mountains. The sun disc in Egyptian mythology represented the God Aten and he changed the national religion to worship Aten as the one single God and to exclude all other Gods in the very first example of monotheism. Temles and tombs of Akhenaten's reign show him and his Queen Nefertiti making offerings to Aten, displayed as a sun disc with radiating arms stretched downwards. It was also during this time that the names of other Gods were removed from temple walls throughout Egypt.
Recently there has been some debate on the extent that he forced his people to conform to his new religion, as some of his courtiers kept names that honored the Gods that Akhenaten shunned. Evidence suggests that despite cutting funding to traditioal temples, he was tolerant of those worshipping other Gods, until an unknown event near the end of his reign. Many scholars believe that Atenism was a precursor to Judaism and Sigmund Freud even argued that Moses had been an Atenist priest that had been forced to leave Egypt after Akhenaten's death.
The City of Akhetaten
The same vision that prompted his religious changes also influenced him to build the city of Akhetaten (now known as El-Amarna) between two mountains halfway between Memphis and Thebes in an area that had never been attributed to any other God. In 1342 BC he moved to Akhetaten and made it his capital (the former capital had been Thebes). The entire city was designed to honor Aten and to celebrate Akhenaten's greatness as a pharaoh. The temples of Aten in the city were a series of open courtyards where worshippers could bask in the God's light, unlike traditional temples that were a group of dark rooms. Akhetaten also featured elegant palaces, good housing and the Royal Road (possibly the widest road of ancient times) that was used for grand chariot processions led by Akhenaten himself.
Physical Depictions of Akhenaten
Akhenaten and his family were depicted as they were, the only time this happened in Egyptian history. The pharaoh is thypically shown as having long sender limbs, a protruding pot belly and wide hips with his face long and slightly feminine. There are countless theories around Akhenaten's appearance including that he may have been a woman or hermaphrodite or that he suffered from diseases like Marfan's syndrome, Froelich's syndrome or elephatiasis or that the physical represtentation is meant to symolize the androgyny of the God at the center of his new religion. Nefertiti appears often along side her husband in actions that were typically reserved for the pharaoh which indicates that she may have had some sort of power in Egypt.
Nefertiti and Smenkhkare
Nefertiti was Ahkenaten's first wife and held the title Great Royal Wife where as his other wives would be given the title Lesser Royal Wife. Around 1335 BC in the fourteenth year of Akhenaten's reign, Nefertiti vanishes from historical record. It was around the same time that Smenkhkare emerged as co-regent of Egypt. His regnal name was Nefernefruaten and he has been depicted as being beloved of Akhenaten. This suggests one of two things, either Akhenaten was bisexual and the two were lovers or that Smenkhkare is in fact Nefertiti. The fact that Nefertiti and Smenkhkare were depicted similarly and that his name is occassionally written with a feminine ending adds fuel to the latter theory. Smenkhkare succeeded Akhenaten to the throne although his reign only lasted less than a year before rule passed to the boy king Tutankhaten (who later became Tutankhamun when he returned Egypt to the old religion and customs).
Akhenaten's Death and Burial
After a seventeen year reign, Akhenaten died either in1336 or 1334 BC although it is not recorded how he died. He was laid to rest in the Royal Tomb of Akhetaten which was similar to those in the Valley of the Kings. However, the tomb was found empty and it has been suggested that when the court returned to Thebes, he was buried in the Valley of the Kings. In 1907, Theodore Davis discovered the 55th tomb in the valley which was filled with Amarna aged objects, many of which had been destroyed or had the carthouches of the pharaoh's name hacked out. While there are those that belive that KV55 is the tomb of Akhenaten, no one knows for sure what happened to his mummy.
After his death Egypt underwent a restoration to the religion of earlier pharaohs, beginning with Tutankhamun. The successors of Tutankhamun, Ay and Horemheb disassembled Akhenaten's temples to use them as a source of building materials for their own temples, and Horemheb even erased Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun and Ay from the official list of Pharaohs to remove any trace of Atenism from history.
Sources:
Crystalinks.com
EgyptologyOnline.com
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