hornung - akhenaten and the religion of light

8/12/2019 Hornung - Akhenaten and the Religion of Light

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4there ae a few inscriptionsfrom the band furtherhymns. Thus, for writAkhenaten's religionwe can only consupassages fromthe tomb inscriptions o

It speaks to the clarityand simplicsuch meager sources nevertheless yiallowingus to gain some familiaritywteristics. But there is also pictorialevof the god Aten and the royal familyof architecture and other motifs in twhich furnish us withan insightintAkhenaten endeavored to promul8atemnemonic images, especially the sunalso scenes of his family.These motobligatoryleaving the artists litde latit

of new pictorialmotifs must have arouthing could be expressed figuratively.Tan effect long after Akhenaten; an unreligious images was developed duringand later in Dynasty zr.

New was the compulsorynature odivine narnes of the Amarna Period.able freedom prevailed in the designames and epithets in a cult scene; itseek a livelyvariety, withas litde repewas also leeway in the representationstellations into whichthey were insertityhad a multiplicityof names, formconstellations to be taken into accouorityone fixed name and one fixed imaation was excluded, and even his epifew stereotypes.

A New nelonNo DivineRevelationAkhenaten left no holy scripture, so what he founded doesnot belong to the religionsof the book. Ad a "\Mordof God"is altogether inconceivable in this new religion, for the newlypromulgated god remained silent The Aten himselfdid not

spealq rather, his preacher Akhenaten spokeabout him. We

must t-hus rely on evidence stemming fromthe inscriptionsof the kingand his officials.

The inscriptions frequendy mentiona "teaching" or"instruction'ofAkhenaten's, which he placed in the heats ofhis subjects. To be sure, the Egyptian word used for it, sebayt,also designates the wisdom literature handed down in writ-ing fromas early as the late Old Kingdom,but in the AmanaPeriod it seems in fact to be exclusively a matter of a teach-ing and instruction imparted orallyby the king;nowhere is

there a trace of religious tractates.For a monarch of the New Kingdom,it is astonishing howlittleAl


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AxHeureuAND THEReutcrot'lop LlcHr

God as PharaohWe have a-lready indicated the rigor withwhich the royal sta-tus of the god was now promuted.Aten ruled the worldas king,he had a royal, titularyand wore the royal uraeus, andhe even celebrated royal festivals of renewal.

Justas officials

often placed the name of their kingon their statues, so nowstatues of the royalcouple bore the cartouches of theirkingand god. Andhis universal rule was indicated pictori-,llyby the many hands of the god, to whicheverythingwasaccessible. Afterearlier, tentative attempts to provide thesun disk withhands, the perfected, brilliandysimple imageof the radiant Aten was developed in a single, bold step. Butthe decided, plastic bulge the disk oftendisplays (Figure rz)should not lead us to interpret it as a solar orb.

The Aten was actually not the sun disk,but

rather thelgbt that is in the sun and which,radiating from it, calls theworldto lifeand keeps it alive. HeinrichBrugsch alreadyemphasized that Aten was a god of light,and Jan Assmannhas managed a fresh distillationof this view. Indeed, from

FIGUREn. A.henaten as sfltnx.Geneva, Muse d z{rtet d'Histoire278o4. Limestone, 4o"xzt'. Pboto courtesy of Muse dArtetd'Histoire.

early times, the sun withits rays had ssystem as a hierogh in writingwordsand the like.

In contrast to the rich mythicframewoian deities had otherwise been embeddedfree of such connections and constellationof him only that he ever and again crmaintains it in life;but there was no longoriginalcreation of the world-Atenwithhis own hands," creates the wonightlyjourney through the netherworApopis, theenemy of the sun, were nowno mentionof the barque of the god, thecourse (in Egypt, withits innumerablewtraveled by boat ).

Pharaoh as GodAten (or Re-Harakhty)was the god ofpersonal god of the individualwas the kiput it, "He was the god who set out onformed signs and wonders, and who intiny ofthe individual,holding lifeand The officialsat Akhenaten's court cultivadependence, in which themes from the "

of the MiddleKingdomwere continuedking was appealed to as the dispenser othe epithets of a creator god were heapeof the new capital conjured up the forbrings intobeing" as a new name for hi

This positionvis--vis humankindtraditional roleof a pharaoh; rather, itstatus of Alhenatenas the beioved sonously, Pharaoh had considered himself t

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ArHeN,crEtrANDTHEREltctotop LlcHr

thus stressing his divine origin.But Akhenaten was the sonof his god in a much more personal manner, and in this laythe seed of the failureof his teaching, for it stood and fellalong withhis own person. For Egyptian theologians therealso arose the question of the ltomoousia of father and son. In

the eighth scene of the Book of Gates, a new description ofthe netherworld that originated in the Amana Period (beforeor after Akhenaten), Atumexpresses his total un withRewith the formulation"Iam the son who emerged from hisfather, I am the father who emerged fromhis son," at thesame time alluding, in context, to the father-son relationshipof Osiisand Horus.

WhileAten was not just a national deity but rather illu-minated the entire worldas the universal sun god, Akhen-aten always remained pharaoh of Egypt and never became a

prophet for all humankind. On a purely superficiallevel, thisis shown by his titulary:Akhenaten was "lordof the TwoLands," that is, Egypt, while the Aten was lord of the world,expressed concretely as "s and earth."

Personal piety at this timeconsisted e>cclusively in loyaltyto the king, which meant to Alhenaten as a Person; no otherintermediary was conceivable. We have already made refer-ence to the excessive appeals made by his officials;veritablehymns rere sung to him, as by Panehsy:

Praise to you, oh my god, who builtme,who determined good for me,who made me come into being qnd Save me bread,who cared for me withhis kat

I give praise to the height of the heavens,I adore the lord of the TWo Lands, Akhenaten:god of fate, giverof I(e, Iord ofcommand,

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Iightof every lnd,on whose gaze one lives.Nile of humankind,on whose ka one is sated.God who creates the great ones and bu

the poor ones,breath for every nose, by which one br

Alhenaten is constantly designatedembodying the annual inundation and alnahre, and he is also called "mother whoishes millionswithhis food," just as prithe hymn of Suti and Hor, the sun god"mother of humans and deities," whilehbe called "motherand father.'

The Female Elemenu NefertitiAkhenaten and his god thus pardy accousphere, but the thirdparty in the allianceimportance was already noted in the preimportance was not of a politicalbut onature and thus had a differentstress thanNefertitishaed in the rulership withocoregent. She was Akhenaten's personaalong withhim and the Aten, comprisedthose which so often occur in the pantheodom. The constellation that shines tloAtum,the single god at the beginningpair Shu and Tefenet who emerged froclear at the beginningof the re, wheof the colossal statues of Akhenaten uecrown of Shu. Later, the indications becas when the royal couple "elevate" t-he n


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ArgeNRrerlANDTHERel-lcrc-l'lop Llcur

Possible AdvisersThe question must be posed whether, aside fromthe royalcouple, any other persons took part in developing this newreligion.Nowhere does Akhenaten name anyone to whom hefelt indebted; rather, he constantly stresses that he aloneknows the Aten. The oft stressed infuence of Heliopolis,theold religious centerof the solar cult, on rhe new beliefsregarding the Aten cannot be substantiated; the high priestthere, Anen, a brother of Tye, was certainlyamong the dig-nitaries whom the young prince often encountered at court,but we know nothingabout his religiousconceptions or hispossible infl.uence. Nor do the sources reveal anhing aboutthe religious leanings of Teye, the king's mother, much as onemight care to ascribe a certain influence to her.

Among all the officialsat the court of his father, a mannamed Amenhoe stands out. Distinct fromthe many othermen of this name, whicheven Akhenaten bore at first,hewas called "Amenhoe son of Hapu" (Figure r3) and camefromAthribisin the delta. Provided with the title"scribeof recruits,"one that \,as not especially high, he was presentedby his kingwithdistinctlyunusual tokens of royal grace; thushe was the onlyofficialof the New Kingdom to receive amortuary temple of his own on the west bank of Thebes,which was n otherwise exclusively royal prerogative- He isportrayed as a wise scribe in a series of statues from Karnak,and in the Late Period he was revered as a deified sage;he tended to be mentioned in the same breath as Imhotep,the architect of the firstpyramid. Amenhoe also directedimportantconstructionprojects for his monarch, such as thetransport and erectionof the Colossi of Memnon;at anadvanced age he also supervised Pharaoh's sed-festivaJ.. Hapu'sson must thus have been an unusual and outstandingpersonaliry one who lived onin the memory of the people,

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FIcuRE g. zlmenltotpe, sonof Hafu, depicndMuseum J. 4486r. Grry granite, beight 5o


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ArHerunreru AND THE ReLlcto..1 oF LIGHT

and who quite likely also made an impression on the succes-sor to the throne as he was growing up. But no sourceinforms us of what Akhenaten materially owed him.

At the end of the reign of Amenophis III, the rwo viziersRamose and Aper-El stood nominally at rhe head of theadministration, but there is no indication that they pursuedany particular religious line. The change from the traditionarto the new artistic sryle, with the royal couple under rhesun disk with its rays, is documented in the Theban tomb(TT SS) of Ramose; he thus supported rhe reform ourwardly,but he must have died soon thereafter. Next to the viziers,the Viceroy of Nubia ( Kush ), who at this time wasMerymes, had a prominent position because of his office.

Aya certainly had considerable influence. He was evidentlya brother ofTeye, and also tutor to and perhaps even fatherlin-law of Akhenaten, if Nefertiti actu;[y came from this

secure sources for this have yet been found.The remaining officials of the time remain mere names,

their personalities unknown to us. But there was undoubtedlya circle of officials at court who were loyally devoted to thenew king and his religious teaching. Foi this clique consist-ing of the king and his officials, it was now necessary to finda new place, one unencumbered by the burden of traditionand the proximity

of the old deities, and free of witnesses tothe past-a virgin territory in every respect.

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hornung - akhenaten and the religion of light

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