The so-called heretic king
Amenhottep IV was an unusual king of ancient Egypt of the 18th dynasty, New kingdom. There was probably a co-regency between Amenhotep IV and his father, Amenhotep III. That way, it would have begun in the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth year of Amenhotep III’s reign. Others had suggested that this co-regency was in the thirty-seventh or thirty-ninth year. Amenhotep IV became a sole ruler from 1378/1352 BC onwards.
From normal beginnings:
The Pharoah Akhenaten started
his rule with the name of (Amenhotep) like his father which means: the god Amun
is satisfied. His coronation name was Nefer Kheperu Re (the transformations of
Ra are perfect). Amenhotep IV married his cousin Nefertiti, who was the
daughter of Ay and Tiy II and the granddaughter of Yuya and Tuya. He had
probably six daughters from her. Amenhotep IV had a secondary wife, Kiya, who
was the mother of Tutankhamun.
At the beginning of his reign, the young king, Amenhotep IV worshipped the old gods, especially Amun of thebes and the sun god, Re-Harakhte.
To an Abnormal reign:
In the fifth year of his reign, Amenhotep IV changed his name from Amenhotep to Akhenaten (servant of Aten), establishing a new religion that believed that there is only one god, the sun god Aten and he banned the worship of the god Amun and all the other Egyptian gods. He was the first Egyptian King and probably the first King in history to call for monotheism.
Aten was never shown in human or animal form, but represented as the sun disk with rays descending from the disk ending in hands holding the ankh sign towards the nose of the king and the Queen. He was the life-giving and the life-sustaining power of the sun, unlike the old gods he had no carved image hidden in a dark room deep within a temple but was worshiped out in the light of day.
Amenhotep IV made constructions for the new god at Karnak using blocks of sandstone from quarries at Gebel el-Silsila which were suitable as they were easier to work and smaller in size. These blocks are known as talatat (the local Arabic title for the used blocks).
These talatat blocks are still being studied as they represent a priceless source of evidence for the history of the cult of Aten.
The short-lived Capital:
In the fifth year of Amenhotep IV’s reign, the king and the Queen went to a site that they called Akhetaten (Horizon of the sun-disc), now called Tell el-Amarna or Amarna.
This site was their new capital, it was a vast natural bay of cliffs stretching for 25 kilometers on the east bank of the Nile, about 10 kilometers to the south of Modern Mallawi. The special thing about this site is that it was virgin territory, like the mound of sand at Heliopolis from which the universe was said to have been created.
The king marked out the site with fourteen “boundary stelae”, eleven on the east bank and three on the west.
The city was supposed to be equivalent to Thebes, the royal and private necropolis and cemetery of the Mnevis bulls (divine bulls).
The Amarna Style:
The artistic elements that Akhenaten introduced in the decoration of the Aten temples and on other monuments of his reign, both at Karnak and at his new capital of Akhetaten (Tell el Amarna) are referred to collectively as the Amarna style. During the co-regency, the first Amarna signs started as the stronger worship of the sun god when Amenhotep III paid much attention to the sun god. Akhenaten encouraged artistic creativity and realism and the walls of the temples and houses were painted in an eccentric new style. Among the surviving works of this period are the colossal statues of Akhenaten, the painting from his private residence, the bust of his wife Nefertiti and that of his mother, Queen Tiy. These works are unique in Egyptian Art as they do not flatter the king and his family, but reveal them as real people in all their beauty and decay.
A revolution in the arts:
The
revolution in religion was accompanied with a revolution in art in many aspects: Putting
the royal family in the Centre of the scenes as (a holy family) far too
intimate to be shown also the king and his subjects are shown in an exaggerated
realism. Akhenaten
also built a temple behind Karnak to the east, its name (gm pA Atn). The
special thing about this temple is that the statues there are representing the
king with his arms crossed showing him as a ruler (not in an Osirid form) as
the Osirid form should show the king in mummy bandages. The
second special thing is that he is shown in this temple in some statues with
the upper part of a man and the lower part of a woman with huge thighs in a
hermaphrodite form, representing him as an incarnation of the creator god(Aten)
as a mediator between Aten and the people.
Akhenaten
shows himself with big ears to hear all prayers of people, big mouth to recite
the prayers to god Aten and big almond eyes to see everything and transfer it
to Aten as he is representing the tool of Aten on earth. Akhenaten
in these statues often appears with complex headdress and his beard is always
straight.
There
is also a special thing about Amarna Art which is the composite statues (the
head is a piece of its own that is put on torso, also the crown could be a
piece of its own). The
princesses (daughters of Akhenaten) are usually shown with greatly elongated
skulls, hanging jaws and large lips like their father.
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| Akhenaten is often depicted with puzzling hermaphrodite features |
Several
theories have been introduced to explain the features of Akhenaten:
- Akhenaten was depicted in his true form, claiming that he suffered from deformities.
- The manifestations of the bisexual nature of the sun god Aten, which is more generally accepted.
The fall of a visionary/madman:
Akhenaten
became the source of blessings for people after death, but this religious and
artistic renewal was short lived as his successors were too weak that they
couldn’t keep the worship of Aten, so the priests of Amun returned the worship
of Amun. Akhenaten made himself unpopular as he closed the old temples and his
lack of enthusiasm for the practical duties of kingship was detrimental to
Egypt’s imperial interests. Surviving documents show that Akhenaten paid little
attention to the army and navy, foreign trade began to fall off and internal
taxes began to disappear into the pockets of local officials.
Letters
to the king discovered in the ruins of Tell el-Amarna, known as the Amarna
letters, show the displeasure of the army commanders and high commissioners in
Palestine and Syria. The local princes, who had been loyal to Egypt, no longer
saw any advantage in trading with Egypt. The Hittites from the north began to
make gains and this led to a general disintegration of the empire. Akhenaten
was succeeded briefly by Smenkhkare and then by Tutankhaten who changes his
name to Tutankhamun, dropping Aten and embracing Amun. The city of Akhetaten
was abandoned and the court returned to Thebes. Tutankhamun returned Egypt to
its traditional values and Akhenaten’s memory was erased as Akhenaten’s
buildings to the east of karnak were razed to the ground by king Horemheb who
used most of the blocks to fill the Ninth pylon at Karnak, and it was probably
the extremely small size of the blocks that saved them from destruction, Horemheb
also razed Akhetaten and Rameses also II reused the stone blocks of its temples
for the work at nearby Hermopolis. Later Egyptian historians would refer to him
only as “The Heretic King”.
Akhenaten
was an ideological and philosophical revolutionary who had the power and wealth
to indulge his ideas, but the ancient Egyptians were deeply religious people
who deeply identified with their ancient traditions and were not ready to embrace such radical
changes and thus fell the visionary. Akhenaten has been a victim to a crazy load of anti-propaganda making it almost impossible to tell what kind of person he really was. Did he see himself as a Prophet or was he an anarchist? Was he of sane mind through it all or had generations of intermarriage attribute him a diseased mind and a tainted conscience?
We will never know...
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| Ruins from Akhetaten at Tel el Amarna, the Capital not meant to be. Attribution: Olaf Tausch / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) |
- A History of Ancient Egypt by Nicolas Grimal
- Discoveringegypt.com
- Pharaoh.SE
- Britannica.com
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