Aeon has posted an essay by Old Testament scholar, James K. Hoffmeier, about the development of Atenism, including the historical context in the centuries before it. Hoffmeier
et al. have written a provocatively titled book,
Genesis: History, Fiction, Or Neither? Three Views on the Bible’s Earliest Chapters (2015), that I have yet to read.
Excerpts below from the complete essay at
https://aeon.co/essays/why-did-an-ancient-egyptian-king-erase-all-gods-but-aten
More than 3,000 years ago, ancient Egypt, with its myriad gods and goddesses, saw the founding of two monotheistic religions within a century of each other. One is associated with Moses, the Bible and ancient Israel’s faith, which is the foundation of Judaism and Christianity. The other burst on to the scene around 1350 BCE, flourished for a moment, and was then eclipsed when its founder died in 1336 BCE. We call the religion Atenism. Where did it come from? And why didn’t the world’s first monotheism last?
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. His cult centre was in a suburb of present-day Cairo, still known by the ancient Greek name Heliopolis, ‘City of the Sun’, and his principal icon was a pyramid-shaped stone called the benben. 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. Re’s son was Horus the sky-god, represented as a falcon, and the Pharaohs were the incarnation of Horus. So their title was ‘Son of Re’.
Meanwhile, in the southern town of Thebes (modern Luxor), the god Amen emerged as the most powerful religious force. As his name suggests in ancient Egyptian, Amen is the ‘hidden one’ and is often depicted in human form with blue skin, representing the blue sky or atmosphere. Amen’s principal cult centre was Karnak Temple in Thebes. Around 2000 BCE, then, there were two dominant deities in Egypt: Re, who reigned in the north, and Amen, who ruled the south.
Of course, we can only accord the 'Mosaic' religion to be as attested from the Old Testament, since there is precious little archaeological evidence of it existing until much later, likely until the period around the time of the first Persian emperor, Cyrus, accorded to be a Jewish savior, or messiah.
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The Karnak complex expanded significantly between 1500 and 1350 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. Egypt’s empire stretched north and east to beyond even the Euphrates River, and in the south, Nubia, the northern half of Sudan, was colonised. Tribute and booty poured into Egypt during this century and a half, with Karnak Temple and its powerful priesthood the major recipients. There is no greater testimony to the prosperity of this era than the colossal building projects of Amenhotep III (1390-1353 BCE) at Karnak and Luxor Temples, largely in the name of Amen-Re. 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.
Elsewhere I have discussed that it was Amenhotep III who first declared himself to be an incarnated god while living, and that he launched a unique state visit to Mycenae, as recorded both on his temple statuary bases and by unique faience memorial plaques found in the cities along the way. A few centuries later, the Mycenaeans would be at the center of the denouement of the Bronze Age, marked narratively, at least, by the Trojan War. The pretext of the war had to do with a certain egg-born Helen. Heliopolis > Helen? In any case, the tales of Homer centered about this war became the literal canonic bible of the later Greco-Roman period, itself superceded by Christianity, where Paul rides to Rome on the ship, Castor and Pollux, the divine, savior, brothers of the divine Helen.
Interesting, as well, in regard to this topic was the brilliant analysis by Immanuel Velikovsky that Akhenaton was
the real character behind the classic Greek story of Oedipus Rex. It begs the question as to why such Greeks would focus on such a story and disguise its origins. And we must also consider here the relationship of the Greek Danaoi or Danaans and their relationship to the Hebrew tribe of Dan. The latter of which the Nazarite 'judge', Samson, was descended from. Samson's reign of chaos would soon lead to the period of kingship in Judea and Israel, at least according to the canonic narrative. And the narrative extent of the domains of Solomon can only be matched by the accounts of Egyptian pharaohs.
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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. It records the hewing out of a large benben stone for ‘Re-Horakhty who rejoices in his horizon in his name of Shu which (or who) is in the Aten in Karnak’. This lengthy name seems to be a theological creed, and is often called the ‘didactic name’ of Aten. No earlier form of the sun-god employed such a lengthy name. So this is new.
Little is known about this temple as it was destroyed after the king’s death, and the blocks reused to build other edifices in the area. Only a handful of decorated and inscribed blocks have survived, and some remain partially visible in the 10th Pylon or gateway at Karnak. One of these blocks, which now graces the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, shows the new deity: ‘Re-Horakhty who rejoices in his horizon in his name of Shu which is in the Aten’. Only the head of the falcon is preserved. A large sun-disc sits on its head, which has a cobra wrapped around the disc with its head flaring up just above the falcon’s beak. 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 ankhs are connected to the underside of the Sun.
Something changed, and the king built at least four temples to Aten
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. Here, she is called ‘the father of the gods’, and the first god created by Atum is associated with atmospheric or cosmic light. 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. That means that Amenhotep had no aversion to ‘the gods’: at this stage, he could not even be called a henotheist, or one who worships one deity without rejecting the existence of others.
This last sentence parallels the Biblical account, where the Bible has the patriarchs, and God himself, acknowledging the existence of the other gods, but that the jealous 'God' is to be adhered to solely.
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The exclusivity of Aten and the campaign to exterminate Amen and other deities is proof positive of a movement from polytheism to monotheism. If doubt remains that Akhenaten was a monotheist, consider some elegant and touching lines in The Great Hymn to the Aten, inscribed on the wall of the tomb of the high official named Aye at Amarna:
O sole god beside who there is none …
You create the earth according to your desire, you alone:
People, all large and small animals, all things which are on earth, which walk on legs,
Which rise up and fly with their wings.
The foreign lands of Syria and Nubia, (and) the land of Egypt …
The lord of every land who rises for them, the Aten of daytime, whose awesomeness is great.
(Now concerning) all distant countries, you make their life …
(O you) who gives life to the son in his mother’s womb, and calms him by stopping his tears;
Nurse in the womb, who gives breath to enliven all he makes …
The themes of universalism, divine oneness, the exclusivity of Aten and his tender care for all creation drive home the point that ‘there is none’ beside Aten. This is a monotheistic statement not unlike the Islamic confession ‘there is no god but God’. And on the theme of divine oneness, the Jewish Shema comes to mind: ‘Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.’ The sun-god was a universal deity: wherever one went in the world, the Sun appears.
Atenism was a monotheistic experiment. But what instigated such a radical shift from the polytheistic orthodoxy that had flourished in Egypt for millennia, and what led to the demotion of Amen-Re from his preeminent status, a position he had held for centuries? Here, there is little agreement among Egyptologists. There are those who think that this religious move was designed to wrest power from the Amen priesthood’s dominance that challenged the crown itself. Simply put, it was a political move. But this view does not adequately consider Akhenaten’s genuine devotion to Aten as reflected in the incredible temples dedicated to him, not to mention the intimacy expressed towards Aten in the hymns.
Others consider Atenism to be simply the climax of an evolution that had been underway for more than a century, in which Re had been moving towards universal status. This interpretation, however, does not take into account the programme of iconoclasm towards Amen and other deities, and the disappearance of traditional images of the sun-god (human form, falcon head, pyramid images, etc). One could advance Aten without eradicating Amen in a polytheistic system.
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Akhenaten also uses the same language of discovery to explain how he found the land where he would establish the new city, Akhet-Aten. The aforementioned boundary inscription records Akhenaten’s words when travelling through the area that would become his new capital:
Look, Aten! The Aten wishes to have [something] made for him as a monument … (namely) Akhet-Aten … It is Aten, my father, [who advised me] concerning it so it could be made for him as Akhet-Aten.
Later in the same inscription, the king again repeats the line: ‘It is my father Aten who advised me concerning it.’ These texts point to an initial phenomenological event in which the king discovered the new form of the sun-god and then, through a later revelation, Aten disclosed where his Holy See should be built.
With the above, we should ponder that Amenhotep III had previously declared himself to be a living god, and there is controversy that Akhenaton had shared a coregency with his father. Here, that the Father (as god) had indeed even visited Amarna. In this light we can also see that Amarna was built in the middle of 'nowhere', midway between Thebes and the delta. It is our contention that the later construction of the Biblical Promised Land was on this general principle, only that Canaan had to be 'cleansed' of its prior beliefs by both conversions and forced migrations. The latter program led by the remnants of the first Experiment in monotheism. Atenism failed because its implementation was too rapid, where peoples take generations to alter enough of their mother 'culture'.
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With Atenism, the evolution from polytheism to monotheism occurred rapidly, in just a few years
Historians of religion over the past 150 years thought that such a shift to monotheism must have been a gradual development taking place over millennia. Just like every field of learning in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the academic study of religion was shaped by evolutionary philosophy, an extension of Darwinian thought. From this perspective, religion began in the hoary past from animism, where everything – trees, rivers, rocks, etc – was possessed by spirits; followed by totemism; then polytheism; henotheism; culminating finally in monotheism. This linear development took thousands of years, it is claimed, moving from simple to complex forms. Some thinkers maintain that monotheism was achieved in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE for the ancient Jews, a development mirrored among Greek philosophers, in Zoroastrianism and other Asian religions during the same general period. But with Atenism, as the evidence suggests, the evolution from polytheism to monotheism occurred rapidly, in just a few years, contrary to the traditional understanding that monotheism appeared eight centuries later.
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Hoffmeier goes on to discuss why he rejects a linkage between Atenism and Judaism, but we think that there is indeed sufficient evidence to assert that they are linked.
