In existographies, Akhenaten (c.1380-1335BC) (IQ:170|#331) (Time 100:2) (FA:1) (CR:39), son of Amen-hetep III, was an Egyptian pharaoh credited with the first attempted formulation of monotheism, via the god Aten. [1]
Name change
Akhenaten, the son of Amen-hetep III, was born Amen-hotep IV (or Amen-hetep IV), meaning “Amun is satisfied” (Ѻ), but in adulthood, to embody his switch from Amen-Ra henotheism to Aten monotheism, changed his name to Akhenaten, written in hieroglyphics as: [5]
meaning “effective for Aten (or sun disc)”, which has been rendered variously as: Khu-en-aten (Cooper, 1877), Khut-en-Aten (Budge, 1904), Akhnaton (Weigall, 1923), Ikhnaton (Freud, 1939), among other variants.
Judaism
In the 19th century, a number of scholars began to conjecture that the monotheistic religious reform initiated by Akhenaten was the seed of what would eventually transform into Judaism; the following is a noted opinion:
“If Moses was an Egyptian and if he transmitted to the Jews his own religion then it was that of Ikhnaton, the Aton religion.”
— Sigmund Freud (1939), Moses and Monotheism (pg. 27) [3]
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Ten Commandments
A number of passages in the Bible, such as the penning of the Ten Commandments, are said to have been written with "god's finger", which is the visual depiction of Akhenaten's god Aten, a sun disc with many arms, representative of sun rays, each with one finger.
Psalms
The “Hymn to Aten”, as Ahmed Osman (1990), among others, have noticed, bears striking resemblance to Psalm 104. [2]
Ethics
Akhenaten regularly described himself as “living in Maat”, meaning living in truth and justice, or something to this effect. [2]
Quotes | On
The following are related quotes:
“Ikhnaton, who sought to reform religious conceptions in the light of reason is the ‘first individual’ in history.”
— J.H. Breasted (c.1910), Publication; cited by Roderick Seidenberg (1950) in Post-Historic Man (pg. 86)
“Akhnaton flung all these formulas into the fire. Djins, bogies, spirits, monsters, demigods and Osiris himself with all his court, were swept into the blaze and reduced to ashes.”
— Arthur Weigall (1923), The Life and Times of Akhenaton (pg. 121) [4]
“Akhenaten’s fascination for the sun disc Aten is akin to constituting atheism.”
— Donald Redford (1984), Akhenaten: the Heretic King; cited by Karl Luckert (1991) in Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire (pg. 109)
References
1. Asante, Molefi K. (2004). From Imhotep to Akhenaten: An Introduction to Egyptian (§:Celestial Elements, pgs. 53-). Philosophers.
2. Osman, Ahmed. (1990). Moses and Akhenaten: the Secret History of the Egypt at the Time of the Exodus (pg. 5). Bear & Co.
3. Freud, Sigmund. (1937). The Man Moses and the Monotheistic Religion: Three Essays (Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion. Drei Abhandlungen). Imago; Moses and Monotheism (translator: Katherine Jones) (txt) (pgs. 27; 61-62). Knopf, 1939.
4. Freud, Sigmund. (1937). The Man Moses and the Monotheistic Religion: Three Essays (Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion. Drei Abhandlungen). Imago; Moses and Monotheism (translator: Katherine Jones) (txt) (pg. 26). Knopf, 1939.
5. Budge, Wallis. (1904). The Gods of the Egyptians, Volume Two (pg. 72). Dover, 1969.
External links
● Akhenaten – Wikipedia.
