Akhenaten Atenist Revolution Family Succession Akhenaten In The

M17-X1:N35:N5-G25-Aa1:N35 Akhenaten, known as Amenhotep IV at the start of his reign, was a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. He is thought to have been born to Amenhotep III and his Chief Queen Tiy in the year 26 of their reign ( 1379 BC or 1362 BC). Amenhotep IV succeeded his father after Amenhotep III's death at the end of his 38-year reign, possibly after a co-regency between the two of up to 12 years. Suggested dates for Akhenaten's reign (subject to the debates surrounding Egyptian chronology) are from 1367 BC to 1350 BC or from 1350 BC/ 1349 BC to 1334 BC/ 1333 BC. Akhenaten's chief wife was NefertitiNefertiti was the wife of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (later Akhenaten), and mother-in-law of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Her name roughly translates to "the beautiful one is come". She also shares her name with a type of elongated gold bead that she w, who has been made famous by her bustExample bust C. Gauss A bust is a sculpture depicting a person's chest, shoulders, and head, usually supported by a stand. These three-dimensional forms recreate the likeness of an individual. These may be of any suitable material (usually marble or other in the Ägyptisches MuseumBerlin's gyptisches Museum ( German: "Egyptian Museum") is home to one of the world's most important collections of Ancient Egyptian artefacts. The museum originated with the royal art collection of the Prussian kings: it was Alexander von Humboldt who re in BerlinBerlin [ bɛrˈliːn ] is the national capital of Germany and its largest city, with 3,387,404 inhabitants (as of September 2004); down from 4. 5 million before World War II. Berlin is located on the rivers Spree and Havel in the northea. __NOTOC__ other names:

1 Atenist revolution

A religious revolutionary, Amenhotep IV introduced Atenism in Year 4 of his reign, raising the previously obscure sun god AtenAlternative use: the Aten asteroids, named after 2062 Aten Akhenaten and his family adoring the Aten Aten is a sun god in ancient Egyptian mythology, and represented by the sun's disk. His worship was instituted as the basis for the mostly monotheistic re to the status of supreme god. This year is also believed to mark the beginning of his construction of a new capital, Akhetaten ('Horizon of the Aten'), at the site known today as Amarna. In Year 5 of his reign Amenhotep IV officially changed his name to Akhenaten ('Glorious Spirit of the Aten') as evidence of his new worship. The date given for the event has been estimated to fall around January 2January 2 is the 2nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 363 days remaining (364 in leap years). Events 366 Alamanni cross frozen Rhine in large numbers, invading Roman Empire. 1492 Reconquista: Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spa of that year. In Year 7 of his reign the capital was moved from Thebes to Akhetaten, though construction of the city seems to have continued for two more years. In honor of Aten he also oversaw the construction of some of the most massive temple complexes in ancient Egypt, including one at Karnak, and is believed to have composed the Great Hymn to the Aten.

Initially Akhenaten presented Aten as a variant of the familiar supreme deity Amun-Ra (itself the result of an earlier rise to prominence of the cult of Amun, resulting in Amun becoming merged with the sun god Ra), in an attempt to put his ideas in a familiar Egyptian religious context. However in Year 9 of his reign Akhenaten declared a more radical version of his new religion by declaring Aten not merely the supreme god, but the only god, even staging the ritual regicide of Amun, as well as the defacing of Amun's temples throughout Egypt. Aten's name is also written differently after Year 9, to emphasise the radicalism of the new regime, which included a ban on idols and other images of the Aten, with the exception of a rayed solar disc, in which the rays appear to represent the unseen spirit of Aten (now no longer a sun god but rather a universal deity). The early stage of Atenism appears a kind of henotheism familiar in Egyptian religion, but the later form suggests a proto-monotheism. The idea of Akhenaten as the pioneer of monotheistic religion was promoted by Sigmund Freud (the founder of psychoanalysis) in his book Moses and Monotheism and thereby entered popular consciousness.

Styles of art that flourished during this short period are markedly different from other Egyptian art, bearing a variety of affectations, from elongated heads to protruding stomachs, exaggerated ugliness and the beauty of Nefertiti. Artistic representations of Akhenaten give him a very feminine appearance, giving rise to controversial theories such that he may have actually been a woman masquerading as a man, which had been known to happen in Egyptian politics once or twice, or that he was a hermaphrodite or had some other phenotypic sexual disorder. It is also suggested by Bob Brier, in his book "The Murder of Tutankhamen", that his family suffered from Marfan's syndrome, which is known to cause elongated features and may explain his appearance. However some sources suggest that private representations of Akhenaten, as opposed to official art, show him as quite normal; moreover other leading figures of the Amarna period, both royal and otherwise, are shown with some of these features, suggesting a possible religious connotation.

2 Family

The dates of Amenhotep IV's marriage to Nefertiti are uncertain. However the couple had six known daughters. This is a list with suggested years of birth:

Meritaten – year 2.
Meketaten – year 3.
Ankhesenpaaten, later Queen of Tutankhamun – year 4.
Neferneferuaten Tasherit – year 6.
Neferneferure – year 9.
Setepenre – year 11.

Of his known or suggested lovers the most memorable are:

Tiy, his mother. Twelve years after the death of Amenhotep III she is still mentioned in inscriptions as Queen and beloved of the King. It has been suggested that Akhenaten and his mother acted as consorts to each other till her death. This would be considered incest at the time. Supporters of this theory consider Akhenaten to be the historical model of legendary King Oedipus of Thebes, Greece and Tiy the model for his mother/wife Jocasta.
Nefertiti, his Chief Queen.
Kiya, his second queen.
Ankhesenpaaten, his third daughter and last known wife at during the last year of his life. Akhenaten is thought to have fathered a daughter through her, Ankhesenpaaten-te-sherit. After his death Ankhesenpaaten married Akhenaten's successor Tutankhamun.
Smenkhkare, his successor and/or co-ruler for the last years of his reign. He is thought to have been a half-brother or a son to Akhenaten. Some have suggested that Smenkhkare was actually an alias of Nefertiti or Kiya, and therefore one of Akhenaten's wives.

3 Succession

There is some debate around whether Amenhotep IV succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, Amenhotep III, or whether there was a co-regency (of as much as 11 or 12 years according to some Egyptologists).

Similarly, although it is accepted that both Smenkhkare and Akhenaten himself died in year 17 of Akhenaten's reign, the question of whether Smenkhare became co-regent perhaps 2 or 3 years earlier is still unclear, as is whether Smenkhare survived Akhenaten. If Smenkhare outlived Akhenaten, becoming sole Pharaoh, it was for less than a year.

The next successor was certainly Tutankhaten (later, Tutankhamun), at the age of 8, with the country being run by the chief vizier (and next Pharaoh), Ay. Tutankhamun is believed to be a younger brother of Smenkhkare and a son of either Amenhotep III or Akhenaten.

With Akhenaten's death, the Aten cult he had founded almost immediately fell out of favor. Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamun in year 3 of his reign ( 1348 BC or 1331 BC) and abandoned Akhetaten, the city falling into ruin. Temples Akhenaten had built were disassembled by his successors Ay and Horemheb (and reused as a source of easily available building materials and decorations for their own temples), and inscriptions to Aten defaced. Finally, Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, and Ay were excised from the official lists of Pharaohs, which instead reported that Amenhotep III was immediately succeeded by Horemheb. This is thought to be part of an attempt by Horemheb to delete all trace of Atenism and the pharaohs associated with it from the historical record.

4 Akhenaten in the Arts

Moyra Caldecott: novel Akhenaten: Son of the Sun (1989)
Mika Waltari: novel The Egyptian (1945)
Philip Glass: opera Akhnaten (1983)
Naguib Mahfouz: novel Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (1985)
Allen Drury, historical novels A God Against the Gods (Doubleday, 1976) and Return to Thebes (Doubleday, 1976)
Judith Tarr , historical fantasy Pillar of Fire (1995)
Lynda Robinson, historical mystery Drinker of Blood (2001, BooksEnthsiast.com)

5 Further reading

Donald B. Redford: Akhenaten : The Heretic King (Princeton University Press, 1984)
Cyril Aldred: Akhenaten: King of Egypt (Thames & Hudson, 1988)
Rita E. Freed, Yvonne J. Markowitz, Sue H. D'Auria, Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten - Nefertiti - Tutankhamen (Museum of Fine Arts, 1999)
Graham Phillips, Act of God: Moses, Tutankhamun and the Myth of Atlantis, (Pan, 1998)
Dominic Montserrat, Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt, (Routledge, 2000)
Nicholas Reeves, Akhenaten: Egypt's False Prophet, (Thames and Hudson, 2001)

6 External links

Preceded by:
Amenhotep III

Pharaoh of Egypt
Eighteenth Dynasty

Succeeded by:
Smenkhkare

Pharaohs Religious leaders

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