Akhenaton

Egyptian king (r. 1350-c. 1334 b.c.e.)

• Born: c. 1390 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Egypt
• Died: c. 1360 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Akhetaton (now Tel el Amarna), Egypt

Akhenaton is credited with the establishment of monotheism in Egypt; he built a new capital, Akhetaton, in honor of Aton, the sun god.

Early Life

Born Amenhotep IV, Akhenaton (ah-keh-NAH-tuhn) was the son and successor of Amenhotep III (also known as Amenophis III) of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Akhenaton’s life and accomplishments need to be seen in the context of his family and of Egyptian history in general. Egyptian history is conventionally divided into thirty-one dynasties, which stretched from about 2925 to 332 b.c.e., and were succeeded by the Greek Ptolemies from 332 until 30 b.c.e. and the Roman emperors from 30 b.c.e. to 395 c.e. These dynasties are clumped together in groups under various designations, with the period of Akhenaton falling into the group of dynasties known as the New Kingdom Period (c. 1570-c. 1069), approximately in the middle of ancient Egyptian history.

The New Kingdom in the fifteenth century b.c.e. covered an area almost two thousand miles from north to south, most of it centered on the Nile River. The architects of this kingdom were Thutmose I, Thutmose III, and Amenhotep II. By the time of Amenhotep II, the northern city of Memphis had been, in effect, displaced by Thebes as the center of royal power. Three hundred miles upriver from Memphis, Thebes was the home of the royal family, and the rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty began building tombs for themselves in the desolate region west of Thebes known as the Valley of the Kings.

One consequence of Thebes’s rise to power was an increase in the influence of the god Amen-Ra, whose large temple was at nearby Karnak. Amen-Ra was a powerful sun god whose name is embedded in such proper names as Tutankhamen and Amenhotep. As a result of Amen-Ra’s dominance at Thebes, the city became the center of religious celebrations.

Akhenaton’s father, whose reign was roughly from 1386 to 1349, controlled Egypt at the peak of its power. He married, when quite young, a general’s daughter named Tiy, but as was common, he had numerous concubines from Syria and other regions. Only the six children—two boys and four girls—of his marriage to Tiy, however, had royal significance. The second son, who became Amenhotep IV, was born around 1390.

Amenhotep III was an impressive man who achieved a reputation as a bold hunter and a gifted diplomat. He publicized his reign in a series of innovative scarab seals, each inscribed with a brief account of some historic event. Amenhotep III was also an ambitious builder; although early in his reign he continued to maintain a royal household in Memphis, he later moved to Thebes and spent the last ten years of his life directing construction projects in that city. At the same time, he had built the temple of Amen-Ra (in modern Luxor) near Karnak on the Nile River. The costs were enormous: The temple at Montu alone used 2.5 tons (2.25 metric tons) of gold and 1,250 pounds (567 kilograms) of lapis lazuli.

During these last ten years in Thebes, Amenhotep III hosted three opulent jubilees in his palace. The sybaritic life took its toll. Amenhotep III’s mummy presents a fat, bald man with rotten teeth; the king died at about the age of thirty-eight and was succeeded by his second son, Amenhotep IV, or Akhenaton, as he soon came to call himself.

Life’s Work

His older brother apparently having died young, Amenhotep IV ascended the throne in about 1377. One peculiarity of the new king’s background is his failure to appear on his father’s monuments, suggesting that for some reason his existence had deliberately been downplayed. The depictions of him show a deformed body that may have been an embarrassment to his family. His sagging belly, elongated face and neck, and feminine hips all point to a pituitary condition now known as Frölich’s syndrome. Although Frölich’s syndrome usually results in eunuchoidism, Amenhotep IV married Nefertiti, and they had several children. Unfortunately, little is known about Nefertiti—she may have been Amenhotep’s cousin—and it is not even certain that Amenhotep was the natural father of the children she bore.

For the first year of his reign, Amenhotep continued the building projects of his father. He then embarked on his own distinctive projects. He soon planned a spectacular jubilee, a surprising departure from the usual practice of hosting them only after a reign of thirty years; this jubilee was marked by the building of four large temples at nearby Karnak.

The historical record at this point is extremely sketchy for two reasons. First, when he erected his new city of Akhetaton, Amenhotep thoroughly eradicated the memorials to Amen-Ra and the other sun gods. Second, after his death, one of his successors, Horemheb, destroyed the four temples at Karnak, whose remains, in the form of blocks known as talatat, scholars have recently been painstakingly fitting together.

The reconstructed reliefs on these temple remains have produced several surprises for scholars. The talatat reveal, for example, that Amenhotep maintained a heavy military presence around himself at all times, a practice that implies insecurity. The talatat reliefs also celebrate Nefertiti in diverse depictions—especially surprising because Amenhotep himself appears nowhere in the decorations of his structures. No firm conclusions can be drawn, but it is impossible not to speculate on the possibility that Nefertiti played a much greater role in the royal planning than that evinced by the scanty evidence available before the talatat reconstructions.

After about five years at Thebes, Amenhotep suddenly abandoned that city and built a new capital farther north down the Nile River. This new capital was named Akhetaton, or “horizon of the Disk.” At the same time, Amenhotep changed his name to Akhenaton (he who is useful to the Sun-disk). In keeping with his new name and devotion, Akhenaton declared Amen-Ra, the old sun god, anathema. He had Amen-Ra’s name plastered over on each royal cartouche (an oblong figure enclosing a royal name or epithet), and the name of his god Aton was then inscribed on them. Throughout the kingdom, the name Amen-Ra was also at this time desecrated wherever it appeared on such objects as walls and tombs. Akhetaton was built on what is today called Tell el-Amārna, and the period of Akhetaton’s dominance is designated the Amarna Age.

Akhenaton’s new city was a hastily constructed affair, probably of inferior workmanship, stretching out for seven miles along the east bank of the Nile in Middle Egypt. Akhenaton’s own residence was a large village at the city’s north end. An unusual walled enclosure designated Maru-aton dominated the southern part of the city; with its pools and gardens, it was probably a site for cult observances.

Akhenaton’s mother, Queen Tiy, was part of the entourage that moved to Akhetaton, and it now appears that a second wife, known as Queen Kiya, also accompanied him to the new home, although her role and status are unclear. The military guard continued as strong around Akhenaton at Akhetaton as at Thebes, but there was a complete shuffle in the important personnel at the court. The other cities, especially Thebes and Memphis, were allowed to fend for themselves; the old elite believed that they had been snubbed by the heretic king and his parvenus in the new center of the kingdom.

In about the eleventh year of Akhenaton’s rule, the royal family began dying, perhaps as a result of a plague in the region. Thus by the fourteenth year, Queen Tiy, Kiya, and four of Akhenaton’s six daughters were all dead. With their passing, and the king’s aging, his daughter Meritaton rose in power and esteem, and by the fifteenth year, she was being depicted in statuary with her husband, Smenkhare (he whom the spirit of Ra has ennobled). The epithets devoted to Smenkhare indicate that he probably acted as the king’s coregent. It is an open question whether Smenkhare ever actually ruled by himself or whether the throne went directly to Tutankhamen on Akhenaton’s death around the year 1360.

What happened to Nefertiti during these last years of Akhenaton’s reign is not known. The fact that she seems to have disappeared at about the same time that Smenkhare came on the scene has inspired scholarly conjecture that they were the same person, but the theory is burdened by too many improbabilities to be convincing. As far as is known, she survived these final years at Akhetaton but with greatly reduced royal influence.

Tutankhamen, possibly Akhenaton’s son by Kiya, moved back to Thebes after three years, and the power in the kingdom was concentrated largely in the capable hands of one of Akhenaton’s top officials, Ay, who himself ruled for about four years after Tutankhamen’s death. Ay’s successor, Horemheb, destroyed Akhenaton’s temples at Karnak, and the work and innovations of the heretic king were concluded.

Significance

Recent scholarship challenges the old romantic picture of a humanist Akhenaton, a pioneering champion of monotheism in whose steps Moses followed. The king was an insecure ruler, physically unattractive, thrust into a role that surrounded him with figures from his father’s establishment whom he feared. His vacillation weakened Egypt’s control of its northern provinces, and he left the administration of his kingdom to his military advisers. Historian Donald Redford characterizes Akhenaton as a dreamy soul devoted to cultic reforms that he did not really understand. By not replacing Amen-Ra with a significant mythology, Akhenaton was actually propagating atheism. The Sun-disk, Redford says, could never be seen as “god,” and Redford spells out his conception of the real focus of Akhenaton’s worship:

What it was Akhenaton tells us plainly enough: the Disk was his father, the universal king. Significant, it seems to me, is the fact that, on the eve of Amenophis III’s passing, the king who sat on Egypt’s throne bore as his most popular sobriquet the title “The Dazzling Sun-disk”; on the morrow of the “revolution” the only object of veneration in the supernal realm is King Sun-disk, exalted in the heavens and ubiquitously termed by Akhenaton “my father.”

Redford’s contemptuous verdict on Akhenaton is that the king was an effete and slothful leader of an “aggregation of voluptuaries.” Moreover, Akhenaton appears to Redford as the worst kind of totalitarian, one who demanded “universal submission” from everyone. It is a harsh verdict that Redford submits and one that more sympathetic scholars will surely challenge as they continue to study the meager evidence of the life and accomplishments of this elusive king.

Bibliography

Aldred, Cyril. Akhenaten and Nefertiti. New York: Viking Press, 1973. This catalog of an exhibition at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, written by one of the period’s most eminent scholars, is an invaluable study of the art of Akhenaton’s reign. Includes illustrations, many in color, and an extensive bibliography. Fully annotated.

Aldred, Cyril. The Egyptians. 3d ed. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998. Aldred provides an excellent general history of the region, with many black-and-white and color illustrations. Includes a bibliography and indexes.

Baines, John, and Jaromir Málek. Atlas of Ancient Egypt. New York: Facts on File, 1984. Baines and Málek provide an especially full and detailed reference book, replete with excellent tables, summaries of the ancient hieroglyphic writing system, maps, and time lines.

Hornung, Erik. Akhenaton and the Religion of Light. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999. This examination of Akhenaton’s period extends to recent archaeological finds. Hornung emphasizes that Akhenaton’s monotheism represented the earliest attempt in history to explain the entire natural and human world on the basis of a single principle, making light the “absolute reference point.” Also addresses the origins of the new religion.

Redford, Donald B. Akhenaten: The Heretic King. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984. A detailed scholarly analysis of Akhenaton and his accomplishments by the man who directed the Akhenaton Temple Project. Redford’s account is one of the standard studies. Includes an index, a bibliography, and illustrations.