Akhenaten
Akhenaten, the tenth ruler of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty, did something no pharaoh had dared before: he erased the gods. Not one or two minor deities, but the entire pantheon that had sustained Egyptian civilization for thousands of years. He replaced them all with a single solar disc, the Aten, and then declared himself the only person on Earth permitted to worship it. He built a brand new capital city from nothing. He commissioned art that looked unlike anything Egypt had ever produced. And then, within a few years of his death, his successors worked to obliterate every trace of him from history. Later pharaohs called him simply "the enemy" or "that criminal". He was all but lost to memory until the late 19th century, when archaeologists uncovered his buried capital. Since then, historians have described him as "enigmatic", "the first individual in history", and also as "possibly insane". How did a younger prince, born into a dynasty of tradition-bound pharaohs, become the most controversial figure in ancient Egyptian history? And what did his brief, radical reign actually accomplish?
Donald B. Redford dates Akhenaten's birth to before his father Amenhotep III's 25th regnal year, roughly 1363-1361 BC. He was not expected to rule. His elder brother, crown prince Thutmose, held that distinction. Thutmose even served as High Priest of Ptah in Memphis, and some Egyptologists believe the younger brother may have inherited that religious role when Thutmose died unexpectedly, perhaps around their father's thirtieth regnal year. Egyptologist Cyril Aldred suggested that this priestly service to Ptah, the patron god of craftsmen, may have shaped the prince's unusual artistic sensibilities. The high priests of Ptah were sometimes called "The Greatest of the Directors of Craftsmanship". Beyond a single mention on a wine docket at the Malkata palace, nothing concrete survives about his childhood. Proposals about his tutors range from the scribes Heqareshu and Meryre II to the vizier Aperel, but only a servant named Parennefer is confirmed by his own tomb inscription to have served the prince. Whether the future pharaoh grew up in Malkata or in Memphis, where the cult of the sun god Ra was practiced at nearby Heliopolis, scholars cannot say for certain. Redford and James K. Hoffmeier note that Ra's cult was so widespread across Egypt that Akhenaten could have been drawn to solar worship regardless of where he spent his early years.
Akhenaten took Egypt's throne as Amenhotep IV most likely in 1353 or 1351 BC, and his first years showed nothing of the revolution to come. Surviving inscriptions show the new pharaoh worshipping Atum, Osiris, Anubis, Nekhbet, Hathor, and the Eye of Ra. The High Priest of Amun remained active through at least his fourth regnal year. In the tomb of Ramose, the pharaoh appears on one wall in traditional style, seated on a throne in stiff formality. On the other side of the same doorway, Amenhotep IV and Nefertiti are shown at the window of appearances with the sun disc already positioned above them. That one tomb captures the moment of transition. He continued his father's construction projects at Karnak's Precinct of Amun-Re and decorated its Third Pylon with images of himself worshipping Ra-Horakhty in the traditional falcon-headed form. He also ordered Aten temples built in cities across the country: Bubastis, Heliopolis, Memphis, Nekhen, Kawa, and Kerma among them. The new Aten temples were built without roofs, so that worshippers stood in the open sunlight rather than in the dark enclosures traditional to Egyptian religion. Around his second or third regnal year, Amenhotep IV organized a Sed festival, a ceremony normally reserved for a pharaoh's thirtieth year of rule. Egyptologists offer several explanations for why a young pharaoh held this ritual rejuvenation ceremony so early, and none has achieved consensus. What they do agree on is that during the festivities, the pharaoh made offerings only to the Aten.
Two letters from Ipy, the high steward of Memphis, mark the last official documents to name the pharaoh as Amenhotep IV. Found at Gurob, those letters are dated to regnal year five, day nineteen of the growing season's third month. About one month later, a boundary stela at Akhetaten already bore the name Akhenaten. Between those two documents, the pharaoh remade himself. Egyptologists Gertie Englund and Florence Friedman analyzed contemporary texts to arrive at a translation of his new name: "Effective for the Aten", arguing that the frequency with which the pharaoh described himself using that precise phrase suggests his name was an expression of personal identity. On the same day the name changed, or nearly so, Akhenaten decreed the founding of a new capital. He chose a site roughly halfway between Thebes and Memphis, on the east bank of the Nile, where a natural dip in the cliffs formed a shape resembling the Egyptian hieroglyph for "horizon". The land had never been inhabited. One boundary stela records that the site was selected precisely because it belonged to no god, no goddess, no ruler, and no people who could claim it. The city, called Akhetaten, meaning "Horizon of the Aten", rose quickly. Builders used smaller, standardized blocks called talatats, measuring roughly 27 by 27 by 54 centimeters. Their lighter, uniform size made construction faster than with the massive blocks used by earlier pharaohs. By his eighth regnal year, the city was ready for the royal family. Only his most loyal subjects followed him there.
A speech given by Amenhotep IV at the beginning of his second regnal year, a copy of which survives on a pylon at the Karnak Temple Complex, offers the clearest window into his thinking. Speaking before the royal court, he declared that the temples of the gods had fallen to ruin and that the gods themselves had ceased their movements, one after the other. Only the sun disc remained, moving and existing forever. Donald B. Redford compared this speech to a manifesto that explained all the religious changes to come. By Year Nine, Akhenaten declared the Aten not simply the supreme god but the only god worth worshipping. He ordered the defacing of Amun's temples across Egypt and, in several cases, even the plural word "gods" was removed from inscriptions. He simultaneously declared himself the sole intermediary between the Aten and all people. Egyptologists trace the development of Atenism through changes in how the god was depicted and named. In the earliest stage, the sun disc still rested on the head of the traditional falcon-headed Ra-Horakhty. In the final stage, the disc sent out sunrays shaped like long arms ending in human hands, accompanied by a new royal epithet: "the great living Disc which is in jubilee, lord of heaven and earth." Akhenaten's theology found its fullest expression in the Great Hymn to the Aten, found in the tomb of his successor Ay and possibly composed by Akhenaten himself. The hymn describes the Aten as the creator of all life, who recreates the world each morning at sunrise. One passage runs: "O Sole God beside whom there is none! You made the earth as you wished, you alone." Another declares that Akhenaten alone understands the god: "You are in my heart, and there is none who knows you except your son."
A cache of 382 diplomatic texts found between 1887 and 1979 near Amarna, written on clay tablets, gives a remarkably detailed picture of Egypt's international position during Akhenaten's reign. The letters document correspondence between the Egyptian court and rulers in Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Canaan, Arzawa, Mitanni, and the Hittites. Egypt's power in the region had peaked roughly a hundred years before Akhenaten under Thutmose III, who led successful military campaigns into Nubia and Syria. By Akhenaten's time, the Hittites under Šuppiluliuma I were rising fast, eventually overtaking the Mitanni as the dominant power in the northern part of the region. The letters show Akhenaten monitoring vassal affairs closely, dispatching Egyptian and Nubian troops, archers, chariots, and ships as needed. He was not the pacific dreamer that some 19th and 20th-century historians portrayed. One confirmed military campaign sent his Viceroy of Kush, Tuthmose, to suppress a rebellion by Nubian nomadic tribes; the victory was marked on stelae at Amada and Buhen. One exchange in the letters shows Akhenaten's frustration with a particularly persistent vassal. Rib-Hadda of Byblos wrote a total of 60 letters begging for military intervention as the state of Amurru expanded around him. Akhenaten once replied, according to letter EA 124: "You are the one that writes to me more than all the (other) mayors." Rib-Hadda eventually lost his city in a coup led by his own brother and was delivered to the king of Sidon, where he was almost certainly executed. The only Egyptian border territory lost during Akhenaten's reign was the province of Amurru in Syria, when its ruler Aziru defected to the Hittites after being summoned to Egypt, released, and promising loyalty he did not keep.
The art produced during Akhenaten's reign broke with every convention of Egyptian royal portraiture. Traditional depictions showed pharaohs as youthful and athletic, serene in their divinity. Akhenaten was shown with a sagging stomach, broad hips, thin legs, thick thighs, large breasts, a long narrow face, and thick lips. Dominic Montserrat, in his study Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt, concluded that by the early 21st century most Egyptologists read these features not as medical evidence but as symbolic art: because the Aten was described as "the mother and father of all humankind", the pharaoh was depicted as androgynous to embody the god's dual nature. The royal family itself became a subject of art for the first time in Egyptian history. Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their daughters are shown kissing, holding hands, and relaxing in intimate domestic scenes. Nefertiti appears performing acts traditionally reserved for the pharaoh alone, including "smiting the enemy". An inscription discovered in 2012 at a limestone quarry in Deir el-Bersha, dated to Year 16, month 3 of Akhet, day 15, confirms that Akhenaten and Nefertiti were still a ruling couple just a year before the pharaoh's death. His twelfth regnal year is considered by Aidan Dodson and other Egyptologists to be the zenith of his reign, marked by a great royal reception at which all six daughters and the full royal court received tributes from Nubia, the Land of Punt, Syria, the Kingdom of Hattusa, Libya, and the Mediterranean islands. Within the five years that followed, several of those daughters, including Meketaten, Neferneferure, and Setepenre, appear to have died. Akhenaten died in his seventeenth regnal year.
Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamun in Year 2 of his reign, around 1332 BC, and moved the court back to Thebes. The dismantling of Akhenaten's legacy accelerated under each successive pharaoh. Horemheb, the last pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, ordered Aten temples torn down and their talatat blocks reused in new construction projects dedicated to Amun. Seti I, the second pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty, had Amun's name re-carved wherever Akhenaten had removed it, and then ordered that Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Neferneferuaten, Tutankhamun, and Ay all be deleted from official king lists, so that official records made it appear that Amenhotep III was immediately succeeded by Horemheb. The scribe Mose's tomb refers to Akhenaten's reign simply as "the time of the enemy of Akhetaten". Akhenaten's reforms left a complicated residue that outlasted the erasure. According to Jacobus van Dijk, the Amarna period began a long-term shift in how Egyptians related to their gods. Before Akhenaten, the pharaoh was the intermediary between people and the divine. After Atenism collapsed and traditional religion returned, something had changed: Egyptians began to believe the gods intervened directly in their lives rather than acting through the pharaoh. That shift in popular piety persisted through the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. The Amun priesthood's power grew steadily until, by around 1077 BC during the Twenty-first Dynasty, the High Priests of Amun effectively governed parts of Egypt. Akhenaten's changes to written language also proved durable: the vernacular linguistic elements introduced during the Amarna period, including the definite article and new possessive forms, remained a more common part of official texts starting with the Nineteenth Dynasty, even as his name stayed off the king lists. Sigmund Freud, in his book Moses and Monotheism, was among the first modern thinkers to propose a direct link between Atenism and later monotheism, a question that continues to be debated today.
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Common questions
Who was Akhenaten and when did he rule ancient Egypt?
Akhenaten was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty who reigned approximately 1353-1336 BC or 1351-1334 BC. He was born Amenhotep IV, the younger son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, and changed his name in the fifth year of his reign to reflect his devotion to the solar disc Aten.
What religion did Akhenaten introduce and what was Atenism?
Akhenaten introduced Atenism, a religion centered on worship of the Aten, the solar disc. By his ninth regnal year he had banned worship of all other Egyptian gods, defaced Amun's temples across Egypt, and declared himself the sole intermediary between the Aten and humanity. Egyptologists debate whether Atenism was strictly monotheistic, monolatristic, or henotheistic.
Why did Akhenaten build a new capital city called Akhetaten?
Akhenaten founded Akhetaten, known today as Amarna, around his fifth regnal year on a previously uninhabited site roughly halfway between Thebes and Memphis on the east bank of the Nile. A surviving boundary stela records that the site was chosen partly because it belonged to no god, goddess, ruler, or people who could claim it. Egyptologists believe the move may also have been aimed at breaking the influence of the powerful Amun priesthood based in Thebes.
What are the Amarna Letters and what do they reveal about Akhenaten's foreign policy?
The Amarna Letters are a cache of 382 diplomatic texts, mostly clay tablets, discovered between 1887 and 1979 near the site of Akhenaten's capital. They document correspondence between Egypt and rulers in Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Canaan, Mitanni, and the Hittites. The letters show Akhenaten actively dispatching troops and monitoring vassal affairs, contradicting the older scholarly view that he neglected foreign policy.
What happened to Akhenaten's religion and monuments after his death?
After Akhenaten's death, his successors systematically dismantled his legacy. Tutankhamun returned the court to Thebes and restored traditional worship around 1332 BC. Horemheb ordered Aten temples demolished and their building blocks reused. Seti I then removed Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, and several others from official king lists to erase the Amarna period from the official record.
Is the mummy found in tomb KV55 really Akhenaten?
The identification remains contested. A mummy discovered in tomb KV55 in the Valley of the Kings in 1907 was studied by a team led by Zahi Hawass, with results published in 2010, identifying it as the father of Tutankhamun and "most probably" Akhenaten. Subsequent scholars have challenged the study, noting that the genetic markers could apply to a brother of Akhenaten such as Smenkhkare, and that the KV55 individual cannot be reconciled as the maternal grandfather of Tutankhamun's daughters under the proposed family tree.
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