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Atenism, also known as the Aten religion, [1] the Amarna religion, [2] the Amarna revolution, and the Amarna heresy, was a religion in ancient Egypt. It was founded by Akhenaten , a pharaoh who ruled the New Kingdom under the Eighteenth Dynasty . [ 3 ]
Akhenaten's status as a religious revolutionary has led to much speculation, ranging from scholarly hypotheses to non-academic fringe theories. Although some believe the religion he introduced was mostly monotheistic, many others see Akhenaten as a practitioner of an Aten monolatry , [ 234 ] as he did not actively deny the existence of other ...
The cult-center of the Aten was at the capital city Akhenaten founded, Akhetaten, [1] though other cult sites have been found in Thebes and Heliopolis. The use of Amarna as a capital city and religious center was relatively short lived compared to the 18th Dynasty or New Kingdom as a whole as it was shortly abandoned after the death of ...
Art before Akhenaten was characterized by its formality and restraint, and shifted toward becoming stylized. [3] While Akhenaten is famous for the changes he made in the religious practices and art, there were also changes in temple architecture, building methods, and public inscriptions.
It is known that Atenism did not solely attribute divinity to the Aten. Akhenaten continued the imperial cult, proclaiming himself the son of Aten and encouraging the people to worship him. [5] The people were to worship Akhenaten; only Akhenaten and the pharaoh's wife Nefertiti could worship Aten directly. [6]
Meryra served as the High Priest of the cult of Aten, a new religious tradition instituted by King Akhenaten.This belief system placed exclusive emphasis on sun worship in the form of Aten, or the solar disc, a deity encapsulating the idea of many gods into the essence of the sun. [3]
In the fifth year of his reign, Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten (ꜣḫ-n-jtn, "Effective for the Aten") and moved his capital to Amarna, which he named Akhetaten. During the reign of Akhenaten, the Aten (jtn, the sun disk) became, first, the most prominent deity, and eventually came to be considered the only god. [8]
The artistic shift appears to be related to the king's religious reforms centering on the monotheistic or monolatric worship of the Aten, the disc of the Sun, as giver of life. Like Akhenaten's religious reforms, his preferred art style was abandoned after the end of his reign.