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Limestone relief at Amarna depicting Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their children adoring Aten, c. 1372–1355 BC. 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.
Following Akhenaten's death, Egypt gradually returned to its traditional polytheistic religion, partly because of how closely associated the Aten became with Akhenaten. [210] Atenism likely stayed dominant through the reigns of Akhenaten's immediate successors, Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten, as well as early in the reign of Tutankhaten. [211]
The worship of Aten and the coinciding rule of Akhenaten are major identifying characteristics of a period within the Eighteenth Dynasty referred to as the Amarna Period (c. 1353 – 1336 BCE). [1] Atenism and the worship of the Aten as the sole god of ancient Egypt state worship did not persist beyond Akhenaten's death.
During the 18th dynasty reign of Akhenaten, the new city of Akhetaten was completely built up and the regular worship of the Aten was established. However, shortly after the pharaoh's death, all fell apart as successive kings destroyed the Temple and the city in an effort to return to the traditional religion of Egypt.
Akhenaten ceased to fund the temples of other deities and erased gods' names and images on monuments, targeting Amun in particular. This new religious system, sometimes called Atenism, differed dramatically from the polytheistic worship of many gods in all other periods. The Aten had no mythology, and it was portrayed and described in more ...
The Great Hymn to the Aten is the longest of a number of hymn-poems written to the sun-disk deity Aten. Composed in the middle of the 14th century BC, it is varyingly attributed to the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Akhenaten or his courtiers, depending on the version, who radically changed traditional forms of Egyptian religion by replacing them with ...
After the death of Akhenaten, depictions of his rule and religion were destroyed because they were considered to be heretical. In Meryra's tomb, Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s features have been consistently erased but their bodies and gestures can still be seen in the chisel marks beneath the Aten's rays for location. [4]
While it is not clear if he held that the Aten was the only god , he clearly regarded it as the only deity worthy of his worship . To pay homage to his chosen god, Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten. [1] Throughout his rule, Akhenaten tried to change many aspects of Egyptian culture to celebrate or praise his god.