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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 ]
Some debate has focused on the extent to which Akhenaten forced his religious reforms on his people. [206] Certainly, as time drew on, he revised the names of the Aten, and other religious language, to increasingly exclude references to other gods; at some point, also, he embarked on the wide-scale erasure of traditional gods' names, especially ...
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.
The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People. London: Thames & Hudson. Martin, Geoffrey Thorndike. 1991. A Bibliography of the Amarna Period and Its Aftermath: The Reigns of Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, and Ay (c. 1350–1321 BC). London: Kegan Paul International. Murnane, William J. 1995. Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt.
While the reforms of Akhenaten are generally believed to have been oriented towards a sort of monotheism, or perhaps more accurately, monolatrism, archaeological evidence shows other deities were also revered, even at the centre of the Aten cult – if not officially, then at least by the people who lived and worked there.
Although he began construction at Karnak during his rule, the association the city had with other gods drove Akhenaten to establish a new city and capital at Amarna for the Aten. Akhenaten built the city along the east bank of the Nile River, setting up workshops, palaces, suburbs and temples. The Great Temple of the Aten was located just north ...
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.
It was the most prosperous time for the Egyptian people and marked the peak of Egypt's power. [4] In 1845, the concept of a "New Kingdom" as one of three "golden ages" was coined by German scholar Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen; the original definition would evolve significantly throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. [5]