Akhenaten and the Amarna Period

Myth-making: a case study

ARCH 666 3/13/2017

Ancient Egypt

1. Predynastic Period 2. Early Dynastic Period 3. Old Kingdom 4. 1st Intermediate Period 5. Middle Kingdom 6. 2nd Intermediate Period 7. New Kingdom 8. 3rd Intermediate Period 9. Late Period 10. Graeco-Roman Period

Amarna Period

(= The end of Dynasty 18)

● Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten (ca. 1353–1335 BC) ● Neferneferuaten (ca. 1335-1333 BC) ● Smenkhare (ca. 1333-1332 BC) ● Tutankhaten/Tutankhamun (ca. 1333-1323 BC) ● Ay (ca. 1323-1319 BC) ● Horemheb (ca. 1319-1307 BC)

Amarna Period

(= The end of Dynasty 18)

Amenhotep IV

● Akhenaten “Effective for the Aten”

Tell el-Amarna

● Akhetaten “Horizon of the Aten”

Amarna Art

Aftermath

Tutankhamun's Restoration Stela at Karnak

Abydos king-list w/o Amarna kings

Abydos King-list

● Amenhotep III (ca. 1391-1353 BC) ● Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten (ca. 1353–1335 BC) ● Neferneferuaten (ca. 1335-1333 BC) ● Smenkhare (ca. 1333-1332 BC) ● Tutankhaten/Tutankhamun (ca. 1333-1323 BC) ● Ay (ca. 1323-1319 BC) ● Horemheb (ca. 1319-1307 BC)

Winifred Brunton (1880-1959)

“Cast Down the Heretic” (album Annihilation of the Wicked)

The Great Company of Gods Gather in Retribution. They Hath Passed Judgment upon Thee. They Cast Down Your Heresy... The Gods have Pronounced Thy Doom. They Scorn Thee and Thy False Aten.

“Could he have been one of them?”

Myth #1: Akhenaten & Aliens

● G. Tsoukalos (Ancient Aliens):

“why did he do this? Because according to his writings and his poems that were written about him later on, he was visited by one of those beings that descended from the sky who told Akhenaten 'this is the way, I am your god!'”

Myth #1: Akhenaten & Aliens

● G. Tsoukalos (Ancient Aliens):

Myth #2: Akhenaten & Atlantis

● G. Tsoukalos

But myths are created not only by mystic writers…

…a.k.a. welcome to the dark side of scholarship...

Donald Redford (Akhenaten: the Heretic King, 1984)

● “Is this effete monarch, who could never hunt or do battle, a true descendant of the authors of Egypt's empire?”

● “a man deemed ugly by the accepted standards of the day, secluded in the palace in his minority, certainly close to his mother, possibly ignored by his father, outshone by his brother and sisters, unsure of himself.”

#3: Akhenaten & Genetic Disease?

● Froelich's Syndrome ● Marfan's Syndrome ● Homocystinuria ● Familial Temporal Epilepsy ● Aromatase Excess Syndrome ● Loeys-Dietz Syndrome ● Antley-Bixer Syndrome ● Klinefelter Syndrome ● …...

#3: Akhenaten & Genetic Disease?

“The presence of disease is further supported by numerous reliefs, statuettes, and other sculptures of Akhenaten and his family dating from the Amarna period. These artifacts show the royalty of that era as having a somewhat androgynous appearance or a bizarre form of gynecomastia.”

#4: Tutankhamum, son of Akhenaten?

“The results demonstrate that the mummy in KV55 is the son of Amenhotep III and father of Tutankhamun, leading to the assumption that the mummy can be identified as Akhenaten.”

Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)

● Margaret Murray (The Splendour that was Egypt, 1949):

“The Tel el Amarna period has had more nonsense written about it that any other period in Egyptian history, and Akhenaten is a strong rival to Cleopatra for the historical novelist.”

● Margaret Murray (The Splendour that was Egypt, 1949):

“The Tel el Amarna period has had more nonsense written about it that any other period in Egyptian history, and Akhenaten is a strong rival to Cleopatra for the historical novelist.”

Amarna Religion

● The Great Hymn to the Aten:

“Adoration of the Sun-Horus-of-the-Double- Horizon, who becomes active in the horizon, in his identity as the Light-that-is-in-the-Aten.... the Sun’s son Akhenaten...and the Chief Queen Nefertiti.”

“his identity as the Light-that-is-in-the-Aten”

The Great Hymn to the Aten

“Your rays embrace the lands, to the end of all you have made ... while you are far, with your rays on earth: you are in their(=people's) face … (you are) risen in your form of the living Aten, apparent and shining, far and glittering … When your movements fade and you set in the western horizon, the land is in darkness, in the manner of death …. How manifold is what you make, even those hidden from sight, oh sole god with no other but him, creating the world to your will.”

The Great Hymn to the Aten

“When you have gone, no eye can exist, for you make their sight so as not to be seen yourself except by your son, the sole one you made, for you are in my heart, but there is no other who knows you except your son, Neferkheperure-Waenre (=Akhenaten) whom you made aware of your designs and your strength: how the land comes from your action as you make them, when you have risen, they live; when you set, they die.”

Amarna Art

Khepri

Men and Bak Stela at Aswan

“a disciple whom his Person(=king) himself instructed, chief of sculptors in the big and important monuments of the king in the House of Aten in Akhetaten”

Men and Bak Stela at Aswan

Monotheism...?

Other gods at Akhetaten: ● Amulets (e.g. Bes, Taweret, Eye of Horus) ● Theophoric names (e.g. Thutmose = “born of Thoth”)

...or monolatry?

William Murnane (Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt, 1995):

“the individual remains hidden behind the carefully crafted persona”

Akhenaten “has become a simulacrum, an endlessly repeated copy with no original. His immortality lies precisely in what is not there. He has survived because behind those recognizable features there is a space where conflicting desires – erotic, aesthetic, political – can be enacted and lived out.”