The Aten – Unravelling the Mystery of the Ancient Egyptian God

In the Aten Sequence Books, our not-so-noble hero Aten has persuaded the gullible Prince Amenophis that there is a new god in Egypt called Aten, who can only be worshipped through him.  The foolish prince is then persuaded to embark on a mission to clear all obstacles, including his own elder brother, out of his way of his becoming the next Pharaoh so he can impose his new religion on the Egyptians and thus allowing Aten access to the gold he needs stored in the vaults under the Temple of Karnak. But in Ancient Egypt who or what was the Aten and how was it worshipped?

Akhenaten worshipping the sun disc

The Aten was the god the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh Akhenaten singled out from the vast pantheon of Egyptian gods and goddesses to worship.  For the first time in Egypt’s long history, there was only one official deity; only one god who could be worshipped, a god who could only be approached through the Pharaoh himself. In the ‘Great Hymn to the Aten’, which many scholars believe Akhenaten wrote himself, the king extols his god as the creator of life, the source of all nourishment and abundance for every person, animal, and plant on the planet.

So why did he choose this particular god? The Aten came to prominence during the long reign of his father, the Pharaoh Amenophis III, so it was a religious concept which was already developing not something the young prince snatched out of thin air.  The Aten would have been discussed and worshipped as he was growing up and his father’s royal palace at Malkata was referred to in ancient times as ‘the Palace of the Dazzling Aten’.

During this reign the deity is often show with the body of a man with a falcon’s head. However, references to the Aten or sun disk did start appearing much earlier in Egyptian history than the 18^th dynasty.  As far back as the Middle Kingdom, there is a reference to this radiant deity in the famous ‘Story of Sinuhe’.  The Aten was depicted as a yellow or golden sun disk and sometimes the full moon was referred to as the ‘silver Aten’. The deity’s full name was ‘Ra-Horakhty who rejoices in the horizon, in his Name as the Light which is in the sun disc’.

When he first ascended the throne Akhenaten was known by his given name Pharaoh Amenophis IV, but as he gradually embraced his new beliefs he changed his names, shut down the temples of the old priests and started building a new capital city entirely dedicated to his new religion on the Nile at what is now known as Amarna. He declared he would move to his new city, named Akhetaten, or ‘Horizon of the Aten’, with his wife and daughters and once there would never leave his city again.  To mark the boundaries of this new capital he had huge boundary stelae carved into the cliffs.

As Akhenaten was building his new capital Akhetaten, he had the name of his god carved onto these boundary stelae marking the city limits.  Sometimes it was shortened to Ra-Horus-Aten or just the Aten. From this time forward, the deity was no longer depicted in human form, but always as the sun disc emanating rays of light culminating in little hands that offered life, health and prosperity to Akhenaten and his family.  This was not a god for the people, but a deity which showered its abundance and light on Pharaoh, who then became a conduit of this divine energy to his country and people.  So in a way, it was Akhenaten himself who was now to be worshipped and seen as a god.

This was nothing particularly new in Egyptian thinking, as the Pharaoh had always been regarded as a physical manifestation of the divine, the direct link between the people and their gods.  But before there were many, many gods and goddesses in Egypt that an ordinary person could choose to honour and most houses had their own little shrines and statues of their favourite deity.  With the arrival of the Aten all this was stripped away and carvings, statues and references to the traditional gods were torn down or erased.

This new era also completely changed worship in the temples.  Not only were the old gods gone, but the temples themselves were very different.  In a traditional Egyptian temple, there would have been outer courtyards open to the sun thronging with people, but as you moved closer and closer into the heart of the complex it would get darker and darker with fewer people having access.  Finally the shrine of the god would be reached.  A dark chamber of secrets, magic and ceremonies probably only visited by the High Priest, a few of his senior clergy and the Pharaoh and his queen.

The new Aten temples were vast courts totally open to the life-giving rays of the sun.  There were rows and rows of offering tables heaped with all kinds of costly foods, drink and cups filled with smoking incense.  In the so-called Long Temple at Amarna the Egyptologists found the remains of 920 mudbrick offerings tables in a grid to the south of the temple wall and have estimated there was as many as another 150 in the central stone-built sanctuary that was, in the new way, left open to the skies.  It would be nice to think that all this abundance of food, a sure sign of Pharaoh’s wealth and power, would have been distributed among the people after the religious ceremonies were over, but there is no evidence for this.  It is not even known if the offering food was cooked on site or taken away to be prepared for feasting at the palace or a more humble family’s dinner.  Or was it just left for the god, rotting away under the merciless heat of the Egyptian sun?

Another unusual feature of these new temples was that there was no cult statue of the deity, which had to be washed and dressed in fresh clothes every day.  Because the interlinking courtyards and the inner sanctuary were all open to the sky, the sun disc was worshiped directly, by tracking its daily progress from where it rose in the east and set in the west.  There were priests in the Aten temples, but Akhenaten himself presided over some of the worship; acting as a High Priest and leading the other worshippers in reciting or singing ‘The Great Hymn to Aten’ and other prayers. 

The royal ladies of Amarna played an unusually prominent part in this worship, and Akhenaten’s queen Nefertiti was usually shown the same size as her husband, accompanying him with their six daughters in all his activities.  One of the great honours that could be bestowed on these royal women was having a small, open cult shrine, known as a ‘sunshade’ or ‘kiosk’ dedicated to them.  One of the features of the Amarna period was a turning away from the stylised art and formal depictions of gods and people towards a more natural style of art showing beautiful scenes of trees, pools, animals and all the bounty nature had to offer.  These ‘sunshades’ were often set in beautiful, sunlit surroundings where there was pools containing fish and colourful plants and flowers.  They created an oasis of tranquillity, somewhere for the women to come where it was quiet and peaceful, a place for contemplation and prayer.  

But even here human conflict crept in.  In one of the larger known sites for the ‘sunshades’ called the Maru-Aten, the names and titles of one Amarna royal lady was erased and recarved with the names and titles of Akhenaten’s oldest daughter Princess Meritaten.  It used to be thought that it had been her mother Nefertiti’s name which had been removed, but now many Egyptologists believe that it was the name of one of Akhenaten’s other queens, Kiya, which had been struck from history.

For all its glittering brilliance, the cult of the sun disc and Akhenaten’s new capital city were to last for less than twenty years.  This self-imposed exile and concentration on religion rather than affairs of state had weakened the Egyptian empire. There is also some evidence that a plague which was sweeping through the Middle East at that time, reached the Egyptian court killing some of the female members of the royal family.  When Akhenaten died there were a few shadowy years were who his successor was is disputed, some scholars thinking it was a young king called Smenkhare and others that Queen Nefertiti seized the throne and ruled on her own. 

But a few years later, when the young boy king Tutankhamen came to the throne, the capital was moved back to Thebes, the temples and old gods were reinstated and the names of Akhenaten and his god were erased.  Unfortunately Tutankhamen was destined to die young and the glittering 18^th dynasty came to an end with the reign of Horemheb, who saw to it that any last traces of this religious experiment were destroyed forever.  Akhetaten had been hastily constructed of mudbrick and any stone which had been used was stripped and used elsewhere, so it swiftly fell into disrepair and crumbled.  The tombs which had been carved in the hillsides were left empty and no more offerings were made in the temples.

Akhenaten image David Holt , Jean-Pierre Dalbera Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 Generic

Sources:

Amarna Project - http://amarnaproject.com/pages/amarna_the_place/central_city/index.shtml

The Aten - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aten

Ancient Egypt Online - http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/amarnareligion.html

What Happened to the Three Youngest Amarna Princesses?

The heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten and his beautiful wife Queen Nefertiti had six daughters, who were often shown with them on their monuments and in tomb decorations.  Before this time at the end of the 18^th dynasty it was rare for Pharaoh’s to be shown with their offspring or even alongside their royal wives, and there are probably many royal children who have not made it onto the pages of history from Ancient Egypt. But from these illustrations from Amarna it would appear that these little girls lived a privileged life of luxury and ease in the royal palace and also that they were loved and included in both the public and private lives of their parents.  But life expectancy was not very long in Ancient Egypt, even for the cosseted children of royalty, so what did happen to the three youngest Amarna princesses Neferneferuaten Tasherit, Neferneferure and Setepenre?

Amarna Princesses - Neferneferuaten and Neferneferure

What draws many people to the Amarna period of Ancient Egypt is the innovative, more realistic style of the art and statuary.  For the first time in Ancient Egypt’s long history the palaces were decorated with colourful scenes from nature, such as flying birds, fish in ponds, gambolling calves and plants.  The royal family were also shown in a more natural guise for the first time.  No longer were the Pharaoh and his Great Royal Wife shown in the perfect, formal poses of earlier reigns; they were drawn or carved with pot bellies and long, spindly limbs, doing the kind of things that ordinary families do, such as playing with the children and showing affection to one another. Some of the most charming scenes from this time depict the young Amarna princesses playing with each other, cuddling with their parents or even being naughty by poking a chariot horse with a stick.  But, as well as being attractive images, these carvings and wall paintings provide us with most of the evidence we have regarding the lives of these royal children.

Their royal father Akhenaten abandoned the traditional capital and religion of Egypt and built an entirely new city called Akhetaten, based on the worship of the Aten or sun disk, for his family and to be the principle royal administrative centre.  It is very likely that Neferneferuaten Tasherit (Beauty of the Beauties of Aten’ – Tasherit means ‘the younger one’ or ‘little’) was the first of the royal sisters to have been born in the new city, followed by Neferneferure (‘Most Beautiful One of Re’) shortly after and then the youngest princess, Setepenre (‘Chosen of Re’).  The very first image we have of them all dates to around year 9 and is a wall painting from the King’s House in Amarna. It shows the entire royal family relaxing, with Neferneferuaten Tasherit painted sitting with her sister Neferneferure on a cushion.  The fresco is very badly damaged unfortunately and all that is left of the picture of the youngest daughter, Setepenre, is her tiny hand.

The three youngest Amarna princesses are also shown in the decorations on the walls of the noble’s tombs at Amarna.  It is in these tombs that we see the last scenes that show Nefertiti surrounded by all six of her daughters.  In year 12 of Akhenaten a ‘Great Durbar’ was held at Amarna where foreign rulers and vassals came from all corners of the Empire to pay tribute and give offerings to the Pharaoh.  The three little princesses are shown with their elder sisters standing behind Akhenaten and Nefertiti as they receive tribute in the tombs of Meryre II and Huya, the Chief Steward of their grandmother Queen Tiye, and in one of the registers Neferneferure is shown holding a pet gazelle, which her youngest sister Setepenre leans forward to pet.  This ‘Great Durbar’ seems to be the nadir of Akhenaten’s reign, as after this glittering event things seem to start falling apart at Akhetaten and many members of the royal family slip away into the shadows of history.

There is evidence from the Amarna letters that a great plague was sweeping through the Middle East at that time and that unwittingly the coming together of so many people from different countries could have helped it to spread.  It is thought that the three youngest Amarna princesses may have been victims of whatever disease it was that was ravaging the population of Egypt.  The tiny Setepenre may have been the first to die, as there is no evidence of her after years 13-14.  Her name does appear on Wall C in the Royal Tomb, along with that of four of her sisters. She is also not shown on a wall in another chamber of the tomb that shows her parents and family mourning the death of her older sister Princess Meketaten.  No evidence of her burial has been found, although she was very likely interred in the Royal Tomb and, heartbreakingly, the little girl was probably not even six years old when she died.

Princess Neferneferure is also missing from the death scene of Meketaten in the royal tomb at Amarna, so may also have died by years 13-14.  However, it is important to remember that we do not know that much about the protocol surrounding royal burial ceremonies; these two princesses may simply have been too young to have been mourners in the scene.  However, Neferneferure’s name is plastered over on Wall C in another chamber in the tomb.  She could also have been buried in the Royal Tomb, although there is some evidence she could have been buried in another tomb at Amarna, Tomb 29, based on an inscription that was discovered on the handle of a pot that refers to the ‘inner (burial) chamber of Neferneferure’.  If she was indeed interred in this other tomb, it could be that she died after her father Akhenaten and the Royal Tomb was already sealed and could not be opened for another burial.

Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters

Again we cannot be certain what happened to Neferneferuaten; when she died or what was the cause of her death.  She is shown on the walls of the royal tomb mourning the death of her elder sister Meketaten accompanied by Meritaten and Ankhesenpaaten, so was presumably still alive at this time, which was around year 14.  There has been speculation that Neferneferuaten could have been married to a foreign ruler, one of her father Pharaoh Akhenaten’s vassals, and sent abroad but this has never been proved and would have been highly unusual. Egyptian princesses were married within the royal family or to prominent courtiers, and not married off into foreign royal families as diplomatic bargaining pieces. There is also a theory that she could have been her father’s mysterious co-regent, a shadowy figure who may have been either male or female. However, it is thought that she died before Tutankhamun and her sister Ankhesenpaaten (Ankhesenamun) came to the throne, as there is no evidence of her during their reign that has so far come to light.

Perhaps we will never know what the ultimate fate of these three young Amarna princesses was, but the sands of Egypt still hold many secrets and new evidence may be found during future excavations. So hopefully there are artefacts out there still waiting to be found that might give us more clues and further glimpses into the extraordinary royal lives of these three little girls.

Image Amarna Princesses - Neferneferuaten and Neferneferure Wikimedia Commons Any Purpose

Image Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

KV55 - Mystery Tomb of the Valley of the Kings

In the Aten Sequence books, Aten needs gold and he is not particularly scrupulous as to where he gets it from, so he sets up a little tomb robbing with Piy on the side.  During this period of Egypt’s history Pharaohs were buried in rock cut tombs in a remote, arid valley on the west bank of the Nile called the Valley of the Kings and then, during the reign of Akhenaten, tombs were dug at Akhetaten.  But so much of the history of the Amarna period is still not clear and there is a tomb in the Valley of the Kings that has raised at least as many questions as it has answered – the mysterious KV55.

So when did the first pharaoh get buried in the royal valley and why was this remote valley chosen?  Early in the 18^th dynasty of ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom one of pharaoh’s architects, a government official called Ineni, broke away from hundreds of years of royal tradition and dug the first royal rock cut tomb in a remote, lonely valley  ‘alone, no one seeing and no one hearing’.  Before this time the pharaohs had been buried in above-ground structures, initially in mastabas and then in pyramids and the larger and more visible they were the better.

Sarcophagus from KV55

We will never know for sure what led to this breaking away from tradition, but it may have been due to the fact that it did not matter how big or solid the structure was, these above-ground tombs were almost inevitably penetrated by tomb robbers and the rich contents of the burial chamber stolen and the mummy of the king ripped apart and destroyed to find the precious amulets and jewellery that were hidden in the wrappings.

To date sixty four tombs have been found in the Valley of the Kings, although many Egyptologists believe that there are more waiting to be discovered.  These are the tombs of pharaohs, queens, royal children and favoured officials and are labelled numerically from KV1 to KV64.  Some of these tombs are huge constructions reaching deep into the cliffs, elaborately carved and painted, and some are little more than shallow pits scratched out of the rock.

The Valley of the Kings has been a tourist attraction since Roman times, as is attested by the graffiti found in some of the tombs, and since the 19^th century has attracted visitors from all over the world.  The spectacular discovery of the undisturbed tomb of Tutankhamun in 1921 increased the flood of visitors and it has been declared that there is nothing left to find in the royal valley.

This has been refuted in recent years by the discovery of KV63 and now KV64, but with all the wealth of knowledge that we have about the royal valley, there is still a lot that we do not know and mysteries abound.

KV55 – the mysterious ‘Amarna’ Cache

In 1907 Edward R Ayrton, working on the behest of Theodore M Davis, uncovered a set of steps and the entrance to a previously unknown tomb. There was excitement when the sloping passage was found to be filled with clean loose chippings and they encountered two blocking walls, one a wall plastered and bearing the unbroken seal of the Royal Valley – the impression of a seated jackal, the god Anubis on a shrine and the crouching figures of nine bound captives.

When the walls were demolished they found two side panels of a wooden shrine covered in fine gold leaf and richly inscribed. They were in very poor condition but the hieroglyphs could still be read; they had belonged to Queen Tiye, the Great Royal Wife of Amenophis III and the mother of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten.  The end of the sloping passage led to a large, undecorated chamber containing further parts of the shrines, a battered mummy case and other objects apparently randomly strewn across the floor of the room.

All of these objects were also in very poor condition and the gold leaf fell to the floor as the air was disturbed.  Four alabaster canopic jars with exquisitely carved portrait heads were found in a niche in the far wall, but the name of the owner had been deliberately destroyed.

Canopic Jar From KV55 

On examination, they found that the golden coffin was collapsing onto the floor and contained a poorly preserved, albeit obviously royal, mummy with its left arm crossed over its chest and the right arm extended.  A gold vulture pectoral had been placed on the head of the mummy.  The mummy was unwrapped and examined in the tomb and sheets of gold removed, one with a cartouche on it thought to be that of Akhenaten.

There were also a couple of wooden boxes whose contents had been strewn across the floor, four magic bricks, some seals bearing the name of Tutankhamun and other fragments of furniture.  The wooden objects had all been damaged by water entering the tomb.

Some of the confusion surrounding the tomb concerns the poor documentation of the objects in situ, the lack of work done on preserving the objects and the rapid clearing of the tomb.  But who had the tomb been prepared for?  Who was the decaying mummy in the battered coffin?  Theodore Davis was convinced that he had found the burial of the great queen Tiye and the once magnificent golden shrine had indeed been made for her by her son Akhenaten.  With one exception, the name of Akhenaten had been deliberately erased and the images decorating the panels show Akhenaten and Tiye worshipping the sun disc.  The way that the parts of the shrine have been stacked in the tomb, indicate that it might have once been erected in the chamber and then later dismantled, probably in antiquity.

There is also evidence that the coffin had been made for a female occupant and then later adapted for a male; there was a false beard, a crook and a flail added and the inscriptions were altered.  The titles of Akhenaten have been found on the coffin and it is now thought that the coffin was originally made, along with the four canopic jars, for a lesser wife of his, Kiya, and then later adapted for him.

However, is the mummy really that of Akhenaten?  Davis had the bones pronounced as those of a woman, but later examinations showed the bones belonging to a young male aged between twenty and thirty.  The skull was found to be platycephalic and very similar to the skull of Tutankhamun.  In addition, specialised blood tests showed that the mummy discovered in KV55 was either the father or brother of Tutankhamun.  The age of the mummy is much too young to have been that of the heretic Pharaoh and so the body has been identified by many as that of Smenkhkare.

Smenkhkare was a shadowy figure who ruled Egypt for a scant three years after the death of Akhenaten.  There are arguments that he was co-ruler with Akhenaten for a while and even that Smenkhkare was a name assumed by Akhenaten’s wife Nefertiti, so that she could rule as pharaoh in her own right.  He is generally believed to be the elder brother of Tutankhamun and was married to Akhenaten’s eldest daughter Meritaten.

In 2010 Dr Hawass released a paper on the recent DNA testing of the royal mummies which suggests that the KV55 mummy is that of Akhenaten.  However, this has stirred up even more debate with some experts rejecting this identification.

So what really happened in this tomb?  Was KV55 a cache of miscellaneous funerary objects from the Amarna period that had been brought back from the royal necropolis at Akhetaten for safe keeping?  Was the tomb the original burial of Queen Tiye, the tomb being opened in antiquity and the remains of the burial of Akhenaten placed in the tomb, with at some later stage the burial of Tiye being removed elsewhere and the funerary objects of Akhenaten defaced and his name removed?  Were the burials of Tiye, Akhenaten and Smenkhkare all in the tomb together at some stage?

Skull from KV55

Unless some new evidence is uncovered, we might never know.  It is perhaps worth remembering that several of the funerary items, including one of the coffins, found in the burial of Tutankhamun are believed to have previously belonged to Smenkhkare.  They were referred to as ‘heirlooms’ by Howard Carter, but would such costly items really have been excluded from Smenkhkare’s burial?  Maybe they were not unused ‘heirlooms’ that had been put into storage at all, maybe they had once been part of Smenkhkare’s grave goods and had either been taken from KV55 directly or brought from a another location and briefly stored in KV55 before being used in the burial of Tutankhamun?

There is so much more evidence and knowledge still to emerge from the shifting sands of Egypt; hopefully some of it will help to shed more light on the riddle that is KV55.


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Get Twitter Buttons KV55 sarcophagus image Hans Ollermann Wikimedia Creative Commons Share Alike Attribution 2.0 Generic

Canopic jar image Captmondo Wikimedia Creative Commons Share Alike Attribution 2.5 Generic

KV55 Skull Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

Aten’s Egypt – The Amarna Period

The Aten Sequence books are pure fantasy, a product of my imagination, yet they are set in a period of our history that was very real.  I have shamelessly ‘borrowed’ some of the most important public figures of that time for my books and created personalities for them and given them a story that in reality they never lived.  So what were their real lives about and what was the true story of this unique slice of ancient Egyptian history known as the Amarna Period?

Akhenaten and his family worshipping the Aten

Aten chooses to touch down in the reign of the Pharaoh Amenophis III for a very good reason.  He needs gold, lots of gold, vast quantities of gold.  And at this time, towards the end of the 18^th dynasty in the New Kingdom, Ancient Egypt was enjoying perhaps the most prosperous, peaceful decades of her long history.  Amenophis III preferred to employ diplomacy rather than war craft, and during his reign he benefitted greatly from the previous military brilliance of his mighty Thutmosid forefathers who had pushed the boundaries of the Egyptian Empire ever wider. His was, quite literally, a golden reign of building, carving statues and creating exquisite jewelry, ornaments and funerary equipment.

He was on the throne from approximately 1386 BC and 1349 BC and was the son of Pharaoh Thutmosis IV and one of his minor wives, Mutemwaya.  His name, Amenophis, means ‘Amen is satisfied’ and during his long reign the great god Amen was the principle deity out of all the huge pantheon of traditional gods that were worshipped in Egypt at this time. The huge temple at Karnak on the east bank of the Nile at Thebes was dedicated to Amen, his consort Mut and their son Khonsu and the priests who ran the temple were immensely wealthy and powerful.

But Amen had not always been the most prominent and powerful of the Egyptian gods.  In the Old Kingdom solar deities, such as Re, had been greatly venerated and pyramids and sun temples had been built to honour them.  The sun was worshipped as a universal source of light, life and power and the early pharaohs had linked the power of the solar rays with their own potency and vigour as the king. The reign of Amenophis would see the return to prominence of these solar gods, paving the way for the startling, heretical beliefs of his son and successor, the Pharaoh who became known to the world as Akhenaten.

During this part of the late 18^th dynasty, the royal women were especially honoured and shown in images, reliefs and statues in ways that they had never been done before.  Amenophis III took the unusual step of marrying out of the immediate royal family and taking as his Great Royal Wife an unknown girl called Tiye. Although not of royal birth, Queen Tiye was depicted as her husband’s equal in statues and wall paintings. In earlier times the queen, if she was mentioned at all, was shown as a much smaller figure and given considerably less prominence on her royal husband’s monuments. Royal children were also rarely shown, but Amenophis III recorded his daughter’s names and titles on many of his monuments.  His sons were not mentioned, but it is known from other archaeological evidence that his eldest son was called Thutmose or Dhutmose and that he was acknowledged as the crown prince.  It was only his early death that allowed his younger brother Akhenaten to gain the crown.

Pharaoh Akhenaten

Akhenaten had originally been called Amenophis IV after his illustrious father and he was to take the worship of the sun to even greater lengths than his father did.  He succeeded to the throne of Egypt in around 1350 BC and reigned for a couple of years as Pharaoh Amenophis IV.  He initially followed the traditional path of starting building projects to enlarge the temple at Karnak, but he very quickly took up the worship of the god Aten, who was the divine sun disk. It was around this time that he changed his name to Akhenaten and started to build, create images and carve statues in a bold, new style.  Egyptian art had altered very little over the last couple of thousand years and was very elegant and stylised.  

This new art was more realistic and more focused on the natural world.  For the first time the Pharaoh was not recorded in the conventional way, but was shown with a saggy belly, skinny arms and legs, and long face.  The royal family were shown with strangely elongated skulls, and were displayed in intimate scenes of family life, even kissing and showing affection.  Once again, it was the royal women were afforded the greatest prominence. Akhenaten followed his father’s example and married a beautiful girl called Nefertiti whose origins are obscure and they had six daughters who were frequently shown with the royal couple. Above all these scenes of royal life, the Aten disk is shown with rays of sun ending in little hands, sometimes holding the ankh of life, reaching down to bless the family’s activities.

Amarna Princess - Wikimedia Commons

 Eventually Akhenaten felt compelled to move his capital city and the centre of Aten worship away from the contaminating presence of the cult and priests of Amen in Thebes.  He searched the country until he came upon a virgin site in Middle Egypt that had never been inhabited or built on before.  It was an arid, desert plain on the east bank of the Nile encircled by cliffs. He named his new city Akhetaten or ‘Horizon of the Aten’ and carved a number of huge boundary stela in the cliffs proclaiming his new city and that these were its boundaries. 

The new city, called el Amarna in modern times, was meticulously planned and laid out with huge temples open to the sun, royal palaces, streets, houses, shops and workplaces.  He started digging tombs for himself and other members of his family in the eastern cliffs, which was another departure from tradition as the dead had always previously been laid to rest on the west bank of the river Nile.  The court, army, craftsmen and many others followed their king to this new life, and workmen were sent out across the country to erase the names of the traditional gods from temples, tombs and monuments.

But Akhenaten’s glorious new dream was not destined to last for very long.  The building took time and many of the temples and public buildings were not completed until around year 8 of his reign.  The pinnacle of the city of Akhetaten’s glory and power was probably the grand jubilee celebrations of year 12, where foreign rulers and dignitaries came to the city to pay homage to the Pharaoh and bring him rich and costly gifts. After this time the effects of Akhenaten’s disinterest in international relations, maintaining order in the Empire and dealing with domestic affairs became more and more apparent.  Rulers of vassal states wrote desperately for help as they were put under pressure from Egypt’s enemies, but their pleas for aid went unanswered.

There were also numerous deaths in the royal family in the years following the jubilee with the royal couple’s second daughter Princess Meketaten dying by year 14, with scenes of her death being carved in the royal tomb. Images of a royal infant in the scene have led to speculation that the young princess could have died in childbirth, but there is also the possibility that she died in a plague that was sweeping through the Middle East at this time. Her two youngest sisters Nefernefrure and Setepenre were absent from these reliefs suggesting that they were already dead and this was the last time that we know of that Queen Nefertiti is shown on a monument.  


Akhenaten’s secondary wife Kiya also seems to have disappeared around this time. The last years of the city are ones of decline and confusion.  Archaeological evidence is scarce, so the exact details and dates of Akhenaten’s death, the reign of the shadowy Pharaoh Smenkhare who followed him and the accession of the boy king Tutankhamen can only be guessed at.  The city was stripped and allowed to fall into ruin, and the Pharaoh’s that followed turned Egypt back to its traditional gods and tried to erase every trace of what they regarded as a shameful, heretical blot on their glorious history.

Akhenaten has attracted many supporters and an equal amount of detractors in modern times.  Some regard him as the first person to worship a single god and adopt a monotheistic religion and he has even been identified with the biblical Moses. Others view him as a heretical dreamer who allowed his country and Empire to go to rack and ruin as he pursued his new ideas and religious mania.  Although the sun disk Aten was promoted as the most important deity by Akhenaten, other solar deities were tolerated.


 It was the other gods and goddesses who were persecuted with their temples being defaced and priests being turned out. It is also important to recognise that the Aten was not a god for the ordinary people.  The beneficial, power giving rays of the sun were only ever extended towards Akhenaten and his family and it was the king who formed the link between the god and the people.  Therefore, the people worshipped the Pharaoh as a means of communicating with the divine, so Akhenaten wanted to be honoured as a god himself rather than be the founding father of monotheistic religion in the world.

So this fascinating period of ancient Egyptian history gives my rather fertile imagination plenty of scope for the adventures of my fictional character Aten and I hope that you enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed creating them.




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Akhenaten image Szczebrzeszynski Wikimedia Commons Attribution Share Alike 1.0 Generic