Egypt: Gift of the Nile

MYTHOLOGY
Egyptian Mythology, specifically, the religion of ancient Egypt. The religious beliefs of the ancient Egyptians were the dominating influence in the development of their culture, although a true religion, in the sense of a unified theological system, never existed among them. The Egyptian faith was based on an unorganized collection of ancient myths, nature worship, and innumerable deities. In the most influential and famous of these myths a divine hierarchy is developed and the creation of the earth is explained.






Egyptian Creation Myth
According to Egyptian mythology, the Sun god Ra had four children. In this painting his son Shu stands on another son, Geb, who became the Earth. Shu, god of the air, raises up Ra’s daughter Nut, who became the sky.

According to the Egyptian account of creation, only the ocean existed at first. Then Ra, the Sun, came out of an egg (a flower, in some versions) that appeared on the surface of the water. Ra brought forth four children, the gods Shu and Geb and the goddesses Tefnut and Nut. Shu and Tefnut became the atmosphere. They stood on Geb, who became the Earth, and raised up Nut, who became the sky. Ra ruled over all. Geb and Nut later had two sons, Set and Osiris, and two daughters, Isis and Nephthys. Osiris succeeded Ra as king of the Earth, helped by Isis, his sister-wife. Set, however, hated his brother and killed him. Isis then embalmed her husband’s body with the help of the god Anubis, who thus became the god of embalming. The powerful charms of Isis resurrected Osiris, who became king of the netherworld, the land of the dead. Horus, who was the son of Osiris and Isis, later defeated Set in a great battle and became king of the Earth.

Local Gods





Egyptian Goddess Selket
Gold leaf covers this statue of the goddess Selket, found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun of Egypt. Selket, the goddess who heals bites and stings, is portrayed as a beautiful woman with a scorpion on her head.

From this myth of creation came the conception of the ennead, a group of nine divinities, and the triad, consisting of a divine father, mother, and son. Every local temple in Egypt possessed its own ennead and triad. The greatest ennead, however, was that of Ra and his children and grandchildren. This group was worshiped at Heliopolis, the center of Sun worship. The origin of the local deities is obscure; some of them were taken over from foreign religions, and some were originally the animal gods of prehistoric Africa. Gradually, they were all fused into a complicated religious structure, although comparatively few local divinities became important throughout Egypt.


Ptah
The Egyptian god Ptah was, among other things, patron of the arts and of artisans. He was worshipped at Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt. This statue of the deity dates from the 18th dynasty and is in the Egyptian Museum of Turin, Italy.



In addition to those already named, the important divinities included the gods Amon, Thoth, Ptah, Khnemu, and Hapi, and the goddesses Hathor, Mut, Neit, and Sekhmet. Their importance increased with the political ascendancy of the localities where they were worshiped. For example, the ennead of Memphis was headed by a triad composed of the father Ptah, the mother Sekhmet, and the son Imhotep. Therefore, during the Memphite dynasties, Ptah became one of the greatest gods in Egypt. Similarly, when the Theban dynasties ruled Egypt, the ennead of Thebes was given the most importance, headed by the father Amon, the mother Mut, and the son Khonsu.
As the religion became more involved, true deities were sometimes confused with human beings who had been glorified after death. Thus, Imhotep, who was originally the chief minister of the 3rd Dynasty ruler Djoser, was later regarded as a demigod. During the 5th Dynasty the pharaohs began to claim divine ancestry and from that time on were worshiped as sons of Ra. Minor gods, some merely demons, were also given places in local divine hierarchies.



Iconography













Egyptian God Ra
The ancient Egyptians believed that the Sun god Ra, who is often represented with the head of a hawk, traveled across the sky during the day and made his way through the underworld during the night. In the underworld he had to overcome a monstrous serpent, bottom, so that he could be born again for the new day. This painting is from a 21st Dynasty coffin.
Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge/Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York

Cat Goddess
This bronze figure with inlaid blue-glass eyes dates from Egypt’s Late Period (712-332 bc). It shows the ancient goddess Bast in the form of a cat.
Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

The Egyptian gods were represented with human torsos and human or animal heads. Sometimes the animal or bird expressed the characteristics of the god. Ra, for example, had the head of a hawk, and the hawk was sacred to him because of its swift flight across the sky; Hathor, the goddess of love and laughter, was given the head of a cow, which was sacred to her; Anubis was given the head of a jackal because these animals ravaged the desert graves in ancient times; Mut was vulture-headed and Thoth was ibis-headed; and Ptah was given a human head, although he was occasionally represented as a bull, called Apis. Because of the gods to which they were attached, the sacred animals were venerated, but they were never worshiped until the decadent 26th Dynasty. The gods were also represented by symbols, such as the Sun disk and hawk wings that were worn on the headdress of the pharaoh.

Sun Worship

Aton
The 18th-dynasty Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton established the deity Aton as the supreme divine ruler. In this sunken relief sculpture (carved into the surface of the stone), Akhenaton is shown making an offering to Aton, who is depicted as a solar disk.
Archivo Iconografico, S.A./Corbis

The only important god who was worshiped with consistency was Ra, chief of cosmic deities, from whom early Egyptian kings claimed descent. Beginning with the Middle Kingdom (2040-1640 bc), Ra worship acquired the status of a state religion, and the god was gradually fused with Amon during the Theban dynasties, becoming the supreme god Amon-Ra. During the 18th Dynasty the pharaoh Amenhotep III renamed the Sun god Aton, an ancient term for the physical solar force. Amenhotep’s son and successor, Amenhotep IV, instituted a revolution in Egyptian religion by proclaiming Aton the true and only god. He changed his own name to Akhenaton, meaning “He who is devoted to Aton.” This first great monotheist was so iconoclastic that he had the plural word gods deleted from monuments, and he relentlessly persecuted the priests of Amon. Akhenaton’s Sun religion failed to survive, although it exerted a great influence on the art and thinking of his time, and Egypt returned to the ancient, labyrinthine religion of polytheism after Akhenaton’s death.

Death Mask of Tutankhamun
Ancient Egyptians believed that the ka, or the body in the afterlife, could not survive unless the deceased person’s actual body was preserved. In order to preserve the bodies of the dead, the ancient Egyptians embalmed and mummified them before burial. They placed the mummified body in a tomb filled with money, household items, and the bodies of loyal servants so that the dead could use them thereafter in the underworld. The death mask of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun (about 1340 bc), shown here, is made of gold and inlaid with colored glass and semiprecious stone. The mask comes from the innermost mummy case in the pharaoh’s tomb and stands 54 cm (21 in) high.
Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York

Egyptian Animals

The ancient Egyptians  were very fond of animals. They had animals that were sacred, some were pets and other were used in farming. Animals were thought to be sacred to the Egyptians because they believed that when one of their gods or goddesses came down to earth, they would represent themselves as a specific species. The Egyptians thought by honoring them, they would be pleasing the god. They also thought that animals shared an afterlife with their humans so it resulted in animals being buried within its family tomb. The animals that were considered especially sacred: 
  • cat- The male cat had religious connections with Ra. Kittens were specifically reared for sacrificial/worship uses .
  • cattle- Beef was often used as a sacrificial offering to various deities.
  • scarab beetle- The emblem of a specific goddess, the scarab beetle was associated with the daily birth of the sun, and credited with spontaneous generation of its young. Because of its sacred status, it was widely represented in art.
  • Jackel- it was considered a protector of royal tombs from robbers and helped in the afterlife journey.
Cats and Kittens:
One of the most common animal mummies in Egypt was the cat. Cats were believed to represent the goddess Bastet. Consequently, they were raised in and around temples devoted to Bastet. When they died, they were mummified and buried in huge cemeteries, often in large communal graves.
From about 332 B.C. to 30 B.C., animals began to be raised for the specific purpose of being turned into mummies. The mummies were sold to people on their way to worship a god and left at the temple as offerings. Scientists have uncovered a gruesome fact: many cats died quite premature and unnatural deaths. Two- to four-month-old kittens seemed to have been sacrificed in huge numbers. So many cat mummies were made that researchers can only guess that there were millions of them.

Cats are very useful animals in a country that depends on grain. The cat's hunting instincts were honoured by the Ancient Egyptians, but so was the cat's gentler side as a warm and loving mother to her kittens. Bastet can be shown as a woman with a feline head. There are disagreements among zoologists as to when these animals first began to live with humans along the Nile, and about which feline became the Egyptian pet. Cats do not appear as household pets during the Age of the Pyramids, though they were very popular animal companions in later times.

Cattle were thought to be sacred and beef was often used for offerings to the gods or goddesses. A bull represented power, aggression, masculinity, fertility; these could be the attributes of kingship. . The cow's large eyes with long lashes, and her generally quiet demeanor suggested a gentle aspect of feminine beauty. Her gift of milk, which could sustain a human child, became of symbol of love and sustenance.



The Hawk  
A hawk, who soars high above the world of humans, seeming to expend no energy in his long hours aloft, and who - far seeing, -can swoop in an instant to capture his prey in sharp talons, became a symbol of kingship.



Anty:
Anty was a hawk god of Upper Egypt. He is shown as a hawk sitting on a crescent moon, or in a boat. He became associated with other hawk-gods, such as Sokar



Horus :

This god is shown as a falcon, or as a man with the head of a falcon. In Egyptian, his name is Her - the distant one. Like the good king who sees everything in his kingdom, the hawk is noted for his sharp vision. The sudden stoop of the hawk, as he leaves the distant sky to attack and capture his prey, is like the quick and decisive action of a king in defense of his country.      Horus is one of the oldest gods of the Egyptians. In the days when powerful leaders were fighting to make one nation out of smaller settlements, the early rulers were called Followers of Horus. On the Narmer palette, the King is shown with a falcon whose one human arm holds a rope that passes through the nose of a defeated rival. The earliest way of distinguishing the name of a king from the names of others was the serekh, which was a rectangle representing the palace of the king, with a hawk on the top.
Originally, there were at least two gods called Horus. One is the fifth child of Nut and Geb, Horus the Elder, and the other is the son of Isis and Osiris. Over time, their stories and attributes came together. An old story tells of how Osiris, king of Egypt, was murdered by his brother, Seth. Seth was very strong and powerful. He took over the country, and ruled well. Isis, the wife of Osiris, hid the child she had born, and raised him in secret.



When Horus grew up, he claimed his father's throne. Seth and Horus struggled for the kingship, but in the end Horus' claim, as son of the previous king, was recognized by a court of all the gods, and Horus became king. In Ancient Egypt, each king was Horus. When a king died, Egyptians said that the falcon had flown to Heaven and united with the Sun Disk. The next king then became Horus. Like the Hawk, the king was a fighter, a warrior. This is why Horus, when shown as a hawk-headed man, wears an armored breast-plate.




Anubis: 


This jackal-headed god looked after the dead, and was in charge of the important task of mummification. Anubis can appear as either a black canine with long sharp ears, or as a man with a canine head. The black colour of Anubis is not natural to jackals or to the wild dogs of Egypt; it may refer to the discoloration of a body after death and during mummification. The black colour also refers to the rich dark soil of Egypt, from which new growth came every year; in similar manner, the dead would come to new life after burial. Dogs, as animal companions, were present in Egypt from the very beginning. Sometimes dogs were buried with their masters. It may have given the Egyptians comfort to think of such an animal as guarding the cemeteries, protecting the dead.

There are other minor animals that were held sacred by the Egyptians so because they were beneficial others because they were considered evil. Examples of these animals are:-
The mongoose was respected because of its skill and power of robbing nests and eating snakes.
The snakes were thought to be evil. Because the snake's poisonous bite, it killed many people.
The crocodile was known for its silent attacks on people near the Nile water.
The hippopotamus was considered evil and very dangerous. They were killed to protect the people. At night the hippopotamus would trample the fields.
The locusts were considered evil because they would destroy and damage crops.
 Frogs and toads were the sign of fertility. The number one hundred thousandths is a sign of a tadpole. Heket: Frog-headed goddess of childbirth. Frogs, who produce vast numbers of tadpoles, were popular as amulets to ensure fertility.  
Babi is a deity shown in Baboon form, and it's from his name that we get our word for these animals. Babi is ferocious, even blood-thirsty, unlike the usually calm and reasonable Thoth who also appears as a baboon.
Other animals represented by a god/goddess or sacred were ibises, dogs, rams, baboons, shrews, fishes, gazelles, and lions.

Culture of Ancient Egypt
Daily life
Most ancient Egyptians were farmers tied to the land. Their dwellings were restricted to immediate family members, and were constructed of mud-brick designed to remain cool in the heat of the day. Each home had a kitchen with an open roof, which contained a grindstone for milling flour and a small oven for baking bread. Walls were painted white and could be covered with dyed linen wall hangings. Floors were covered with reed mats, while wooden stools, beds raised from the floor and individual tables comprised the furniture.
The ancient Egyptians placed a great value on hygiene and appearance. Most bathed in the Nile and used a pasty soap made from animal fat and chalk. Men shaved their entire bodies for cleanliness, and aromatic perfumes and ointments covered bad odors and soothed skin. Clothing was made from simple linen sheets that were bleached white, and both men and women of the upper classes wore wigs, jewelry, and cosmetics. Children went without clothing until maturity, at about age 12, and at this age males were circumcised and had their heads shaved. Mothers were responsible for taking care of the children, while the father provided the family's income.
Music and dance were popular entertainments for those who could afford them. Early instruments included flutes and harps, while instruments similar to trumpets, oboes, and pipes developed later and became popular. In the New Kingdom, the Egyptians played on bells, cymbals, tambourines, and drums and imported lutes and lyres from Asia. The sistrum was a rattle-like musical instrument that was especially important in religious ceremonies.
The ancient Egyptians enjoyed a variety of leisure activities, including games and music. Senet, a board game where pieces moved according to random chance, was particularly popular from the earliest times; another similar game was mehen, which had a circular gaming board. Juggling and ball games were popular with children, and wrestling is also documented in a tomb at Beni Hasan. The wealthy members of ancient Egyptian society enjoyed hunting and boating as well.
Architecture
The architecture of ancient Egypt includes some of the most famous structures in the world: the Great Pyramids of Giza and the temples at Thebes. Building projects were organized and funded by the state for religious and commemorative purposes, but also to reinforce the power of the pharaoh. The ancient Egyptians were skilled builders; using simple but effective tools and sighting instruments, architects could build large stone structures with accuracy and precision.
The earliest preserved ancient Egyptian temples, such as those at Giza, consist of single, enclosed halls with roof slabs supported by columns. In the New Kingdom, architects added the pylon, the open courtyard, and the enclosed hypostyle hall to the front of the temple's sanctuary, a style that was standard until the Graeco-Roman period. The earliest and most popular tomb architecture in the Old Kingdom was the mastaba, a flat-roofed rectangular structure of mudbrick or stone built over an underground burial chamber. The step pyramid of Djoser is a series of stone mastabas stacked on top of each other. Pyramids were built during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, but later rulers abandoned them in favor of less conspicuous rock-cut tombs.
Beliefs in the divine and in the afterlife were ingrained in ancient Egyptian civilization from its inception; pharaonic rule was based on the divine right of kings. The Egyptian pantheon was populated by gods who had supernatural powers and were called on for help or protection. However, the gods were not always viewed as benevolent, and Egyptians believed they had to be appeased with offerings and prayers. The structure of this pantheon changed continually as new deities were promoted in the hierarchy, but priests made no effort to organize the diverse and sometimes conflicting creation myths and stories into a coherent system. These various conceptions of divinity were not considered contradictory but rather layers in the multiple facets of reality.
Gods were worshiped in cult temples administered by priests acting on the king's behalf. At the center of the temple was the cult statue in a shrine. Temples were not places of public worship or congregation, and only on select feast days and celebrations was a shrine carrying the statue of the god brought out for public worship. Normally, the god's domain was sealed off from the outside world and was only accessible to temple officials. Common citizens could worship private statues in their homes, and amulets offered protection against the forces of chaos. After the New Kingdom, the pharaoh's role as a spiritual intermediary was de-emphasized as religious customs shifted to direct worship of the gods. As a result, priests developed a system of oracles to communicate the will of the gods directly to the people.
The Egyptians believed that every human being was composed of physical and spiritual parts or aspects. In addition to the body, each person had a šwt (shadow), a ba (personality or soul), a ka (life-force), and a name. The heart, rather than the brain, was considered the seat of thoughts and emotions. After death, the spiritual aspects were released from the body and could move at will, but they required the physical remains (or a substitute, such as a statue) as a permanent home. The ultimate goal of the deceased was to rejoin his ka and ba and become one of the "blessed dead", living on as an akh, or "effective one". In order for this to happen, the deceased had to be judged worthy in a trial, in which the heart was weighed against a "feather of truth". If deemed worthy, the deceased could continue their existence on earth in spiritual form.
Burial customs
The ancient Egyptians maintained an elaborate set of burial customs that they believed were necessary to ensure immortality after death. These customs involved preserving the body by mummification, performing burial ceremonies, and interring, along with the body, goods to be used by the deceased in the afterlife. Before the Old Kingdom, bodies buried in desert pits were naturally preserved by desiccation. The arid, desert conditions continued to be a boon throughout the history of ancient Egypt for the burials of the poor, who could not afford the elaborate burial preparations available to the elite. Wealthier Egyptians began to bury their dead in stone tombs and, as a result, they made use of artificial mummification, which involved removing the internal organs, wrapping the body in linen, and burying it in a rectangular stone sarcophagus or wooden coffin. Beginning in the Fourth Dynasty, some parts were preserved separately in canopic jars.
By the New Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians had perfected the art of mummification; the best technique took 70 days and involved removing the internal organs, removing the brain through the nose, and desiccating the body in a mixture of salts called natron. The body was then wrapped in linen with protective amulets inserted between layers and placed in a decorated anthropoid coffin. Mummies of the Late Period were also placed in painted cartonnage mummy cases. Actual preservation practices declined during the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, while greater emphasis was placed on the outer appearance of the mummy, which was decorated.
Wealthy Egyptians were buried with larger quantities of luxury items, but all burials, regardless of social status, included goods for the deceased. Beginning in the New Kingdom, books of the dead were included in the grave, along with shabti statues that were believed to perform manual labor for them in the afterlife.[151] Rituals in which the deceased was magically re-animated accompanied burials. After burial, living relatives were expected to occasionally bring food to the tomb and recite prayers on behalf of the deceased.
Social classes in ancient Egypt
·       The Pharaohs

The king had a special status, which is expressed by his monuments. The tomb of a high official and of a poor farmer might have been different in size, but in theory they could display the same features. A royal tomb was always different. In the Old and New Kingdom pyramids were built, while officials were buried in mastabas. In the New Kingdom king tombs were decorated with special texts (Amduat), only rarely known from contemporary private tombs. The special status of the king was also expressed in other ways: the king wore a crown; the king had a special titular. The women nearest to the king also had a special status. The name of the wife of the king was, from the Second Intermediate Period, written in a cartouche, and several Old and Middle Kingdom wives of kings were buried in a pyramid.

·       The ruling class

It is not known to what extent the royal family and the high court officials were connected by family ties. There is clear evidence that the officials of the Old Kingdom were often sons of, or at least related to, the king. In the Middle and New Kingdom the highest officials were often members of the same families, whose members held important positions at court and across the country. Social status is expressed very directly in art. The main person in a relief or painting is always shown as the biggest figure. Servants are shown as much smaller.

·       Craftsmen

The miserable lives of a whole range of craftsmen are described in the 'Satire of Trades' - a perfect example of how ancient Egyptian writings present physical work as secondary, while the profession of accountant/writer ('scribe') was seen as the most important. The best documented group of Egyptian craftsmen are the people living at Deir el-Medina. However, they worked on the decoration of the tomb of the reigning king, and therefore they enjoyed a special, quite atypical status.

·       Farmers

Most part of the Egyptian population must have been farmers or working in food production. There is little written evidence about these people, and almost no rural settlement archaeology; fortunately, funerary archaeology (their tombs) can reveal to us a little more about these people.
Marginalized groups
Most societies co-exist with a number of people, not living in organized structures. From both archaeology and written sources there is very little known about such people. They are hard to identify in the archaeological record, and do not appear often in writings, other than in literary settings. The Tale of Khuninpu relates the injustice that such a marginalized group might suffer: its hero lives in the marginal territory of the Wadi Natrun, west of the western Delta, and is robbed of his last belongings on his way to market. Such individuals, collecting goods at the desert edge and living from small-scale trading, are almost invisible outside such exceptional self-critical compositions.

·       Slaves
Different societies and authors use different definitions of slavery, and there is little agreement on the existence or prominence of slavery in ancient Egypt. The Egyptian term Hm is often translated into English as slave, but also 'serf' and 'servant'. In the Old and Middle Kingdom people on great estates are sometimes designated by the Egyptian word mryt; if somebody bought a certain estate, than it seems that he also bought the meryt people working on it. There are also legal documents in the Middle Kingdom recording the 'sale' of individuals: similar transactions are well attested for the New Kingdom.




Pharaoh Akhenaton
Akhenaton (often alt: Akhenaton, or rarely Ikhnaton) meaning 'Effective spirit of Aton', first known as Amenhotep IV (sometimes read as Amenophis IV and meaning 'Amun is Satisfied') before his first year (died 1336 BC or 1334 BC), was a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. He is especially noted for attempting to compel the Egyptian population in the monotheistic worship of Aten, although there are doubts as to how successful he was at this.
He was born to Amenhotep III and his Chief Queen Tiye and was their younger son. Akhenaton was not originally designated as the successor to the throne until the untimely death of his older brother, Thutmose. Amenhotep IV succeeded his father after Amenhotep III's death at the end of his 38-year reign, possibly after short coregency lasting between either 1 to 2 years. Suggested dates for Akhenaton’s reign (subject to the debates surrounding Egyptian chronology) are from 1353 BC-1336 BC or 1351 BC­1334 BC.
Akhenaton’s chief wife was Nefertiti, made world-famous by the discovery of her exquisitely moulded and painted bust, now displayed in the Altes Museum of Berlin, and among the most recognised works of art surviving from the ancient world.
Pharaoh Akhenaton was known as the Heretic King. He was the tenth King of the 18th Dynasty. Egyptologists are still tying to figure out what actually happened during his lifetime as much of the truth was buried after he died.
Akhenaton lived at the peak of Egypt's imperial glory. Egypt had never been richer, more powerful, or more secure. Up and down the Nile, workers built hundreds of temples to pay homage to the Gods. They believed that if the Gods were pleased, Egypt would prosper. And so it did.
Akhenaton and his family lived in the great religious centre of Thebes, city of the God Amun. There were thousands of priests who served the Gods. Religion was the 'business' of the time, many earning their living connected to the worship of the gods.
All indications are that as a child Akhenaton was a family outcast. Scientists are studying the fact that Akhenaton suffered from a disease called Marfan syndrome, a genetic defect that damages the body's connective tissue. Symptoms include, short torso, long head, neck, arms, hand and feet, pronounced collarbones, pot belly, heavy thighs, and poor muscle tone. Those who inherit it are often unusually tall and are likely to have weakened aortas that can rupture. They can die at an early age. If Akhnaton had the disease each of his daughters had a 50-50 change of inheriting it. That is why his daughters are shown with similar symptoms.
Akhenaton was the son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiy, a descendent of a Hebrew tribe. The largest statue in the Cairo Museum shows Amenhotep III and his family. He and Queen Tiy (pronounced 'Tee') had four daughters and two sons. Akhenaten's brother, Tutmoses was later named high priest of Memphis. The other son, Amenhotep IV (Later to take the name Akhenaten) seemed to be ignored by the rest of the family. He never appeared in any portraits and was never taken to public events. He received no honors. It was as if the God Amun had excluded him. He was rejected by the world for some unknown reason. He was never shown with his family nor mentioned on monuments. Yet his mother favored him.
King (1353–36 BCE) of ancient Egypt of the 18th dynasty, who established a new cult dedicated to the Aton, the sun's disk (hence his assumed name, Akhenaton, meaning “beneficial to Aton”).

Early reign

Few scholars now agree with the contention that Amenhotep III associated his son Amenhotep IV on the throne for several years of coregency; it is assumed here, in accordance with general scholarly consensus, that the older king died before his son gained power. At or shortly after the time of his accession, Amenhotep IV seems to have married the chief queen of his reign, Nefertiti. The earliest monuments of Amenhotep IV depict the traditional worship of deities executed according to the artistic style of the preceding reign—with the exception of a prominent role accorded to the falcon-headed god Re-Harakhte, who is given an unusual epithet containing the phrase “who rejoices in his horizon, in his aspect of the light which is in the sun's disk.”
Within the first few years of his rule, Amenhotep IV introduced sweeping changes in the spheres of religion, architecture, and art (see Amarna style). Near the main precinct of the god Amon at Karnak, he founded several new temples dedicated to Re-Harakhte, who was now provided with a lengthy epithet placed in two royal cartouches and was described as “the light which is in the sun's disk ( aton).” Moreover, the new god, Aton, was no longer portrayed in anthropomorphic form but as the sun's disk itself, elevated to the heavens and extending its multiple rays down over the royal family. Each ray ended in a tiny hand with which the Aton might offer the sign of life to the king and queen or even embrace their limbs and crowns.
Unlike the traditional ritual prescribed for most Egyptian deities, which was carried out in small, darkened sanctuaries in the innermost recesses of their temples, Amenhotep IV's devotion to the Aton was celebrated through the presentation of foodstuffs on large numbers of offering tables and made in open sunlight. The Aton temples at Karnak therefore consisted of a series of vast open-air courts in which there was virtually no interior space at all. The only preserved architecture from Karnak indicates that these courts were flanked by roofed porticos with colossal statues of the king placed against the pillars. The new temples were built entirely of relatively small blocks of sandstone of uniform size, known as talatat, apparently for speed in construction—an understandable convenience, considering the scale of the project. The walls were decorated with reliefs executed entirely in sunk relief, a method well-suited for exterior surfaces exposed to direct sunlight. The scenes, reconstructed from thousands of individual talatat blocks, portray the royal couple and their eldest daughter, Meritaton, engaged primarily in making offerings to the Aton, although scenes of offering-bearers, cattle designated for slaughter, foreigners in obeisance, and detailed depictions of the royal palace are also abundant. One series of reliefs shows Amenhotep IV at the celebration of his jubilee, a ceremony normally observed by kings of the New Kingdom (c. 1539–1075 BCE) only beginning in their 30th regnal year. One temple at Karnak shows only Nefertiti as the primary officiant before the Aton, sometimes accompanied by Meritaton—an unprecedented privilege for a mere queen. In addition, the enormous expanse of the exterior temple wall provided a stone canvas on which experiments in large-scale composition were undertaken.
The introduction of a new cult was accompanied by innovations in the portrayal of the human form in both relief and sculpture. The royal family was depicted with features that, by comparison with standard conventions of Egyptian art, appear noticeably exaggerated: a prognathous jaw, a thin neck, sloped shoulders, a pronounced paunch, large hips and thighs, and spindly legs. Facial features were characterized by angular, slitted eyes, fleshy lips, nasolabial wrinkles, and holes for ear plugs, while the princesses are often each depicted with an inflated, egg-shaped cranium. Much scholarly debate has centred on whether these features reflect the actual appearance of the king—extended by convention to his family and retainers—and various theories have been argued about the presumed pathology of Amenhotep IV and what medical conditions might produce the anatomical traits shown. The Karnak colossi in particular show these new characteristics in notably exaggerated form, including one that apparently depicts the king without male genitalia. Whether such statues were intended to represent the male and female element combined in the person of the divine king or whether they are simply statues of Nefertiti has not been satisfactorily settled. More simply, the remarkable innovations of Amenhotep IV in several cultural spheres at once may be reasonably viewed as a manifestation of the intimate connection in Egyptian culture between art and religion. In devising a radically different cult based on the worship of the sun's natural form, the king was forced to develop a new artistic idiom with which to express it. That Amenhotep IV was personally involved in these changes seems clear: the biographical text of one of the reign's master sculptors indicates that he was instructed by the king himself.

Move to Akhenaton

In the fifth year of his reign, the king changed his name from Amenhotep (“Amon Is Content”) to Akhenaton (“Beneficial to Aton”). Nefertiti's name was expanded to Neferneferuaten (“Beautiful Is the Beauty of Aton”)-Nefertiti. That same year Akhenaton moved his capital to a new site some 200 miles (300 km) north of Thebes. The location chosen for the new capital, named Akhetaton (“Horizon of the Aton”; Tell el-Amarna), was a virgin site on the east bank of the Nile River, a large desert embayment enclosed by limestone cliffs, in which a series of boundary stelae were carved. The boundary texts, dated the fifth, sixth, and eighth years of his rule, describe the planned city in some detail and reveal Akhenaton's primary intention: to construct a city dedicated to the worship of the Aton separate from already established cults.
Construction began apace on a new series of royal residences and open-air temples, the latter built entirely from limestone talatat and decorated in a manner similar to that of their predecessors at Karnak. The central city was built around the vast main temple to the Aton, called Gempaaton, and a secondary sanctuary, called the Mansion of the Aton. A large formal palace connected to a royal estate by means of a bridge over the main north-south road was located nearby. The road itself led to a northern palace and a riverside settlement laid out along the northern limits of Akhetaton. The royal and religious structures of the central city were surrounded with administrative offices, storerooms, and workshops, as well as extensive suburbs of private villas and smaller private houses. To the far south a separate garden enclosure, called the Maru-Aton, was built, and it seems to have provided a place of recreation for the royal family. The site of Tell el-Amarna provides invaluable insight into the city layout and domestic architecture of ancient Egypt, and yet it remains very much an atypical settlement, because of its programmatic foundation and its situation on the edge of the desert rather than in the cultivation.
Private tombs for the officials of Akhenaton's court were built in the northern and southern cliffs to the east, although ultimately none were completed or ever used for burial. The royal tomb, intended for Akhenaton, Nefertiti, and his daughters, was carved in a large wadi east of the city. Not far from the outlet of the royal wadi, the remains of a village for workmen were discovered, apparently the domestic quarters for those skilled craftsmen engaged in cutting and decorating the royal tomb.
One of the most important discoveries from Tell el-Amarna was a cache of clay tablets originating in the records office of the central city, referred to as the Amarna Letters. Written in an archaic and somewhat provincialized form of Babylonian cuneiform, the tablets represent part of the correspondence between the Egyptian court and other states and vassals of the ancient Middle East. They provide invaluable insight into the nature of diplomatic relations between the great nations and petty states of the 14th century BCE as well as an incomplete and tantalizing hint of the strategic maneuvering of the time. Letters from the great powers (Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni, and the Hittite court) are often preoccupied with the exchange of gifts and diplomatic marriages. Those from the vassal states of Syro-Palestine deal with the local political and military situation and are often filled with complaints of inattention on the part of the Egyptian court. These communications have been used as the basis for the conclusion that Akhenaton had adopted a pacifist attitude toward the Egyptian empire in Asia, but, considering the selective nature of the letters and the lack of direct evidence from the Levant, such judgments may in fact be premature.
In addition to Nefertiti, two other queens appear at Akhetaton: the king's mother, Tiy, and a secondary wife of Akhenaton, called Kiya, who bears a distinctive epithet, quite different from Nefertiti's, incorporating the phrase “the (king's) greatly beloved wife.” While Tiy seems to have died during her son's reign, the fate of Kiya is unclear, although her name at the Maru-Aton was usurped by that of the eldest princess, Meritaton.

Religion of the Aton

The religious tenets Akhenaton espoused in his worship of the Aton are not spelled out in detail anywhere. They must be reconstructed largely from the iconography of the temple reliefs and stelae that depict him with his deity and from the one lengthy religious text from Tell el-Amarna, the Aton Hymn, preserved in several of the private tombs. In myriad offering scenes preserved from Karnak and Tell el-Amarna, Akhenaton is not portrayed face-to-face with his god, as traditional offering practices would dictate, but lifting up offerings to the sun's disk in the heaven, which bathes him in its rays. Although the Aton is depicted as the physical manifestation of the sun, his name is nonetheless placed within cartouches, a distinction typical of royalty rather than divinity, and he is said to be “one who is in his jubilee,” a celebration normally reserved for kings. The reciprocal dialogues between king and deity—which regularly appear in traditional temple scenes and which validate the blessings uttered by the gods—are not feasible in Akhenaton's religion, in which the primary deity has no mouth to speak. Temple texts are thus confined almost entirely to the names and titles of the Aton and those of Akhenaton and his family, who are often shown together on offering stelae from private villas.
The Aton Hymn itself is largely a forceful description of natural effects. It describes the solar disk as the prime mover of life, whose daily rising rejuvenates all living things on earth and at whose setting all creatures go to sleep. While the Aton is said to have created the world for men, it seems that the ultimate goal of creation is really the king himself, whose intimate and privileged connection to his god is emphasized. Divine revelation and knowability are reserved for Akhenaton alone, and the hymn is ultimately neutral in regard to explicating the mysteries of divinity. The hymn has certain passages that are shared by a wider literary tradition and are not unique to Akhenaton; some have similarities to Psalm 104 (see Psalms).
At some point after his fifth regnal year, Akhenaton initiated a program to erase the name and image of the Theban god, Amon, from all monuments, a decision that wreaked widespread destruction in many Egyptian temples. The reason for this drastic step is not known; at some point, it seems that other gods were attacked as well, including Amon's consort, Mut, and the plural word gods.
Although Akhenaton has been considered by some as the world's first monotheist, the religion of the Aton may best be described as monolatry, the worship of one god in preference to all others. In fact, Akhenaton's god consistently incorporated multiple aspects of the traditional divinized sun, such as Re-Harakhte (the rising sun), Shu (atmosphere and sunlight), and Maat (daughter of Re). Whether his beliefs ever took hold in the public imagination, or even among the residents of Akhetaton itself, remains uncertain. Private homes, as well as the workmen's village, have yielded numerous figurines of household deities, and stelae dedicated to traditional deities, such as Isis and Tausret, have been found in some of the private chapels. Certainly there is no evidence that Akhenaton's idiosyncratic religion survived his death.

Last events of the reign

Toward the end of his reign, Akhenaton is shown on certain monuments together with another king, whose coronation name was Ankhkheperure and whose personal name was Neferneferuaten, the initial element of Nefertiti's own name. Whether this personage is in fact a new male coregent whose origin cannot now be traced or whether it is Nefertiti herself elevated to the status of male pharaoh remains a controversial issue. This king's personal name, Neferneferuaton, was then changed to Smenkhkare, the name by which he is more widely known. Akhenaton seems to have ruled with Smenkhkare until Akhenaton's death in his 17th regnal year, when he was presumably buried in the royal tomb at Akhetaton; Smenkhkare then seems to have had an independent rule of perhaps three years, although Smenkhkare's biographical and regnal details remain unclear. The city that Akhenaton founded did not long survive; jar dockets from Akhetaton indicate that the site was abandoned by the third regnal year of his son and successor, Tutankhamen.

Assessment

Akhenaton's rule may be seen as a brief rent in the fabric of Egyptian civilization, in which an idiosyncratic and short-lived royal cult was officially mandated, as was the foundation of an ephemeral royal capital and far-reaching effects in the areas of monumental art. There is little doubt that the major tenets of the Aton religion and the concomitant changes in artistic style were personally initiated by Akhenaton himself, justly earning him the sobriquet of “history's first individual”—if not the first monotheist. Although the Aton cult quickly disappeared after the death of its inventor, a number of Akhenaton's stylistic innovations were adopted into the artistic repertoire of later craftsmen, and the large-scale compositions of the Amarna period may be seen as predecessors of later Ramesside battle and festival reliefs. 


The Family
Akhenaton’s Great Royal Wife was Queen Nefertiti.


Queen Nefertiti is often referred to in history as "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World." The Berlin bust, seen from two different angles, is indeed, the most famous depiction of Queen Nefertiti. Found in the workshop of the famed sculptor Thutmose, the bust is believed to be a sculptor's model. The technique which begins with a carved piece of limestone requires the stone core to be first plastered and then richly painted. Flesh tones on the face give the bust life.
Her full lips are enhanced by a bold red. Although the crystal inlay is missing from her left eye, both eyelids and brows are outlined in black. Her graceful elongated neck balances the tall, flat-top crown which adorns her sleek head. The vibrant colors of the necklace and crown contrast the yellow-brown of her smooth skin. While everything is sculpted to perfection, the one flaw of the piece is a broken left ear. Because this remarkable sculpture is still in existence, it is no wonder why Nefertiti remains "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World."

Nefertiti's origins are confusing. It has been suggested to me that Tiy was also her mother. Another suggestion is that Nefertiti was Akhenaton’s cousin. Her wet nurse was the wife of the vizier Ay, who could have been Tiy's brother. Ay sometimes called himself "the God's father," suggesting that he might have been Akhenaton’s father-in-law. However Ay never specifically refers to himself as the father of Nefertiti, although there are references that Nefertiti's sister, Mutnojme, is featured prominently in the decorations of the tomb of Ay. We will never know the truth of this bloodline. Perhaps they didn't know either



This shrine stela also from the early part of the Amarna period depicts Akhenaton, Nefertiti, and Princesses Meretaten, Mekeaten, and Ankhesenpaaten worshiping the Aten as a family. Dorothea Arnold in her article "Aspects of the Royal Female Image during the Amarna Period" discusses the plethora of reliefs depicting intimate family moments. While Akhenaton leans forward to give Meretaten a kiss, Mekeaten plays on her mother's lap and gazes up lovingly.
At the same time Ankhesenpaaten, the smallest, sits on Nefertiti's shoulder and fiddles with her earring. Arnold claims that the shrine stela "relates to the Aton religion's concept of creation" in which the King and Queen are viewed as "a primeval 'first pair." At the top of the composition, the sun-god, Aton, represented by a raised circle, extends his life-giving rays to the Royal Family. The relief uses the concept of the "window of appearances" or a snapshot of life. The figures are framed by a fictive structure which suggests the form of a square window. Aldred in his book Egyptian Art calls this "a brief moment in the lives of five beings as they are caught in an act of mutual affection". In actuality, the royal palace at Akhenaton had a window from which the royal couple could observe the city and address their subjects.
It is accepted that Akhenaton and Nefertiti had six daughters. No son was ever shown in reliefs.
The names of the daughters were; Meritaten (1349 BC) - Meketaten and Ankhenspaaten (1346 BC) - Neferneferuaten (1339 BC) - Neferneferure and Setepenre (1338).
In 1337 BC the official family, with all six of Nefertiti's daughters was shown for the last time.
In 1336 BC Meketaten died in childbirth.
In 1335 Nefertiti seemed to vanish, assumed dead.


This limestone relief found in the Royal Tomb at Amarna depicts Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and two of their daughters making an offering to the sun-disk Aten. Akhenaten and Nefertiti carry flowers to be laid on the table beneath the "life-giving" rays of the Aten. The figures are carved in the grotesque style, a characteristic of the early half of the Amarna period. Nefertiti, sporting the double plume headdress mentioned in the stela dedication, is the petite figure placed behind her larger scale husband. The compostion mirrors early artistic representations of the royal couple. To emphasize the strength and power of the pharaoh, Egyptian iconographical tradition required the female figure to be smaller in scale than the male.

Akhenaten's minor wives includeD Merytaten, Kiya, Mekytaten, and Ankhesenpaaten.