Akhenaten

Amen and His City

During the 18th dynasty in the Upper Egyptian city of Waset, called Thebes by the Greeks, the god Amen was supreme. No god had dominated the ancient land as Amen did; his name would ring eternally through the ages as Amen and sometimes in combination with Ra as Amen-Ra. Indeed, the 18th dynasty of Kemet, named Egypt by the Greeks, was the Age of Amen's supremacy. Any god raised up against the might of Amen would surely be struck down. Any scribe, sesbesb, or, more precipitously, Per-aa, Great House, called pbaraob by the Hebrews, who dared to question the predominance of Amen would find himself or herself resigned to the margins of Kemetic history and assaulted by 1,000 defenders of the Hidden One.

In the city of Amen, called Waset, the spoils of 100 war victories swelled the coffers of the Almighty and made God Amen all-powerful, in fact, incalculably awesome. Thus, Amen was also wealthy, the richest of any deity the world had ever known. Avenues of sphinxes, grand pylons of massive stones, decorated the city of God. Treasures from foreign capitals, including gold from the kingdoms of Nubia, timber from

Assyria, and spices from Punt, elevated Amen as paramount king of all the gods, the god of gods. So great and foreboding was he that neither the Per-aa nor the high priest could lay claim to this bounty. It had not been won in the service of mere humans; the wealth of Amen was the precious treasure won in service to the Hidden One.

There were no gold or silver coins in Egypt, one of the few civilizations that grew to maturity without metal coinage. But the temporal possessions of Amen were immeasurable. Donations of real estate, boats, vineyards, and livestock from the people of Kemet were constant and an indication of the popularity of the Supreme God, Amen, during the 18th dynasty.

But even Amen, as powerful as he was in the inner sanctum of his mighty temple, could not run his own operations from his hidden domain. Here even a God needed people, clerical and administrative, to hear the word of God and to do his bidding among humans, to carry out his rituals, to punish the disobedient, and to receive his gifts. It was also necessary to have people to manage the increasing stores of goods being shipped daily into the treasures of Amen. As mighty as he was from on high, Amen depended on a company of priests to carry out his will.

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