Aten

In ancient Egypt during the Middle Kingdom, the word Aten, also spelled Aton, was originally used to describe the orb or radiant disk of the sun. By the mid-New Kingdom times, a solar god named Aten was well known and established among the other Egyptian deities, although it was not until the 18th dynasty of Egypt that the worship of the Aten emerged. During the reign of King Amenhotep III, the worship of the Aten was encouraged. Throughout the history of ancient Egypt, from c. 1550 BC, when the Egyptians finally drove out the Hyksos from their land, the god Amon-Ra had been given credit for this victory and was elevated to the status of chief of all Egyptians' traditional gods and from whom the early Pharaohs claimed descent.

This status was held by Amon-Ra until the ascendancy of Amenhotep Ill's son, Amenhotep IV (1352–1336 BC), to the Egyptian throne. During the fifth year of his reign, Amenhotep IV changed his name from Amenhotep, which meant “Amon is satisfied,” to Akhenaten, which meant “Glory of the Aten.” At this same time, the minor god Aten was elevated to the rank of the state god of Egypt, replacing Amon-Ra.

Instituting the worship of the Aten was the apex of religious reformation ushered in by King Akhenaten. Although Egyptians had always worshipped a chief god, they had also worshipped numerous other gods and goddesses. Akhenaten imposed the worship of the Aten on Egyptian subjects as the sole god to be worshipped. He enforced a new form of strict monotheism, which denied any rivals to the god Aten. Not only did Akhenaten forbid the worship of the former state god Amon-Ra, he closed the temples dedicated to Amon-Ra, persecuted and dispossessed the priesthood of Amon-Ra, and removed all inscriptions of other gods from public temples, monuments, and other building structures. Akhenaten proclaimed himself the priest of Aten and the god's only son. He also had new open-roofed temples built to reflect the essence of the Aten's radiance and power.

The Egyptian gods were traditionally represented by an animal head atop a human body. Usually, the animal chosen to represent a god reflected the character of the god. The earliest representation of the god Aten was in the form of a falcon-headed figure wearing the disk of the sun on its head. As part of Akhenaten's religious reform, the Aten was no longer portrayed as half animal and half human, but as a solar orb, a sun globe with long rays, each ray depicted as long stick-like arms ending in tiny human hands. The hands were sometimes shown holding the Egyptian hieroglyphic sign for life, the “ankh,” which was a cross shaped like a T with a loop at the top, or the hands were shown open, extending his power and grace to the royal family and to all humanity.

The Aten sometimes wore, even as the sun globe, the royal uaeus, which was the sacred asp that was worn on the headdress of divinities and royal personages of ancient Egypt. This was the only manner in which the Aten was allowed to be depicted during the reign of Akhenaten. Because the Aten represented the sun shining at its brightest, no idols were fashioned in the image of the Aten. Akhenaten declared that the Aten's form could not be captured because he was the essence of the sun's creative power and, therefore, his form could not be imagined.

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