A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
This was fully seen when King Akhunaton (otherwise Echnaton, or
Icheniton, or Akhunaton, or Akhunaten, or Chuenaten, or Khu-en-aten, or
Kku-n-aten, or Khouniatonou, or Khounaton!) = Amen-hetep or Amun-hotep
(or Amenophis) IV, moved by monotheistic zeal, departed so far from the
customary royal policy as to put under the ban all deities save that he
had chosen for himself, repudiating the God-name Amen in his own name,
and making one from that of his chosen Sun-God, Aten ("the sun's disk")
or Aton or Atonou [247] or Iton [248] (latterly held to be = the Syrian
Adon, "the Lord," symbolized by the sun's disk). There is reason to
think that his was not a mere Sun-worship, but the cult of a deity,
"Lord of the Disk," who looked through the sun's disk as through a
window. [249] In any interpretation, however, the doctrine was wholly
inacceptable to a priesthood whose multitudinous shrines its success
would have emptied. Of all the host of God-names, by one account only
that of the old Sun-God Ra-Harmachis was spared, [250] as being held
identical with that of Aten; and by one account [251] the disaffection
of priests and people rose to the point of open rebellion. At length
Akhunaton, "Glory of the Disk," as he elected to name himself, built
for himself and his God a new capital city in Middle Egypt, Akhet-Aten
(or Khut-Aten), the modern Tell-el-Amarna, where he assembled around
him a society after his own heart, and carried on his Aten-worship,
while his foreign empire was crumbling. The "Tell-el-Amarna tablets"
were found in the ruins of his city, which was deserted a generation
after his death. Though the king enforced his will while he lived,
his movement "bore no fruit whatever," his policy being reversed
after his family had died out, and his own monuments and capital city
razed to the ground by orthodox successors. [252] In the same way the
earlier attempt of the alien Hyksos to suppress the native polytheism
and image-worship had come to nothing. [253]
The history of Akhunaton is established by the later
Egyptology. Sharpe makes no mention of it, though the point had
been discussed from 1839 onwards. Cp. Lepsius, Letters from Egypt,
etc., Bohn trans. 1853, p. 27; and Nott and Gliddon's Types
of Mankind, 1854, p. 147, and Indigenous Races of the Earth,
1857, pp. 116-17, in both of which places will be found the
king's portrait. See last reference for the idle theory that he
had been emasculated, as to which the confutation by Wiedemann
(Aegyptische Geschichte, p. 397, cited by Budge, Hist. of Egypt,
1902, iv, 128) is sufficient. In point of fact, he figures in
the monuments as father of three or seven children (Wiedemann,
Rel. of Anc. Eg. p. 37; Erman, p. 69; Budge, iv, 123, 127).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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