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
Maspero, again, declares Tii to have been an Egyptian of old
stock, and the God "Atonou" to have been the deity of her
tribe (Hist. anc., as cited, p. 249); and he pronounces the
cult probably the most ancient variant of the religions of Ra
(p. 250). Messrs. King and Hall, who also do not accept the theory
of a Syrian derivation, coincide with Messrs. Breasted and Weigall
in extolling Akhunaton's creed. In a somewhat summary fashion
they pronounce (work cited, p. 383) that, "given an ignorance of
the true astronomical character of the sun, we see how eminently
rational a religion" was this. The conception of a moving window
in the heavens, which appears to be the core of it, seems rather
a darkening than a development of the "philosophical speculations
of the priests of the Sun at Heliopolis," from which it is held by
Messrs. King and Hall to have been derived. Similarly ill-warranted
is the decision (id. p. 384) that in Akhunaton's heresy "we see
... the highest attitude [? altitude] to which religious ideas had
attained before the days of the Hebrew prophets." Alike in India
and in Egypt, pantheistic ideas of a larger scope than his or those
of the Hebrew prophets had been attained before Akhunaton's time.
Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, on the other hand, points out that the cult
of the Aten is really an ancient one in Egypt, and was carried
on by Thothmes III, father of Amen-hetep II, a century before
Akhunaton (Amen-hetep IV), its "original home" being Heliopolis
(History of Egypt, 1902, iv, 48, 119). So also von Bissing,
Gesch. Aeg. in Umriss, p. 52 (reading "Iton"). Rejecting the view
that "Aten" is only a form of "Adon," Dr. Budge pronounces that
"as far as can be seen now the worship of Aten was something
like a glorified materialism"--whatever that may be--"which had
to be expounded by priests who performed ceremonies similar
to those which belonged to the old Heliopolitan sun-worship,
without any connection whatsoever with the worship of Yahweh;
and a being of the character of the Semitic God Adôn had no place
in it anywhere." Further, he considers that it "contained no
doctrines on the unity or oneness of Aten similar to those which
are found in the hymns to Ra, and none of the beautiful ideas
on the future life with which we are familiar from the hymns and
other compositions in the Book of the Dead" (Ib. pp. 120-21).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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