Word: aten
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...Egypt. The priesthood surrounding Egypt's traditional polytheistic religion had accumulated enormous power. Rather than try to wrest it from the priests, the young king simply pulled their religion out from under them. He abolished the polytheistic system and replaced it with a religion based on the worship of Aten, the sun god. The Pharaoh even changed his name to Akhenaten--or "one who serves Aten." This undoubtedly made him a despised figure among the orthodox, a hostility that spilled over to his queen who, if ancient reliefs are to be believed, also wielded enormous power. "She is literally hand...
...elements of a soap opera." When Amenhotep IV, as he was originally called, ascended the throne in 1353 B.C., Egypt was a flourishing empire, at peace with its neighbors. Yet there were troubling signs. His father Amenhotep III had already challenged the powerful priesthood by proclaiming the sun god Aten as foremost among Egyptian deities and himself as his living incarnation...
...shook things up even more, not only changing his name to honor the new god (Akhenaten means "one who serves Aten") but also banishing the older gods, especially the priestly favorite Amen. Some scholars believe Akhenaten's monotheism, a historic first, inspired the Hebrew prophets, but it had the more immediate effect of freeing Egypt's artists. They could now portray the Pharaoh and the voluptuous Nefertiti (who may have shared the throne with him) in a far more casual, realistic way. Akhenaten's cone-shaped head, elongated face, fingers and toes, pot belly and flaring hips have led some...
Matzke says that 65 percent of Yale's buildings were constructed during aten-year period in the 1920s and 1930s. Sincethen, they have not received sufficientmaintenance work, she says...
...priests. When his son Amenhotep IV finally did strike at the priests, it was with a hysteria that unsettled courtiers and populace. Yet it was this man, a neurotic genius with a face and body distorted by what seems to have been a severe hormonal imbalance, who declared the Aten, the disc of the sun, to be the one true god. Then he closed the temples of Amen, built a new capital dedicated to the Aten and took for himself the name Akhenaten...