Word: aten
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
Perhaps Amenhotep was one of the first student radicals. At any rate, he succeeded to the throne at about 16 and set out to revolutionize the age-old system of multiple deities, substituting a single god, Aten, symbolized by the sun. In fact, he changed his own name to Akhenaten, meaning Useful to Aten. Women's Lib would have loved him: he gave equal billing, in bas-relief and statuary, to his Queen, Nefertiti. She was portrayed in the sleek drapery she might actually have worn, one shoulder bare, a clasp under her right breast. In dark red quartz...