Akhenaten

Akhenaten is one of the Personalities in their Times options in Section III (25 marks). You answer one question on your personality, with two or three parts, at least one worth 10–15 marks. The syllabus asks you to study:

• Historical context: Egypt and its empire under Amenhotep III; the power of Amun and the growth of sun worship; Egypt's place among the great powers.
• Background and rise to prominence: his family; his accession as Amenhotep IV and early reign at Thebes.
• Career: the Aten religion; the founding of Akhetaten; Amarna art; the roles of Nefertiti and the royal family; foreign relations; his death and successors.
• Evaluation: his impact and legacy; ancient and modern images and interpretations.

All dates are BC and approximate. His reign is usually dated about 1353–1336 (17 years).

Under Amenhotep III Egypt was at the height of its wealth and power. The empire stretched from Nubia to Syria, and Egypt dealt as an equal with Babylon, Mitanni and the other great kingdoms, exchanging gifts and princesses. The temple of Amun at Karnak was enormously rich, and its priesthood was influential. At the same time, interest in the sun god was growing: the Aten, the visible disc of the sun, already appears under Amenhotep III, who called himself ‘the dazzling Aten’.

• Parents: Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, a powerful queen of non-royal birth. He apparently became heir after the death of his elder brother, Prince Thutmose.
• Wives and children: his Great Royal Wife was Nefertiti, who appears beside him in art and worship far more than earlier queens. They had six daughters, including Meritaten, Meketaten and Ankhesenpaaten (later Ankhesenamun, wife of Tutankhamun). Another wife, Kiya, was also prominent for a time. A DNA study published in 2010 identified the body from tomb KV55 — very probably Akhenaten — as the father of Tutankhamun; this is widely cited, but the study's methods and conclusions are still debated.
• Accession as Amenhotep IV. Whether he first shared the throne with his father (a co-regency) is debated.
• Early reign at Thebes: he built temples to the Aten east of Karnak, including the Gempaaten, using small standard stone blocks called talatat. Colossal statues from the Gempaaten show his new artistic style. He celebrated an early jubilee (sed festival).

• The god: the Aten, the sun disc, creator and sustainer of all life. After the first years it was shown as a disc with rays ending in hands, some holding the ankh (life) to the royal family. It had no human or animal form and no cult statue.
• The king as intermediary: only Akhenaten ‘knew’ the god. Officials and ordinary people worshipped through the royal family, whose images stood in household shrines.
• Worship: open-air temples with hundreds of offering tables in the sunlight, such as the Great Aten Temple at Akhetaten.
• Name change: in about year 5 Amenhotep (‘Amun is satisfied’) became Akhenaten (‘effective for the Aten’). Later in the reign the Aten's formal name was revised to remove references to other gods.
• Against Amun: later in the reign agents erased the name and images of Amun across Egypt, and sometimes the plural word ‘gods’. The traditional temples lost royal support.
• The Great Hymn to the Aten, in the tomb of the official Ay at Amarna, praises the Aten as the ‘sole god, beside whom there is no other’ who made the world.
• Afterlife: the dead were imagined waking each morning with the sun at Akhetaten, rather than living in the underworld ruled by Osiris.

Historians debate whether this was true monotheism (belief in one god only) or henotheism (worship of one god without denying others; some textbooks say monolatry), and how far it was driven by belief or by politics (reducing the power of Amun's priesthood).

• Foundation: in about year 5, the king chose a site in Middle Egypt on the east bank of the Nile, roughly halfway between Thebes and Memphis, on land sacred to no other god. Boundary stelae cut into the cliffs (years 5 and 6, with additions in year 8) marked its limits and record that the Aten himself chose the place.
• Layout: the Great and Small Aten Temples, palaces, the Royal Road for the royal chariot procession, suburbs of large villas, the workmen's village, and rock tombs for officials in the eastern cliffs, with the royal tomb in a distant valley.
• Life in the city: the court and government moved there within a few years. Archaeologists, notably Barry Kemp's team, have found that many households kept images of traditional gods such as Bes and Taweret. The South Tombs Cemetery (excavated from 2005) shows that many ordinary residents did heavy labour, were poorly fed and died young.
• The end: the city was abandoned within a few years of Akhenaten's death.

• Exaggerated royal figures: long face and jaw, narrow shoulders, full belly and hips (for example the Gempaaten colossi).
• Intimate royal family scenes: the king and queen kissing their daughters under the Aten's rays.
• More naturalism and movement in scenes of plants and animals, such as painted palace floors.
• Some works show a more refined, restrained style, like the painted bust of Nefertiti, found in 1912 in the workshop of the sculptor Thutmose and now in Berlin.

Older theories that the style shows a disease (such as Marfan syndrome) found no support in the 2010 DNA study, itself debated. Most historians see it as a deliberate religious style.

The main evidence is the Amarna letters: about 380 clay tablets found in 1887, mostly in Akkadian cuneiform.

• Great kings of Babylon, Mitanni, Assyria and Hatti wrote as ‘brothers’, asking for gold; marriage alliances belong mainly to Amenhotep III's reign. Tushratta of Mitanni complained that he received gold-plated wooden statues instead of solid gold ones.
• Vassals in Canaan and Syria promised loyalty and accused each other. Rib-Hadda of Byblos sent many appeals for help against Abdi-Ashirta and Aziru of Amurru; Aziru later sided with the Hittites.
• The Hittite king Suppiluliuma expanded into northern Syria and eventually crushed Mitanni (the dates of his Syrian wars are debated).
• Tombs at Amarna show a great reception of foreign tribute in year 12 (perhaps a ceremonial display), and a campaign in Nubia is recorded.

The older view (for example James Breasted) of a pacifist king who lost the empire is now often challenged: vassal appeals were normal diplomatic language and Egypt kept Canaan, though it lost influence in northern Syria.

• Akhenaten died in about his year 17. His successors are debated: a ruler named Smenkhkare and a ruler named Neferneferuaten (possibly Nefertiti or Meritaten) appear briefly. A 2012 discovery of an inscription naming Nefertiti as queen in year 16 shows she was alive late in the reign.
• Tutankhaten became king as a child, changed his name to Tutankhamun and issued the Restoration Stela, describing neglected temples and restoring the old gods. The court returned to Memphis and Thebes.
• Horemheb (perhaps continuing work begun under Tutankhamun and Ay) dismantled the Aten temples and used talatat as fill in the pylons of Karnak (which preserved thousands of them). Later king lists omitted the Amarna kings, and a Ramesside text refers to him only as ‘that enemy (or criminal) of Akhetaten’.

Interpretations

• James Breasted (early 20th century): ‘the first individual in history’, a visionary religious thinker.
• Donald Redford (1984): a self-centred ‘heretic king’ whose religion served his own power.
• Erik Hornung: a religious revolutionary who created a ‘religion of light’.
• Barry Kemp (Amarna excavations): the archaeology of ordinary life shows how far the royal vision was from most people's experience.

You do not have to name historians to reach the top band, but using an interpretation accurately to support your argument is credited.

• Impact in his time: a complete religious and artistic revolution; a new capital; the court reshaped around him.
• Limits: support was narrow; ordinary religion continued; the reform collapsed soon after his death; influence in northern Syria declined.
• Legacy: removed from official memory, but rediscovered through Amarna, the talatat and the Amarna letters; a figure of endless modern fascination.

A model paragraph

Here is how one paragraph might use evidence and evaluation (on ordinary religion, not one of our bank questions):

‘The archaeology of Akhetaten suggests that the Aten religion reached ordinary people only partly. Excavated houses contain amulets and images of household gods such as Bes and Taweret, who protected women in childbirth — concerns the distant Aten did not answer. Since the king was the only one who “knew” the god, ordinary residents may have found little in the new faith for their own needs. This helps explain why the reform collapsed so quickly once the royal court that sustained it had gone.’

• Calling the religion simple monotheism without noting the king's central role and the debate.
• Treating the vassal appeals in the Amarna letters as proof the empire collapsed.
• Explaining Amarna art only as a sign of disease.
• Mixing up Tutankhamun (who issued the Restoration Stela) and Horemheb (who later usurped it and destroyed the Aten temples).
• Presenting the identification of the KV55 body as certain.

• 10-mark parts often ask you to explain one aspect: his religious ideas, Akhetaten, art, Nefertiti's role or foreign relations.
• 15-mark parts usually ask you to assess his reforms, achievements, impact or legacy. Open with a judgement and argue it throughout.
• Use the Hymn to the Aten and the boundary stelae as royal statements of belief: they show what the king wanted to be believed.
• Useful terms: Aten, monotheism, henotheism, talatat, boundary stelae, Amarna letters, vassal, restoration.

• New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Amenhotep III: the wealth, empire and religion Akhenaten inherited.
• Hatshepsut: another 18th Dynasty ruler later removed from the king lists.
• Ramesside Egypt: how the 19th Dynasty kings presented themselves as restorers after Amarna.