Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Rebellious son: Amenhotep III was succeeded by one of the first known monotheists

Smithsonian Magazine

Not long after Amenhotep III died, in 1353 B.C., masons entered his mortuary temple and methodically chiseled out every mention of Amun, the god said to have fathered the great pharaoh. Astonishingly, the order to commit this blasphemy came from the king's own son. Crowned Amenhotep IV, he changed his name to Akhenaten in his fifth year on the throne and focused his energies on promoting a single god, Aten, the sun disk. Together with his beautiful queen Nefertiti, he built a new capital, Akhetaten (today known as Amarna), banned representations of several deities and set about destroying all inscriptions and images of Amun, from the Nile Delta to today's Sudan.

See the above page for more.

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