Akhenaten - Amenhotep IV, the tenth pharaoh of the XVIII dynasty, son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye - an outstanding politician, a famous religious reformer, during whose reign there were significant changes in the politics and religion of Egypt. Akhenaten is famous for the fact that during his short life he carried out a religious reform, approaching the approval of monotheism.
Amenhotep IV entered into an acute conflict with the priests of Amun, proclaimed himself an admirer of the radiant god Aten, personified by the sun disk - Aten, whose cult was widespread already in the time of Amenhotep III and Tiya. The erection by the pharaoh of the temple of Aten in Thebes led to a complete break with the cult of Amun and its priests. He banned the worship of Ra, disbanded the priesthood, closed all the temples and moved the capital from Thebes to the desert area to the north - Tel el Amarna.
Amenhotep IV changed his throne name - "Amon is pleased" to Akhenaten - "servant of Aton", he destroyed the name "Amenhotep" on the monuments of his father and destroyed the sculptures of the sphinxes associated with him.
One God received the name Aton. Many historians explain this monotheistic reform, which has no analogues in antiquity, by the pharaoh's desire to get rid of the power of the Theban priests, who became so strong that they even dictated their will to the pharaohs. The priests of Egypt considered themselves the only intermediaries between people and gods, everyone from the pharaoh to the peasant had to carry part of their income to the treasury of the Theban priests. The power of the priests can be judged by the ruins of the famous temple complex in Karnak - cyclopean structures with a temple to the sun god Ra amaze the imagination even today.
In a new place, 300 km up the Nile from Thebes, in just a few months an amazing city blossomed in the dead desert. Not just a city - the city of the god Aton, heaven on Earth. The planning, construction and decoration of the new capital, which received the name Akhetaton - "the place of power of Aton", Akhenaten watched personally.
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The Amarna period is considered the highest form of ancient Egyptian art. The era of Amarna was the time for the creation of amazing masterpieces of Egyptian art, including the sculptural portraits of Akhenaten and Nefertiti from the studio of the sculptor Thutmose the Younger in Akhetaton.
Akhenaten's wife was the beautiful Nefertiti, his cousin. Nefertiti possessed tremendous power and authority, she played an extremely important role in the religious life of Egypt at that time, accompanying her husband during sacrifices, sacrifices and religious festivals. She was the living embodiment of the life-giving power of the Sun, giving life. In the temples of the god Aton in Thebes, prayers were offered to her, none of the temple activities could take place without her, a guarantee of the fertility and prosperity of the whole country.
After reigning for about 17 years, Akhenaten died at a fairly young age, having ceded the throne to the king of Smenkhkar, who was the husband of the eldest daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti - Princess Meritaton. Two years later, the throne passed to Tutankhaton, who, according to one of the hypotheses, was the son of Nefertiti and the sculptor Thutmose the Younger.
Under the influence of high-ranking dignitaries and priesthood, Tutankhaton renounces the heresy of his predecessor - Akhenaten, takes the name Tutankhamun and transfers the court to Memphis.
Akhetaton was gradually abandoned and began to collapse, and with the beginning of the 19th dynasty it was cursed and turned into a quarry. The name of its creator was also cursed and removed from the official documentation, in which from now on Akhenaten was only referred to as "an apostate from Amarna."
Excavations in the Amarna area were started in 1891 by F. Petrie, then suspended, and in 1907 continued by the German Oriental Society under the leadership of Ludwig Borchardt, who revealed the famous bust of Nefertiti to the world.
For more than 30 centuries Akhenaten and Nefertiti were not mentioned even in legends. Their names were erased from monuments, their statues lost their faces, their city was razed to the ground. But deciphering ancient manuscripts, scientists found references to the pharaoh - a prophet and queen, whose beauty could not be described.
A love letter from Akhenaten, written by the pharaoh to his wife, has survived to this day:
Author: Valentina Zhitanskaya