Egyptian God Aten: The Egyptian Sun Disk That Transformed Ancient Religion, Origins, Symbolism, Worship, and Legacy
Aten was the focus of Atenism, which was the religious system formally established in ancient Egypt by the late Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten. Exact dating for the Eighteenth Dynasty is contested, though a general date range places the dynasty in the years 1550 to 1292 BCE. The worship of Aten and the coinciding rule of Akhenaten are major identifying characteristics of a period within the Eighteenth Dynasty referred to as the Amarna Period (c. 1353 – 1336 BCE).
Atenism and the worship of the Aten as the sole god of ancient Egypt state worship did not persist after Akhenaten’s death. Not long after his death, one of Akhenaten’s Eighteenth Dynasty successors, Tutankhamun, reopened the state temples to other Egyptian gods and re-positioned Amun as the pre-eminent solar deity. Aten is depicted as a solar disc emitting rays terminating in human hands.
Egyptian god Aten
Who is the Egyptian god Aten?
Before Akhenaten’s revolution, Aten already existed in Egyptian belief as an aspect of the sun. Egyptians worshipped several solar deities, including Ra, Horus, Khepri, and Amun-Ra. Aten represented the sun disk itself, shining light and life over the world. He was not originally a god with a large, independent following. Aten started as a symbol. Akhenaten turned that symbol into the centre of the state religion.
Egyptian God Aten Name
The word Aten appears in the Old Kingdom as a noun meaning “disc” which referred to anything flat and circular; the sun was called the “disc of the day” where Ra was thought to reside. By analogy, the term “silver aten” was sometimes used to refer to the moon. High relief and low relief illustrations of the Aten show it with a curved surface. Therefore, the late scholar Hugh Nibley insisted that a more correct translation would be globe, orb or sphere, rather than disk.
Egyptian God Aten Origins
The Egyptian god Aten was the disc of the sun and originally an aspect of Ra, the sun god in traditional ancient Egyptian religion. Aten does not have a creation myth or family but is mentioned in the Book of the Dead. The first known reference to Aten the sun-disk as a deity is in The Story of Sinuhe from the 12th Dynasty, in which the deceased king is described as rising as a god to the heavens and “uniting with the sun-disk, the divine body merging with its maker”.
Although the Aten was the subject of cult worship during the reign of Amenhotep III, his successor Akhenaten made the Aten the only deity to whom cult worship was offered by the state and official temples, although archaeological evidence indicates that the state temples of the other Egyptian gods were not closed, and at home cult worship was not displaced. The Aten was much discussed in temples and tombs inscribed during the reign of Akhenaten where he is depicted as creator, giver of life and nurturing spirit of the world.
Aten in Early Egyptian Religion
Egyptian god Aten was extensively worshipped as a solar deity during the reign of Amenhotep III where it was depicted as a falcon-headed god like Ra. While Egyptian god Aten was the preeminent creator deity of a pantheon of ancient Egyptian gods under Amenhotep III, it was not until his successor that Aten would be the only god acknowledged via state worship.
During the reign of Amenhotep III’s successor, Amenhotep IV, the Aten became the sole god of the Egyptian state religion, and Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten to reflect his close link with the supreme deity. The sole worship of Aten can be referred to as Atenism. Many of the core principles of Atenism were recorded in the capital city, Akhenaten founded and moved his dynastic government to, Akhetaten, referred to as either Amarna, El-Amarna, or Tell el-Amarna by modern scholars.
In Atenism, night is a time to fear. Work is done best when the sun, and thus Aten, is present. The Aten created all countries and people, and cares for every creature. According to the inscriptions, the Aten created a Nile river in the sky (rain) for the Syrians. The rays of the sun disk only hold out life to the royal family, and because of this, non-royals receive life from Akhenaten and Nefertiti, later Neferneferuaten, in exchange for loyalty to the Aten. In inscriptions, like the Hymn to the Aten and the King, the Aten is depicted as caring for the people through Akhenaten, placing the royal family as intermediaries for the worship of the Aten.
Akhenaten identified himself as a son of the Egyptian deity Aten, just as numerous of his predecessors had claimed to be born of a deity and their status as the embodiment of Horus. Akhenaten placed himself to be the sole connection between Aten and Aten as the supreme god. This has caused the debate on whether Atenism is to be counted as a monotheistic religion, and thereby turning it into one of the earliest to fall under the umbrella of monotheism.
Akhenaten
Egyptian god Aten is both a unique deity and a continuation of the traditional idea of a sun-god in ancient Egyptian religion, deriving a lot of the concepts of power and representation from the earlier solar deities like Ra, but building on top of the power Ra and many of his contemporaries represent. Egyptian god Aten carried absolute power in the universe, representing the life-giving force of light to the world as well as merging with the concept and goddess Ma’at to develop further responsibilities for Aten beyond the power of light itself.
How the Egyptian god Aten Was Worshipped
The cult-center of the Aten was at the capital city Akhenaten founded, Akhetaten, though other cult sites have been found in Thebes and Heliopolis. The use of Amarna as a capital city and religious centre was relatively short-lived compared to the 18th Dynasty or New Kingdom as a whole as it was shortly abandoned after the death of Akhenaten. Inscriptions found on boundary stela accredited to Akhenaten discuss his desire to make the city a place of worship to Aten, dedicating the city to the god and emphasising the royal residences’ efforts in worship.
Major principles of the Aten’s cult worship were recorded via inscriptions on temples and tombs from the period. Straying significantly from the tradition of ancient Egyptian temples being hidden and more enclosed the further one went into the site, the temples of the Egyptian god Aten were open and did not have roofs in order to allow the rays of the sun inside. No statues of Aten were allowed as they were seen as idolatry.
However, these were typically replaced by functionally equivalent representations of Akhenaten and his family venerating the Egyptian god Aten and receiving the ankh, the breath of life, from him. Compared to periods before and after the Amarna Period, Priests had less to do since offerings, such as fruits, flowers, and cakes were limited, and oracles were not needed.
In the worship of the Egyptian god Aten, the daily service of purification, anointment, and clothing of the divine image that is traditionally found in ancient Egyptian worship was not performed. Instead, incense and food-stuff offerings such as meats, wines, and fruits were placed onto open-air altars.
A common scene in carved depictions of Akhenaten giving offerings to Aten has him consecrating the sacrificed goods with a royal sceptre. Instead of barque-processions, the royal family rode in a chariot on festival days. Elite women were known to worship the Aten in sun-shade temples in Akhetaten.
Akhetaten: The City of the Egyptian god Aten
To honour the Egyptian god Aten, Akhenaten founded a new city on untouched land: Akhetaten, modern Amarna. He declared that the city belonged to Aten alone, and he carved boundary stelae into the cliffs to mark its holiness.
Akhenaten as a Sphinx in the city of Akhetaten
Life in Akhetaten
The city flourished with palaces, housing districts, workshops, and wide avenues. Its temples were unlike any seen before in Egypt. Priests, artists, and officials moved there to serve the new religion, while carvings showed Akhenaten’s family basking in Aten’s rays. Akhetaten was vibrant but short-lived. After Akhenaten’s death, it was abandoned.
Akhetaten Temples
Two temples were central to the city of Akhetaten. The larger of the two had an “open, unroofed structure covering an area of about 800 by 300 metres (2,600 ft × 1,000 ft) at the northern end of the city”. Doorways had broken lintels and raised thresholds. Temples to the Aten were open-air structures with little to no roofing to maximise the amount of sunlight on the interior making them unique compared to other Egyptian temples of the time. Balustrades depict Akhenaten and the royal family embracing the rays of the Aten flanked by stairwells, ramps, and altars. These fragments were initially identified as stele but were later reclassified as balustrades based on the presence of scenes on both sides.
Egyptian god Aten Royal titulary
Inscriptions in tombs and temples during the Amarna Period often gave Aten a royal titulary enclosed in a double cartouche. Some have interpreted this to mean that Akhenaten was the embodiment of Aten, and the worship of Aten is directly worship of Akhenaten; but others have taken this as an indicator of Aten as the supreme ruler even over the current reigning royalty.
There were two forms of the title; the first had the names of other gods, and the second later one was more ‘singular’ and referred only to the Aten himself. The early form was “Re-Horakhti who rejoices in the Horizon, in his name Shu, which is the Aten.” The latter form was “Re, ruler of the two horizons, who rejoices in the Horizon, in his name of light, which is the Aten.
The monotheism
Ra-Horus, more usually referred to as Ra-Horakhty (Ra who is Horus of the two horizons), is a synthesis of two other gods, both of which are attested from very early on in ancient Egyptian religious practice. During the Amarna Period, this synthesis was seen as the invisible source of energy of the sun god, of which the visible manifestation was the Aten, the solar disk.
Thus, Ra-Horus-Aten was a development of old ideas which came gradually. The real change, as some see it, was the apparent abandonment of all other gods on the state level, especially Amun-Ra, the prohibition of idolatry, and the debatable introduction of quasi-monotheism by Akhenaten.
The syncretism is readily apparent in the Great Hymn to the Egyptian god Aten in which Re-Herakhty, Shu, and Egyptian god Aten are merged into the creator god. Others see Akhenaten as a practitioner of an Aten monolatry, as he did not actively deny the existence of other gods; he simply refrained from worshipping any but the Aten. Other scholars call the religion henotheistic.
Amun (Amun-Ra) – The Fertility and Creation God
The Fall of Atenism
Being pharaoh, Akhenaten was regarded as the high priest or even a prophet of the Egyptian god Aten, and in his reign one of the primary promoters of Atenism in Egypt. Following the death of Akhenaten, Tutankhamun restored the cult of Amun, and the prohibition against the state worship of anything but the deities of non-Atenism was removed in favour of a resurgence of the state worship of the old Egyptian pantheon.
The point of this transition can be seen in the name-change of Tutankhaten into Tutankhamun, indicating the loss of favour in the worship of the Aten. While there was no purge of the cult after Akhenaten’s death, the Aten persisted in Egypt for another ten years or so until it seemed to fade. When Tutankhamun came into power, his religious reign was one of tolerance, with the major difference being that the Aten was no longer the only god worshipped within official, state capacity.
Tutankhamun made efforts to rebuild the state temples that were destroyed during Akhenaten’s reign and reinstate the traditional pantheon of gods. This seemed to be “a move based publicly on the doctrine that Egypt’s woes stemmed directly from its ignoring the gods, and in turn the gods’ abandonment of Egypt”.
Conclusion
Egyptian god Aten’s rise and fall form a dramatic chapter in Egyptian history. What began as the sun’s warm light became the centre of a national religious revolution. Akhenaten’s devotion to Aten changed art, architecture, and worship across Egypt, even if only for a short time.
Today, Egyptian god Aten stands as a reminder of how bold and unexpected ancient history can be. His story invites us to explore how belief, politics, and creativity can come together to reshape a civilization.
