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Akhenaten's Monotheistic Beliefs

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Akhenaten's Monotheistic Beliefs
Akhenaten is viewed as one of the most controversial Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. The introduction of Akhenaten’s monotheistic views attributed to the decline of the Egyptian empire during his reign in the 18th dynasty. Akhenaten believed that Aten, the sun disk, was the one true god. This ideology was then adopted, though not willingly, throughout Egypt. Akhenaten focused the majority of his time into building temples and enforcing his new regime that he neglected his duties as Pharaoh. Consequently, Egypt’s boarders shrank and the citizens initiated revolts. Despite this, Akhenaten is seen as a revolutionary, being the starting point for major monotheistic religions such as Christianity.
The change to monotheistic religion (believing in only …show more content…
The previous belief was that of a polytheistic nature; they believed in many deities who each had their own origin myths and rituals. The sheer number of gods and goddesses created a safety net of sorts. Then unexplainable phenomena could be reasoned as the doing of one god or another (Teeter, 2016). The gods were personified to allow the people a tangible connection with them; hands to give or take away, feet to move, mounths to speak and eyes to see. By making an abstrtact idea such as sunlight a god, which does not posses human characterisitcs, Akhenaten successfully removed the people’s ability to interact with the gods (Teeter, 2016). Communicating with the gods was a privillege reserved for the Pharaoh and the royal family alone. And as Akhenaten claimed to be the only gateway between mortals and gods, the previously limitless ways to contact the gods through prayers and offerings was reduced to appealing towards the Pharaoh’s ego in …show more content…
So much so that every mention of Amun was physically removed from temple walls and any mention of him in literature was also erased. The administrative centre of Egypt moved from Thebes to Amarna, the city dedicated to Aten, with Akhenaten forcing people with government positions to relocate under threat of stripping them of their titles (Teeter, 2016). The move to Amarna may have been prompted due to Thebes having strong ties to Amun, further rejecting the god from Egyptian society as he wasn’t considered important enough anymore to have his city as the
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