spin

The Aten cult was around for less than a quarter of a century. It was never ever popular. It was actively stifled when it folded. Egyptian society found it confusing and elitist, so the fabric of the society was stretched and suffered. The only reason why we know about all this now was because of the unearthing of the unfinished city of Akhetaten and various tombs of the era. The temples of Aten were pulled down and used as fill material for pilons elsewhere and the religion was forgotten. (There's a museum at Luxor which features fragments from a temple to Aten, fragments found relatively recently precisely in a pilon.) There was no popular movement behind the Aten religion: it was the royal faith and not even available to the plebs, who didn't know what to do because their gods had been banished for the sake of Aten. We knew next to nothing about Akhnaten until the beginning of last century. Tutankhaten changed his name to signal the end of the novel faith.

Ahknaten showed little interest in foreign affairs, as can be seen with a reading of the Amarna letters, but those letters reflected the state of affairs in Canaan in which Egypt was a powerful but distant overlord, its representatives feared and honored but rarely seen by most statelets in Canaan. The Canaanites were too busy squabbling over their own local affairs to show any interest outside them. Egypt was a different world, aloof.

How does one imagine the transmission of the Aten religion after the death of Akhnaten and the abandonment under Tutankhamun? Who transmitted it?


spin

DrZoidberg

I wasn't talking about Aten wholesale. I was only talking about the monotheistic idea. Basic ideas are very tenacious indeed and can spread virally. Even though all details about Amarna was lost, the idea of the one god could still have survived. Many ideas have historically survived and gained in popularity simply because being derided by figures of authority.

Take all the modern myths today for example. This thing that it helps beat the flu if you keep warm? Who came up with that idea? Where does it come from? Why is it still being spread?

spin

Basically the same problem. You have to produce a meaningful trajectory for a private religious belief. That didn't get out of the palaces of Egypt and lasted less than 25 years. Would you like to posit an idea that no-one understood being able to survive centuries and jump countries and cultures without a trajectory?


spin

semiopen

Thanks, I've never heard that before.

The development and symbolism of Passover until 70 CE (or via: amazon.co.uk) By Tamara Prosic

discusses this -

http://books.google.com/books?id=xK1...ociety&f=false

She states on page 54 that in scholarly discussions of the dual nature of the festival: the festival of Passover is considered non-sedentary but the feast of Unleavened Bread deals with the concerns of sedentary people. This is not that simple though as she goes into more detail.

Interesting book, but at $150 I might wait for the movie.

Hope I didn't give the impression that I thought Moses invented it in the desert or something.

Thanks again for mentioning this.

DNAReplicator

I can’t help but notice the following parallels between Manethro’s story and our understanding of Egyptian history today – namely that Ay (whose tomb walls the Hymn to the Aten was found on), whose father was probably Syrian, rose to Grand Vizir from non-royal origins under Amenophis IV (nee. Aknahton). On The death of Aknahton, he was the effective ruler of Egypt while the boy king Tutankamun, was on the throne for nine years. On Tut’s death, he ruled in his own right for about 4 years – i.e. 13 years effective rule in total.

Although Ay did ditch Atenism as the state religion, his successor (and probably his rival while he was alive) Horemheb was the pharaoh that appears to have initiated the severe reaction against all things Aten. In many ways he was as much the first Pharaoh of the 19th dynasty as he was the last of the 18th. His successor was Ramses I.

So we have a partially foreign monotheistic usurper of the throne who effectively reigned for 13 years (as did Osarseph) with something that looks a little like Psalm 104 painted on his tomb wall. Add to this that Ay’s mummy has never been identified (one of only a handful of Pharaohs in the New Kingdom for whom this is true), and one is left with the interesting conjecture that Ay is quite a good fit for Moses, which by extension would make Horemheb the pharaoh of the exodus.

Hmmm......

spin

This last isn't correct. The father you are to is the master of horse Yuya, who wasn't Syrian, but likely from Mitanni--and while the Mitanni were noted for their skill with horses, Syrians weren't. (This was a time when Egypt and Mitanni were close.) Yuya married into a very important family from Akhmim which supplied a number of royal queens during the 18th dynasty. He was a close confidant to Amenhotep III, so it is highly unlikely that he wasn't anything but Egyptian in his actions, so his son, Ay, also master of horse and close confidant to royalty.

The reason why Ay's body was never found is that there was no-one to bury him properly. He in fact was responsible for burying Tutankhamun and made sure it was hidden well. Ay's tomb would have been utterly desecrated under Horemheb.

Horemheb as pharaoh of the exodus doesn't function with the city of Raamses (Exod 1) dating from the reign of Ramses II.

Any conjecture that Ay was a good fit for Moses, being totally preposterous should be best abandoned as quickly as possible before I find an egg-on-face smiley. This ain't the place for naive speculation if you want respect!


spin

bacht

I guess the main candidate for such a hypothetical chain of transmission would be Zoroastrian Persia, if they ever heard of Akhnaten.

DNAReplicator

You gotta be kidding!

OK, point taken

spin

You know the Persians were relatively late arrivals in territory that used to be Elamite. Then for several generations they were mere lackeys to the Medes until Cyrus altered the status quo. I don't see the Persians being on a trajectory for Egyptian monotheism, though they themselves had picked up dualistic monotheism before they moved down into today's Iran, thanks, according to tradition, to Zarathustra. Persian polytheism was repackaged as monotheism with the various old gods becoming angel figures, either working for the god of heaven, Ahura Mazda, or for his opposite, Ahriman. (Persia does sound like a good source for later aspects of Jewish monotheism.)

bacht

Thanks spin