Ancient Egyptian History Class 4

Pharaohs, Gods and God

Adjunct Professor Joe Boisvert

Gulf Coast State College

New Kingdom PharaohsThe New Kingdom saw the reign of some

of Ancient Egypt's most powerful and charismatic pharaohs. 

Definition of the Word PharaohThe word pharaoh comes from the Egyptian 'per-aa', meaning 'great house' and referred to the royal palace. Only quite late in the New Kingdom did it come to refer to the king himself. 

Head of Queen Tiy wearing crown with raised headdress.

Queen TiyThis famous

portrait of Queen Tiy dates from ca. 1350 BC and is made of yew wood with gold foil inlays. It is on display at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin.

AKHENATON MOTHER

Queen Tiy, wife to Amenhotep III, may have been born a commoner but was soon corresponding with foreign princes as an equal. Similarly, Queen a full participant in religious ceremonies honoring Aten, the sun god. 

Wifely duties 

Like any dutiful wife, an Egyptian queen was expected to support her husband. She had a variety of religious and political duties that reinforced the position of the royal family. 

Akhenaton Pharaoh God -

One of the several colossal sandstone statues of Akhenaten found in a court east of the temple of Amen at Karnak.

The statue shows the characteristic facial features of Akhenaten that was obligatory for his representation at Karnak: small slanting eyes, a long, narrow nose and a full, prominent mouth.

The king's curious physiognomy has been the source of much speculation.

Akhenaton

.

Amenhotep at some point changes his name to Akhenaten, and founds a new Capital named Akhet-Aten more than a 100 miles north of Thebes.

Nefertiti takes on the longer name of Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti. Several beautiful temples and palaces are built in Akhetaten and Nefertiti plays an important role in religious life as well as court life.

In year 12 there is another large festival that takes place. Inscriptions in the tombs of the nobles show that there is a large tribute, and Akhenaten and Nefertiti are shown with their six daughters receiving tribute from many people.

Moving to the New Capital of Egypt from Memphis to Akhet-Aten City

The Later Years (After Year 12)

Soon after year 12 disaster seems to strike. First Meketaten, the second eldest daugher, dies. Scenes in the royal tomb in Akhet-Aten (modern Amarna) show a grief stricken Nefertiti and Akhenaten mourning their daughter. Around roughly the same time Akhenaten’s mother Queen Tiye also dies, and several of the younger daughters of Nefertiti also disappear from the scene.

Second wife of Akhenaten. Her name is found written as: kiya, kaia, kia and kiw 

Kiya had a unique title only used by her: hemet mereryt aat - Great Beloved Wife. She was however never called Great Royal Wife. She never wore a uraeus, and her name was never enclosed in a cartouche.

On the other hand Kiya is known to have had a sunshade and was depicted with Akhnetane and a daughter. The latter seem to indicate she played an important role at court. 

The origins of this Queen are rather mysterious. Some think she may have been the Mitanni Princess Tadukhepa, daughter of King Tushratta. Others have suggested she may be a daughter of Aye and Tey. But there is no evidence one way or the other.

Thought by some to be the mother of Tutankh(u)aten and possibly of Smenkhare. 

There is no way to describe the founders of the three great monotheisms of the West without first glancing back at the pattern laid down by AkhenatenWhose great experiment already forecasts their advent.It is no accident that the West’s first monotheist is also its first religious fanatic, for Akhenaten was the first to begin persecuting the beliefs of others 

The life of the Akhenaten, the West’s prototypal monotheist.

Akhenaten was not only the first founder of a religion that we have on record as being founded by a single individual, but unlike Christ, Moses and others such as the Buddha, he was the first such religious founder to have the power of an entire state apparatus at his disposal.

Akhenaten was no democrat, but an autocratic tyrant — with the power to effectuate any transformation of the state he wanted. His religion, like that of Christ’s, may have been a religion of love but, also like Christianity, it was not a religion of tolerance.

Not only did he Start a New Religion, One God he Changed the Culture:

There is no blood here (Akhenaten banished the custom of sacrificing war prisoners); war does not exist; violence is a thing of the past;

The Empire crumbling is away in Palestine as the kings of its cities send clay letters of distress to Akhenaten, letters telling of their kings’ towns being sacked and raided by bands of Habiru and Amorites go largely unanswered by Akhenaten.

Violence, war and empire belong to the real world not the World of Ahkenatan

Consistent with this vision, there were no under classes or poor people at Ahkenaten City:

this was a city of villas and palaces only; slaves and servants had no houses of their own but lived within their masters’ households. All inhabitants were assigned their set functions, so there was no opportunity for an urban proletariat to take root.

To the north and south, sections filled with villas surrounded an official center containing a palace, temples, barracks, government bureaus, storehouses and archives.

There was no set quarter for workshops. A street life could not have developed at Amarna.

What Was Missing ?

Now, what was missing from Akhenaten’s World it is only a religion of Light; Darkness has no reality in this world whatsoever.

And consequently, there is a failure in Akhenaten’s religion to address the question of Evil: human suffering is not admitted to exist at all, for the Aten is a beneficent god who sees to the welfare of all his worshippers.

Akhenaten himself is to be imagined in a way similar to how some pictured Jesus Christ, as a human sun of God the Father, come down to earth on its behalf, in order to address, not human suffering, in this case, but only to provide for human well-being.

To admit of suffering in this cosmos would be to admit to a failing in the Aten,

Akhenaten simply was not prepared to do any such thing.His god was a perfect god: simple, serene, luminous, beatific.

Evil was not a problem because it did not exist.

WHO WAS THE REAL AKHENATEN

Theories to How He Was PortrayedILLNESS OR STYLE?????

One theory is that it was some form of religious symbolism.

Because the god Aten was referred to as "The mother and father of all human kind," it has been suggested that Akhenaten was made to look androgynous in artwork as a symbol of the androgyny of the god

It has also been suggested that the distinctive art of this time was some kind of expressionistic art style, and it has been pointed out that everyone depicted in the artwork of the period showed some of the odd features of the king and his family. 

Firstly - Who was Horemheb?

 

 

From the tatters of a failed monotheistic religion the General Horemheb surfaces to help take control of the country (along with Ay) and steer Tutankhamun back from the brink of a heretic life of Aten worship and once more into the arms of Amun.

Not one block was left upon another at Akhetaten City.

Walls were torn down to their foundations, mud-bricks pillaged, and steles and statuary hopelessly smashed.

Thereafter the ruins provided a quarry for over a century, most of the known blocks gravitating across the river to Hermopolis, where the Ramessides used them extensively; but some ended up as far away as Abydos, over 100 miles to the south.

The fate of the sun temples at Memphis and Heliopolis can only be imagined; the one at Memphis was undoubtedly torn down.” (Redford, 227) 

The four temples which Akhenaten had built in Thebes were dismantled and their blocks were used by Horemheb as masonry fill for new pylons at Thebes and Luxor

After the Amana Period

The End Class 4

But the precedent had been set: Western monotheism had come into being,

perhaps a few centuries too early, but the

Event had taken place, and the new symbol system that had come forth from

out of the collective unconscious was merely anticipating, by centuries, what

would eventually become the religious norm of Western

civilization.

Monotheism Had Come into BeingIn Egypt Maybe for the First Time