AKHENATEN: THE 18TH DYNASTY PHARAOH – AS TAKEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVES OF ALDRED AND BREASTED
Akhenaten has become a controversial figure in Egyptian history. He has been described by historians as being the pharaoh of oppression, the victim of exodus, the mentor of Moses and the instigator of Jewish monotheism. The question now is: Was Akhenaten a great king or does he deserve nothing but censure? The period of Akhenaten’s reign in ancient Egypt (1376-1350) was perceived to be historically significant because it was during his reign that drastic changes to ancient Egyptian customs and traditions, such as introducing a Monotheistic religion, altering the way the pharaoh was portrayed in art and changing the way Egypt interacted with other countries. Two of the perspectives presented about Akhenaten are those of Henry Breasted and Cyril Aldred. Breasted, an American Egyptologist ad archaeologist, wrote a book entitled Religion in Ancient Egypt in 1906, focusing on Akhenaten as ‘the first individual in history’ with important influences on religion. Aldred, on the other hand, wrote his book Akhenaten: King of Egypt which was first published in 1968 and eventually in 1988. Adred focuses more on Akhenaten’s influences on art and carefully studies archaeological evidence to support his claims. He also offers reviews of other historian’s claims.
Who is Akhenaten?
Dubbed as ‘heretic’ pharaoh, Akhenaten was son to Amentohep III and Queen Tiy. When Akhenaten succeeded the throne, he was known as Amentohep IV but changed his name to Akhenaten (the glorious spirit of Aten) on his fifth reignal year. Akhenaten was the 18th dynasty pharaoh of Egypt, It was during this time that he began to build a new city which is the Akhetaten in Middle Egypt. Akhenaten was married to whom to be known as the Great Royal Wife, Nefertiti at the beginning of his reign. They had six known daughters: Meritaten, Meketaten, Ankhesenpaaten (later became Queen of Tutankhamun), Neferneferuaten Tasherit, Neferneferure and Setepenre.
Cyril Aldred and his perspectives about Akhenaten
Cyril Aldred was born in Fullham, London, on 19 February 1914. He attended Sloane School Chelsea, and studied English at Kings College in London. Later, he attended Courtlaud Institute of Art, from which he graduated in 1936. While at Courtlaud, he met Howard Carter. He later became assistant curator at the Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. During World War II, Aldred served in the RAF before he returned in 1946 to undertake a serious study of Egyptology.
He acknowledges the many different views but returns to the evidence. Aldred focuses on archaeological evidence and Akhenaten’s influence on art. Aldred (1988) maintains that Akhenaten was a courageous innovator when he introduced monotheism, substituting the old gods of Egypt. Akhenten introduced a new all-powerful God to the world during his reign. Early on in his reign, he began supporting a new form of the old solar faith. Akhenaten attempted to make “Aten” equivalent to the word “God”, resulting in the traditional term “Divine offering” being changed to “Aton offering.” He gave this sun-God a new name and symbol. The old symbol of the sun-God was a pyramid and a falcon. This symbol was only recognised among the Egyptians, so he changed this symbol to a new one, one that people could recognise, suggesting Akhenaten’s desire for world dominance. The new symbol depicted the sun as a disk that had beams radiating downward, with each ray ending with human minds. This was a symbolism of power from a celestial source.
Further, the typical art favors routinal activities and typical experiences over the images of mythical and remote. The art is not concern in glorifying absolute sovereign, aggrandizing a ruling military caste or purveying esoteric religious symbolism. The murals of Akhenaten seemed to contradict the art prior to his regime, betraying the marked concern for nature. The art during the Amarna period has somewhat experienced major changes. People are now portrayed as they were and that Akhenaten chose to portray himself as less Godly and more human. Naturalism was the primary theme among artworks, portraying the daily life pf people with less dignified lifestyles and with very minute details. Akhenaten was depicted as more feminine than masculine by means of disfiguration. The king not only showed the naturalness of human but also of his surroundings comprising of the Nile River with vegetation and wild animals as monkeys. What the pharaoh is trying to achieve is the balance between him and his environment, which explains the many illustrations of the pharaohs at different scenarios (Smith, 1958, p. 152).
The art during the Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty is but the promotion of an ancestral subordinate ‘low-style’ which was extrapolated from the tradition where rulers were stylized but animals and servants portrayed in freer and more naturalistic mode (Fitter, 1995, p. 38). As Aldred (1973) highlighted, Akhenaten elevated an underdeveloped demotic stratum of tradition to ruling idiom. Akhenaten’s art naturalism, however, did not reached its full potential basically as embedded on new inclusiveness of content, perspective draughtsmanship and freed play of form. The pharaonic landscape art are certain anti-traditionalist impulses that are shared with highly commercial cultures. Aldred claim that Akhenaten was a revolutionary Pharaoh who can dispose tradition for the purpose of commitment to break the power of priestly caste (pp. 53-55).
Nonetheless, Akhenaten also excavated a new Royal Tomb in the eastern hills. Apart from this, tombpainting is a commonplace in dry abstractions and otherwise eminent frolicsome objects. The new tomb would be the final resting place for Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughter Meritaten. Even if they died elsewhere in Egypt, they will be bought back to Akhenaten to be buried. Aldred suggests that the new location of this tomb signaled a huge change for it proclaimed that Akhenaten was breaking completely from dynastic tradition of making Royal tomb on the territory of Amum at Thebes in the Western hills. The tombs of the priests of the Aten and the high state officials would also be made at this new location, in the Royal Wadi at Akhenaten (Aldred, 1988). For Aldred, however, it was seen as reconciliation with the ‘maet’ or harmony of an ideal world, a thing that could also be jangled out of tune by human neglect or wrongdoing (Aldred, n.d., p. 11; Smith, 1958, p. 152).
Henry Breasted and his perspectives about Akhenaten
Born James Henry Breasted in 27 August 1865 to a small business owner Charles, he was the first American archaeologist and historian to obtain a PhD in Egyptology. Breasted received his education from North Central College in 1888, Chicago Theological Seminary, Yale University and University of Berlin in 1894. It was also in 1894 that he visited Egypt with wife Frances Hart for a honeymoon-cum-working vacation. The reason behind this is that Breasted was recruited to build a portfolio of Egyptian antiquities for the University of Chicago. Breasted wrote a compilation of the extant hieroglyphic inscriptions entitled Ancient Records of Egypt in 1906.
Breasted observed Akhenaten as a ‘God-intoxicated man’ whose mind is able to respond with marvelous sensitiveness and discernment to the visible evidences of God about him. Akhenaten was fairly ecstatic in his sense of the beauty of the eternal and universal light. The author noted that the modernity of Akhanaten’s teachings and his anticipation of Christian attitudes and beliefs and stressed about the king’s inadequate comprehension of the practical needs of his realm and his ‘fanaticism’ (as cited in Hornung and Lorton, 1999, p. 13). Breasted (1905) pointed out that Akhanaten started a far-reaching revolution when he started to contradict the Amun priesthood and introduced the exclusive worship of sun-disk God as well as the creation of new cities. Akhenaten’s rancor in Amun led to the changing of his name which was a derivation of the hated name Amun. Like Breasted, other historians described Akhanaten as the world’s first idealist and the world’s first individual as well as the first man to found a religion and established such a religion so pure that we must compare it to Christianity in order to discover its faults (Ibid).
Breasted (1905) was among the fist to acknowledge the profound importance of newly discovered Akhenaten and his Ra-centered religion and the development of biblical monotheism, describing it as ‘remarkable’. Breasted highlights that the surviving hymns which he himself composed and conceived in the reign of the pharaoh was a significant element in the shaping of religious beliefs of Egyptians during that time with one God ruling the entire world while also taking delight from his creative power. Implicitly, the author puts emphasis on the practice that are unethical due to the fact that Akhenaten did not recognize the great benevolent purpose by which the character of God carries or the demand for morality and righteousness in the character of men. Breasted draws his conclusions on the role of Akhenaten’s family. Queen Tiy taught much about the Aten to him and his father neglected him from religious events, while also celebrating the multiplicity of Gods. Both actions resulted to strengthened interest in Aten. The third influences would be Nefertiti, a foreigner wife who does not believe much of polytheistic convictions. Other historians like Tuthill and Hornung argue that although there are political and economic reasons behind the establishment of monotheism, is a resultant of a dispute between the father and the son; it is now Amun versus Ra-Harakty.
Slowly, during the 14th century, Amun priests are becoming wealthier and more powerful than the pharaohs. Thereby, the abandoning of Amun priesthood is mainly because of political extinction rationale, making Akhenaten a futile pharaoh. What he did is pursued Egyptians to worship the Aten, embraced monotheistic beliefs and moved to the capital city. Akhenaten dedicated a new city to the Aten. He declared that it was in fact the Aten who brought him to the location of this new city. Distant cliffs on the east bank are interrupted by a wide gap, formed by the Royal Wadi, centered in the surrounding hills. Thus forming a huge representation of the hieroglyph “Akhet” which means ‘horizon’. This could have been the reason the king named the city ‘Akhetaten’ which literally means the “Horizon of the Aten.” Akhenaten also found out that the location of the new city belonged to no one and concluded that it must have belonged solely to the Aten since the beginning of time. This was a place destined for Akhenaten’s new city.
That Akhenaten is blinded by his own modernism-oriented idealism is how Breasted portrays this 18th dynasty pharaoh. After his reign which lasted for 17 years, Akhenaten died with no successor and a soon-to-perished religious movement. Such doomed faction was a clear manifestation that Breasted could be categorized as a self-consumed ruler who uses personal power to alter immemorial customs and traditions. Although Akhenaten was inspired and moved by the beauty of creation and a pacifist that he is, the king was haunted by exigency of ruleship especially in a time that there is eagerness and pressure to create a national identity for Egypt. It was during this period that defence is being strengthened to keep Egypt from invasion and occupation. True enough, the death of the heretic ruler resulted in the relinquishment of 230 years of unprecedented power and splendor. Breasted bickered that what Akhenaten pursued was the empowerment of one’s own divinity and importance to his society. To the end, his reign remain to be a totalitarian in the name of defacing gods especially Amun and theophoric pharaohs’ names. As such, his religious conceptualism was rooted on the ideas about life, power, energy and divinity.
Reference
Aldred, C n.d. Egyptian Art.
Aldred, C 1973, Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Brooklyn Museum/Viking Press, New York.
Aldred, C 1988, Akhenaten: King of Egypt, Thames and Hudson, London.
Breasted, J H 1905, A journey through the land of the Pharaohs, 2nd edn., Camera Graphic Press, LTP, USA.
Fitter, C 1995, Poetry, Space, Landscape: Toward a New Theory, Cambridge University Press, UK.
Hornung, E and Lorton, D 1999, Akhenaten and the Religion of Light, Cornell University Press.
Smith, W S 1958, The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt, Penguin Books, Baltimore, MD.
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