Approximately 3,400 years ago, Egypt was at the height of its power during the 18th dynasty. In the middle of this period came a pharaoh who completely upended Egyptian society. He built an entirely new capital, created an entirely new religion, neglected his empire, and ultimately caused the destruction of his dynasty. Yet, despite his historical importance, we didn't even know he existed for almost 3,000 years. Learn more about Akhenaten, history's first monotheist and his impact on ancient Egypt, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The story of Akhenaten is, I think, the most fascinating story of any pharaoh from ancient Egypt. And it begins in the 18th dynasty, approximately 3,400 years ago. Egypt was a wealthy, stable empire with control over Nubia to the south and the Levant to the northeast. Built through conquest, it enjoyed prosperity, exercised diplomacy, and undertook massive building projects. Religion was the traditional Egyptian polytheism, whose powerful priesthood had grown extremely wealthy and influential, creating a subtle tension beneath the otherwise successful system. Amenhotep III was arguably one of the most successful pharaohs in Egyptian history, as he ruled during peak Egypt, benefiting from the conquests of his father, Thutmose III. Amenhotep III ruled for about 40 years, a very long reign at that time, and his successor was supposed to be his son, Thutmose, who would become Thutmose IV. However, Thutmose died, and the crown ended up passing to his youngest son, Amenhotep in about the year 1353 BC, and Amenhotep became Amenhotep IV. Amenhotep IV inherited a successful empire, and all he had to do was keep the engine running. And instead, he had ideas of his own, particularly in the realm of religion. At the core of Amenhotep's religion was his promotion of the Aten, the solar disk as the sole supreme deity. This was a radical break from Egypt's thousand-year-old polytheistic tradition, which recognized hundreds of gods, foremost among them Amun, Ra, Osiris, Isis, and Ta. The Aten was not entirely new. It had existed as a minor solar deity during the Middle Kingdom and gained some prominence under the reign of his father, Amenhotep III. What Amenhotep IV did was unprecedented. He elevated the Aten to the status of the only true god. And this makes Atenism one of the earliest, perhaps the earliest experiments with monotheism in recorded history, predating even Mosaic Judaism as a state religion. Although scholars debate whether it was true monotheism or simply henotheism. Henotheism is the worship of a single god but doesn deny the existence of other gods It sort of a mix of polytheism and monotheism The Aten was depicted not as a human or an animal figure as Egyptian gods traditionally were but as the sun disk itself with rays ending in human hands that extended the ankh, or the symbol of life, to the royal family. Crucially, the Aten had no mythology, no consort, no cult statues, and no priesthood beyond the pharaoh himself. Amenhotep IV declared himself the sole intermediary between the Aten and humanity, and only through the pharaoh could the god be accessed. Several years into his reign, Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten, meaning effective for the Aten. His wife was a woman that you may have heard of, Queen Nefertiti, and she took the additional name Nefer-Nefer-u-Aten, which means beautiful are the beauties of the Aten. This renaming was a public ideological declaration of total commitment to the new religion. Akhenaten composed the Great Hymn to the Aten, one of the most remarkable religious texts of the ancient world. It celebrated the Aten as the universal creator whose light sustained all life, and whose rays were withdrawn at night, plunging the world into death-like darkness. And the hymn bears a striking thematic similarity to Psalm 104 of the Hebrew Bible, a resemblance that has fascinated scholars for over a century. Perhaps his most dramatic act was the founding of an entire new capital city. Akhenaten chose a virgin site on the east bank of the Nile in the middle of Egypt, a place untouched by any other god's cult, and named it Akhenaten, Horizon of the Aten. Today, it's simply known as Amarna, which is much less confusing than two words that sound almost identical. Construction began around the fifth year of his reign, and the imperial court relocated there by the ninth year. The city was built with extraordinary speed, using a new construction technique that involves smaller standardized sandstone blocks called talitat, which could be assembled rapidly. Amarna had features that were not found anywhere else in Egypt. It had open-air temples to the Aten. And this was a revolution in itself, as traditional Egyptian temples were dark, enclosed sanctuaries where the god's statue was hidden. In contrast, Aten temples were opened to the sky and bathed in sunlight. A wide royal road connected the major palaces and temples. Elaborate boundary stelae were carved into the cliffs outside the city, marking the city's sacred limits. And there were also comfortable housing for officials, workers, and artisans who lived there. Akhenaten swore an oath never to leave the boundaries of his new capital, binding himself and his court permanently to the new city. If Akhenaten had just adopted his new religion, that would be one thing. But his personal beliefs began to shape official Egyptian state policy. He didn't simply promote the Aten alongside other gods. He increasingly suppressed the traditional religious system altogether. As his reign progressed, Akhenaten's revolution turned aggressive. He dispatched agents throughout Egypt to enforce his new religious edicts. He ordered that the name of the god Amun be chiseled out of temple walls, tomb inscriptions, and monuments, even from his own father's cartouches. A cartouche is an oval-shaped frame in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that enclosed and protects the royal name of a pharaoh. He also closed temples to the traditional gods and even removed all plural references to gods. Perhaps most importantly, at least politically, he redirected the vast wealth and estates of the traditional Amun priesthood to the new Aten cult. This was economically and politically devastating to the powerful priesthood of Amun at Karnak which controlled enormous land holdings and wielded immense influence Their suppression wasn't merely theological. It was a direct power grab by Akhenaten to centralize religious and economic authority in the crown, and away from the powerful priesthood which had served as the bureaucracy in ancient Egypt. While consumed by his religious revolution, Akhenaten largely neglected Egypt's empire. The Amarna letters, more on that in a bit, reveal desperate pleas from Egypt's Canaanite vassal rulers and Syro-Palestinian allies for military aid against the accroaching Hittites and local raiders. Akhenaten's replies were largely dismissive or non-existent. Egypt's influence in the Levant, built painstakingly over generations, eroded significantly during his reign. Akhenaten died around 1336-1334 BC after approximately 17 years of rule. His tomb is prepared in a royal wadi near Armana, and what happened to his body remains unclear, as his tomb has never been found. The aftermath of Akhenaten's death threw Egypt into chaos. His successor was Semkakare, a pharaoh about whom we know almost nothing and who had an extremely short reign of less than two years. They were replaced by Nefer-Nefer-u-Aden, who was probably Queen Nefertiti, as she had taken the same name, but this hasn't been confirmed. Assuming this was Nefertiti, she too reigned only for a short period before she was replaced by the son of Akhenaten, although not necessarily her son. It's someone you've probably heard of before, Tutankhaten, better known to the world as Tutankhamen, aka King Tut. Tut ascended to the throne at around the age of eight or nine, and he was heavily influenced by his advisors, including the Egyptian general Horemheb and the court official named Ai, who persuaded him to reverse his father's policies. He abandoned Amarna, restored the traditional gods, reopened the temples of Amun, and changed his name to Tutankhamen. The priestly class finally had its revenge, and the Aten experiment was over. Tutankhamen only reigned for nine years. His replacement was I, one of his advisors, who may have been a relative, and who in turn was replaced by Hornhebb, who also was probably related. Now in the introduction of the episode, I mentioned something that may have seemed odd. I said that we had no knowledge of Akhenaten for over 3,000 years. If that's true, how did it happen, and then how do we know about him today? Ai and Horemheb were the last pharaohs of the 18th dynasty. While Tutankhamen reversed many of his father's policies, Ai and Horemheb, as well as rulers of the early 19th dynasty, sought to completely eliminate Akhenaten from history. They pursued one of the most complete demnaccio memori policies in world history. If you remember way back to my episode on the subject, demnatio memori is a Latin term referring to the complete erasure of someone's memory. The city of Amarna was torn down, and its blocks repurposed as fill material for other temples. Akhenaten's name was chiseled off of monuments across Egypt, and the few surviving texts that referenced him called him only the enemy or the criminal Akhenaten. His reign was entirely struck from the list of official kings, with the 18th dynasty recorded as ending with Amenhotep III, as though Akhenaten, Semenkakare, Nefer-Nefer-u-Aten, Tutankhamen, and Ai had never even existed Horemheb further muddied the historical waters by usurping Tutankhamen monuments for himself The net result of this sweeping campaign was that Akhenaten vanished from human memory for more than 3,000 years. The rediscovery of Akhenaten began in the 19th century. Early Egyptologists began investigating a site on the Nile now known as Amarna, the ruins of Akhenaten's capital. Travelers had noticed an unusual boundary stella carved into the cliffs that described a king founding a new city for the Aden, but nobody understood what it meant. The breakthrough came in 1887 when local villagers accidentally discovered a cache of clay tablets, now known as the Amarna letters. Written in Akkadian, they turned out to be diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian court and other Near Eastern powers. These letters anchored the site firmly in the 14th century BC and revealed the existence of a pharaoh operating from this previously unknown capital. Excavation soon followed, led by archaeologists such as Flinders Petrie, who uncovered the city's layout, its temples, palaces, and distinctive art style. The strange, elongated depictions of the royal family and the repeated references to the Aten made it clear that this period represented a major break from traditional Egyptian religion. One of the most famous finds came later in 1912, when a German team led by Ludwig Borghardt discovered the stunning painted bust of Nefertiti in a sculptor's workshop. This single object helped bring global attention to the Armana period and its unique artistic style. By studying inscriptions, reliefs, and artifacts alongside kings lists and other Egyptian records, scholars were able to reconstruct the identity of the heretic king who had been completely erased. The name Akhenaten re-emerged along with the story of his religious revolution centered on the Aten. And the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 also dramatically raised public awareness of this period. What makes this rediscovery remarkable is how complete the erasure had been. Unlike many ancient rulers who were forgotten over time, Akhenaten was deliberately written out of history. It took archaeology, chance discoveries, and decades of scholarship to bring him back into the historical narrative. There are many different lessons that you can take away from the reign of Akhenaten. One is the danger of instituting changes that alienate and anger the ruling class. Another might be about implementing an idea like monotheism before everyone's ready for it. But perhaps the greatest lesson I take away from this is that even if you institute the most historic and groundbreaking changes in society, there is absolutely no guarantee that history is going to remember you. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Akin and Cameron Kiefer. The first review today comes from listener Paul1662829285 from Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, Great overviews. Each episode is such a good overview of world monuments and other interesting topics. I just started listening after visiting the Gateway Arch a few weeks ago, and it just so happened to be the topic of the episode today. Love the podcast. The next review comes from listener Sealy Six on Apple Podcasts in the U.S. They write, Great show. This is my favorite podcast and I love the historical aspect. Please do more Roman and World War podcasts. Also, is there a different context for you to use the difference between Muslim versus Islam? Well, thanks to both of you and Sealy's, Islam is the name of the religion and Muslim is the person who practices the religion. Remember, if you leave a review on any of the major podcast apps, you too can have it right on the show. Thank you.
