AKHENATON: ANCIENT REVOLUTIONARY

Definition of Revolution

Revolution simply means a complete or drastic hange of any kind. There are many types of revolutions, ranging from a revolution in fashions to a revolution in politics. Some involve a change in habits, attitudes or beliefs, others involve change in the way people make a living or a change in the circumstance of life as a whole. Some of these changes are made by mental exertion alone, others involve war, devastation and killing. Most people today when they hear the word revolution think of political revolution and conjure up visions of terror, bloodshed and change brought about by a few with the use of force. Revolution, therefore, means threat, fear and something inherently evil to most people. Only a few use revolution to symbolize hope, promise and a better life for all.

These varied definitions of the concept of revolution indicate that complete and drastic change never comes easily. Yet change is the essence of history. Change is not only unavoidable; change is necessary for survival; change makes life worth living. If revolution implies complete and drastic change, then revolutionaries are people who try to bring about such changes. In one sense history is the story of revolutionaries.

Amenhotep IV

This being the case it might be a good idea to look at the life and work of one man in ancient Egypt whom many consider to be the first revolutionary in history. He was a king, Amenhotep IV, who lived in the 18th century before Christ. In most early societies the land and people were considered to be the property of god, and were controlled by him through his agents and priests.

The Egyptian monarch or pharaoh, however, was not simply a priest mediating between god and man; the monarch was himself a god. He was an aspect of the totality of power in society and in nature. Early in the fourth millennium there are already indications that the Egyptians apparently tried to preserve and protect the physical remains of the dead and to provide them for use after death with the food and furnishings that had been valuable during life. The building of elaborate tombs and gigantic pyramids was an expression of this belief in the afterlife. The mortuary arrangements of the Egyptians provide insights into Egyptian attitudes toward religion and philosophy, with the passing of time bringing even greater refinements

Not only were as many objects of dress, equipment and furnishings as the individual could afford, put into his tomb, but the walls of the tomb were decorated with reliefs of paintings depicting the individual.s life in detail--his pleasures, his honors, his business, the operations of his farm and household. Why did they do it? The basic reason was to protect and preserve, in as many ways as could be devised, the existence of the individual, together with the environment which he regarded as necessary to the good life.

The Egyptians therefore, from the earliest of times believed in the immortality of the soul, the indestructibility of the human personality. This in fact meant that they believed in god. Basically Egyptian religion envisaged a host of powers in the universe, constituting the effective dynamic in every aspect of human experience' Many of these powers were never dignified with the status of god; many, such as the power of the sun, were recognized in various places under different names. Ultimately, an intricate theological tangle developed, resolved for the most part in a complicated but skillful theological system of identifications and hierarchy.

The system held the sun, usually by the name of Ra, as the supreme cosmic power. More closely involved in the daily life of man were Osiris, Isis and Horus. This Trinity had to do originally with the vital forces of generation in the Nile and the earth. Osiris represented the fertilizing power of the Nile, Isis the reproductive earth and Horus the vital force in the vegetation which was the fruit of the union of the first two. This involved an annual rhythm. Osiris was born and died with the rise and fall of the river; Horus was born and died with the germination and harvest of the crop; yet neither actually died, for both reappeared annually to repeat the cycle. In a sense they were the same. It was Osiris who brought Horus to life by coming into him, thus Horus was Osiris reappearing as Osiris again in the rising river.

This seems to us to be excessively mysterious and figurative. But to the Egyptians it made as much sense as the mathematics of biochemistry and genetics make to us. It was a common-place belief that no one questioned until Akhenaton came around. These same divine forces active in the Nile, the earth and vegetation were considered active in human life as well, at least in the life of the Pharaoh. Though the king died, a living king survived in the person .f the human son and heir and also in the immortal person (or mummy) of the deceased monarch in another world. Osiris was the king; he reigned and died. But there was after-all still a living being, the son of Horus. But since the king was Osiris, Horus had become Osiris. Thus the king was both, Osiris and Horus. Neither of them ever really died, despite appearances. Osiris. Horus, the king--all three-- were always living simultaneously in the world and the next.

Thus physically the Pharaoh was the human embodiment of the divine powers sf the Nile and .f vegetation, of life, death and resurrection sf Osiris and Horus. Later on this concept was applied to mankind in general. Not everyman was truly Osiris-Horus as the pharaoh was truly so, but every man lived and died by virtue of the same divine vital forces and experienced the same renewal of life after seeming death. Thus human life and immortality were merged in the same process as natural and cosmic life and vitality. All other religions which originated in the Middle East were eventually affected and influenced by these beliefs.

Background of Amenhotep IV

By the l4th century B.C. the Egyptians had developed a large empire and their religions beliefs were spread to other peoples. However, it was back in Egypt itself were a dramatic revolution took place with the accession of Amenhotep IV in the year 1379. This pharaoh was the son of Amenhotep III, who was a kind of Louis XIV of his world, and his queen Tiy was apparently not sf royal blood and may even have been a foreigner, possibly Negroid. The features in her portraits are of a different cast from those of the portraits of native Egyptians. She may have suffered from an ailment which affected her physical structure. In any case, same of her physical peculiarities reappear in portraits sf her son and his children-- and even his wife, the famous and beautiful Nefertiti. it has been suggested that, for whatever reason, Amenhotep IV was of peculiar physique, and thus set a kind of common fashion which influenced the portraits sf other members of the court. It is striking and possibly significant, that he and other members of his family and court are often depicted with bulging cranium, thin neck, sloping shoulders and paunchy stomachs.

With these physical peculiarities, real or invented, went an equally remarkable personality and policy. He tried to replace the traditional, official Egyptian religion of Amarna by a new concept of god. Although still embodied in the sun, this concept, called Aton, was understood more abstractly and monotheistically. This meant that he had to make a revolution. He had to attack and destroy the traditional patterns of religion, which were thoroughly woven into every aspect of Egyptian life. He had to change the theology, ritual and ecclesiastical structure. To begin with he changed the capital from Thebes to a new place in middle Egypt called Amarna. He also changed his name to Akhenaton, which means "Aton is satisfied." He reversed the entire foreign policy of Egypt by abandoning efforts to extend or even maintain Egyptian power outside the Nile valley. Egypt stopped being imperialistic and aggressive. It was something like an immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Vietnam. The immediate result was a powerful opposition within Egypt from those who, for material interests or mere ideological reasons, resented the changes. Every revolutionary has his opponents. Every revolution spawns a counter-revolution. Chaos followed in Syria and Palestine, where the principalities tried to take advantage of the situation to reestablish their independence. The greater Asian powers tried to win for themselves larger territories.

Akhenaton died after only fifteen years of rule. His successors were young and ineffectual and hence victimized by the leaders of the party of the old regime. The worship of the old god Amen was shortly restored and the counterrevolution was victorious. That was the revolution in capsule form. Now lets look at this first revolution in history more closely to see what we can learn from it. The First Revolutionary in History When Amenhotep became pharaoh a sharp struggle began between the royal house and the organized priests of Amon. Their position and wealth were challenged by the new religious ideas of the new king. It is always that way. The entrenched religious establishment, like the entrenched political power structure resists new ideas because they threaten to reduce their power and disrupt their cozy economic nests. At a time when Egypt.s imperial possessions in Asia were being threatened, the new pharaoh did not call for all-out war against the enemy, but instead devoted himself with absorbing zeal to the new Solar universalism--in other words, to domestic reform' Imperialistic war is frequently used as a way to prevent revolution or reform at home. But Amenhotep like most revolutionaries did the exact opposite.

The Sun-god was given a new name which freed the new faith from the compromising polytheistic tradition of the old solar theology. He was now called "Aton," an ancient name for the physical sun, and probably designating his disk. Not only did the Sun-god receive a new name, but tee young king new gave him a new symbol also. The most ancient symbol of the Sun-god was a pyramid or a falcon. However these were intelligible only in Egypt, and Amenhotep had a wider arena in view. The new symbol depicted the sin as a disk from which diverging beams radiated downward, each ray terminating in a human hand. It was a masterly symbol, suggesting a power issuing from its celestial source, and putting its hand upon the world and the affairs of man. Such a symbol was suited to be understood throughout the world which the Pharaoh controlled. It is evident that what the king was deifying was the force by which the Sun made himself felt on earth. Religion was made more universal, more spiritual and abstract. Thus all men could benefit by it. It was no longer limited to a few who had used it for their own salvation after death and enrichment while still on earth. The bitterest enmities broke out, culminating finally in the determination on the king's part to make Aton sole god of the Empire and to annihilate Amon.

The king changed his name from "Amenhotep" (Amen is satisfied) to "Akhenaton" (Aton is satisfied). The name of Amen, wherever it occurred on the great monuments of Thebes, was expunged. These erasures were not confined to the name of Amon. Even the word "gods" as a compromising plural was expunged wherever found, and the names of other gods, too, were treated like that of Amon. The king built a new capital at Tell-el-Amarna and called it Akhetaton (horizon of Aton) . The name of the Sung-god is the only divine name found in the place, and it was evidently intended as a center for the dissemination of Solar monotheism. Similar centers were also built in other parts of the Empire, in Nubia (Sudan) and Syria. He built up a strong following which propagated the new faith. It was a faith in a God who had limitless power--a God no longer of the Nile valley alone, but of all men and all the world.

The obvious dependence of Egypt on the Nile made it impossible to ignore this agency of life, and there is nothing which discloses more clearly the surprising rationalism of Akhenaton than the fact that he stripped off without hesitation the venerable body of myth and tradition which deified the Nile as Osiris, and attributed the flooding to natural forces controlled by his god, who in like solicitude for other lands made a Nile for them in the sky. It is evident that, in spite of the political origin of this movement the deepest sources of power in this remarkable revolution lay in this appeal to nature, in this admonition to "consider the lilies of the field." Akhenaton was a "God-intoxicated man," whose mind responded with marvelous sensitiveness and discernment to the visible evidences of God about him. He was absolutely ecstatic in his sense of the beauty of the eternal and universal light.

In this respect Akhenaton's revolution consists of the gospel of beauty and beneficence of the natural order, a recognition of the message of nature to the soul of man. The breath of nature had touched life and art at the same time and quickened them with a new vision. Even the king's relations with his family became natural and unrestrained. Like all true revolutions it affected all aspects of man's life. He was determined to establish a world of things as they are, in wholesome naturalness. Such fundamental changes as these, on a moment's reflection, suggest what an overwhelming tide of inherited thought, custom, and tradition had been diverted from its channel by the young king who was guiding this revolution.

It is only as this aspect of his movement is clearly discerned that we begin to appreciate the power of his remarkable personality' Before his time religious documents were usually attributed to ancient kings and wise men, and the power of a belief lay chiefly in its claim to remote antiquity and the sanctity of immemorial custom. Until Akhenaton the history of the world had been but the irresistible drift of tradition. All men had been but drops of water in the great current. Akhenaton was the first individual in history. Consciously and deliberately, by intellectual process he gained his position, and then placed himself squarely in the face of tradition and swept it aside.

The Meaning of Akhenaton's Revolution

What did this revolution mean to the Egyptian people? How did it affect their daily life? The whole environment of existence had been changed suddenly. Their holy places had been desecrated, the shrines sacred with the memories of thousands of years had been closed up, the priests driven away, the offerings and temple incomes confiscated, and the old order blotted out. Groups of muttering priests, nursing implacable hatred, must have mingled their curses with the execration of whole communities of discontented tradesmen--those who had made a comfortable living out of the old religion. Bakers no longer made a living from the sale of ceremonial cakes at the temple feasts. Craftsmen no longer sold holy trinkets of the old gods at the temple gateway. Statues of Osiris lay under piles of dust in the tumbledown studios of hack sculptors. Tombstone makers and scribes who had sold their cheap wares to a gullible public were bankrupt.

Actors and priestly mimes were driven away from the sacred groves of Osiris by the police: Normally they would have presented the ''passion play, reenacting the drama of the life, death and resurrection of Osiris. Physicians so-called no longer collected money for expelling evil spirits. Shepherds no longer placed a loaf of bread and jar of water under a tree in order to placate the goddess of the tree who might otherwise bring sickness to the household. Peasants no longer erected crude images of the gods in the field to drive away terrible demons sf drought and famine. Mothers no longer dared to pray with their little ones at bedtime to shield them from the demons of darkness. In the midst of a whole land thus darkened by clouds of smouldering discontent, this marvelous young king, and the group of sympathizers who served under him set up their tabernacle to the daily light, in serene unconsciousness of the total darkness that enveloped all around and grew daily darker and more threatening.

When we place the revolutionary movement of Akhenaton against this background of popular discontent and then add to it the secret opposition of a powerful priesthood, a powerful army which disliked the king's peace policy, we begin to appreciate the powerful individuality of this first intellectual leader in history. His reign was the earliest age of the rule sf ideas. Akhenaton was the world's first revolutionary, and he was fully convinced that he might entirely recast the world of religion, thought, and life by the invincible purpose he held. Like all true revolutionaries at all times Akhenaton was fully persuaded that his ideas were right and that all men would eventually benefit by them.