Pharaoh Akhenaten proclaimed "the Aten" (the visible Sun itself) to be the sole deity, taking Sun worship a stage further. Some have suggested that his spirituality was based on the scientific observation that the sun's energy is the ultimate source of all life.
"Aten" (Otin/Akh Otin) was the traditional name for the Sun-disk itself and so the name of the God is often translated as "the Aten". For example, in the coffin texts of the Middle Kingdom the word "Aten" represents the Sun disk, and in the 'Story of Sinuhe' (also from the Middle Kingdom) Amenemhat I is described as soaring into the sky and uniting with Aten, his Creator. During the New Kingdom, the Aten was considered to be an aspect of the composite deity Ra-Amun-Horus. Ra represented the daytime sun, Amun represented the Sun in the underworld and Horus represented the sunrise.
#Africa #Egypt
No comments:
Post a Comment