Akhenaten: All-powerful Visionary of the Ancient World

Thou arisest fair in the horizon of Heaven, Living Aten, Beginner of Life—there is none who knows thee save thy son Akhenaten. Thou hast made him wise in thy plans and thy power.

This was the famed Hymn to the Aten, spoken by the people of ancient Egypt in regard to their new god-king, Akhenaten, possibly the most powerful person in Egyptian history. His courage, inspiration, foresight, and actions make him one of the ancient world's most compelling figures.

He started his life auspiciously enough, being born the son of a pharaoh, Amenhotep III. Growing up in a royal family certainly meant that the young Amenhotep (eventually the IV) was exposed to political and religious power, in the form of the priests of the civilization's various religions. He would have seen as well the enormous power wielded by these priests, to whom some pharaohs bowed on matters of religious portent.

Amenhotep IV he became after his father's death. He soon married one of Egypt's most famous women ever, Nefertiti. Together, they forged a powerful kingdom, a far-seeing, far-reaching partnership ruling a far-flung empire.

After a few years, Amenhotep had had enough of the polytheism and the requisite religious figures associated therein and decided to strike out on his own, declaring that his people should worship only one god, Aten. To emphasize this, he changed his name to Akhenaten and declared himself the chief priest of this new religion.

Aten was, quite literally, the Sun. And who better to worship the Sun and declare its portents to the people of Egypt than the pharaoh, lord over all. Akhenaten composed the aforementioned Hymn to the Aten, the utterance of which served to reinforce the idea that the way to the supreme god was through the pharaoh, not through the priests, as had previously been the case (for even though the Egyptian civilization was a theocracy, it was the priests who often wielded the real power by offering the people a lifeline to the gods).

Akhenaten was the pharaoh, who had the power of life or death over his people, all his people. His pronouncement transformed Egyptian society. The idea of the worship of only one god spread, and people began reciting the Hymn and showing their deference to their pharaoh in religious matters.

The priests went along with this, of course, because they had little choice. (The pharaoh had life or death over them, too.) Another difference was that Akhenaten decreed that worship would take place in the light. The god being worshipped was the Sun, so it was only natural to worship the light, whereas before, people attended religious services administered by priests in indoor temples. This outdoor worship was the second way that the religious shift enlightened the people.

But Akhenaten wasn't done. He decreed that he had had a vision from Aten, decreeing that the civilization needed a new capital. No longer content to rule from Thebes, as his predecessors had done, Akhenaten had a large temple complex built at what is now called El-Amarna, quite a ways north along the Nile River. This was a massive, sprawling collection of stoneworks, built into a cliff-face, from which the young king could expect to keep his throne in the face of many serious assaults.

Akhenaten and Nefertiti, said to be one of the world's most beautiful women, ruled supreme for several years. He elevated her to co-regent, something unheard of in the strong patriarchal tradition of the ancient world.

His last stroke of boldness lay in the artistic realm, as Akhenaten decreed that statues and inscriptions on temple walls be more life-like, and not so abstract. Rather than abstract images, the art produced when Akhenaten was on the Egyptian throne was dominated by realism, the idea that you could look from a sculpture or a wall carving into the eyes of the subject and see a striking resemblance. It was almost as if the spirit of the person or scene being described had been captured physically, rather than abstractly. In a society that believed that the spirit of a person did indeed live in such things as carved hieroglyphs on walls, this was an innovation indeed, one that was encouraged and likely even directed by the young king who had energy to burn and a legacy to create.

So, in his time on the throne, Akhenaten had created a new religion with himself at the head, put the civilization's Amen priesthood out of a job, made his wife co-ruler, and brought his people's art into an ancient Renaissance. Such boldness and staggering accomplishments surely made the young king the target of jealous men. And jealous they were — the priests and other once-powerful people who found themselves sidelined while the new pharaoh dashed his way into history.

Historians have no hard evidence that Akhenaten was murdered. Indeed, many historians think that Akhenaten, even though he ruled for only 16 years (longer than King Tut, his successor, but much shorter than other pharaohs, including the famed Ramses II), died of natural causes. His wife's career after her husband's death is still being debated, as the sands of history have her assuming various roles, including the full pharaohship by herself.

Akhenaten's legacy endures, however: He instituted a one-god religion, perhaps the first in the history of the world; he consolidated all of the power of the state and the religion in one person, himself; he moved the capital of his civilization, for the first time in memory, to a desert citadel that would have withstood several massive assaults should his enemies have chosen to thwart his innovations by brute force of arms; he challenged the role of women in government by making his wife a ruler at his side in name and deed; and he ushered his civilization's artists into what we would consider a modern age, one in which the artist captured the true nature of the subject, as if the creation were a photograph, rather than a badly drawn approximation.