Wednesday 22 March 2017

Hiatus over. WI: Atenism survives?

Finally back in the saddle, illness and job hunting have kept me away from this blog for far too long. As usual, I'll update every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Without further ado:

The aten, or Egyptian sun disk

In 1353 BC, the throne of Egypt passed from Pharaoh Amenhotep III to his eldest son, also named Amenhotep. The first five years of Amenhotep IV's reign were uneventful, as the new Pharaoh occupied himself with building projects - including, though few would have found it questionable or guessed that it was a sign of things to come, temples to the 'Aten' or Egyptian sun disk. However, in his fifth year, Amenhotep renamed himself 'Akhenaten' ('effective for Aten') and abandoned the traditional Egyptian pantheon in favor of worshiping Aten, built a new city called 'Akhetaten' to serve as his capital, and disbanded the priesthoods of the other gods.

However, Akhenaten died after seventeen years on the throne of Egypt, and the cult of Aten waned soon after. The royal succession that followed his death was chaotic: he was first succeeded by a woman called Neferneferuaten, whose identity is unclear - she was either his Great Royal Wife (principal spouse) Nefertiti or one of their daughters - and then by his son Tutankhaten, the famous King Tut, who was only nine or ten at the time of his ascension to the throne and who spent his reign under the thumb of powerful advisers. It was due to the influence of these powerful conservative statesmen, such as the Grand Vizier Ay and the general Horemheb, that Tutankhaten reversed his father's efforts to establish an Atenist religion in favor of restoring the traditional Egyptian faith. Tutankhamun died young and the throne was eventually usurped by Horemheb, who mounted a campaign to erase as many traces of the Atenist period as he could.

But what if...Atenism had not faltered? Perhaps Akhenaten does not die while his son Tutankhaten is still underage, but instead lives another decade: thus, by the time he dies Tutankhaten is not approximately seven years old (as he was nine or ten when he took the throne two years later) but seventeen or eighteen, old enough and sufficiently indoctrinated into the Atenist faith that he will not simply do whatever the Amunist Ay and Horemheb ask of him. Then, Tutankhaten living longer (perhaps he never contracts malaria nor breaks his leg, both of which led to his historical death) and managing to father an heir with his sister-wife Ankhesenpaaten (historically renamed Ankhesenamun) would solidify the place of the Atenist faith in Old Egypt.

What are the medium to long-term effects? Well, most obviously, we are likely to get a reversal of Horemheb's campaign to erase all traces of Atenism and Akhenaten as well as his successors. Instead, the priesthood of the old Egyptian gods would still be suppressed and their objects of worship destroyed in favor of new Atenist replacements. Instead of a diverse extended family of gods and goddesses, Egyptians would now direct their prayers and hymns to the great sun disc alone in temples.

Politically, a longer-lived Atenism would reinforce the process of centralization in Egypt that was already going on at the time of Akhenaten's reign. Under Atenist belief, nobody could directly worship the Aten except the Pharaoh and his wife: everyone else was still supposed to worship the Pharaoh as an intermediary between them and the Aten, in a continuation of the traditional worship of the Pharaoh as the intermediary between the divine and the Egyptian people. Akhenaten also centralized control of the army, national administration and religion (priestly goods and estates were confiscated for the state in his reign) into his new capital at Akhetaten, a process which was reportedly open to corruption among royal officials but would have continued unimpeded in a world where Atenism lasted longer.

Akhenaten reigning longer would also have positive implications for Egypt's foreign policy. Despite the initial laxness of his foreign policy where it concerned the stability of the Egyptian sphere of influence in the Levant - among the cache of Amarna Letters, archived correspondence between Akhenaten's government and their Levantine vassals, were sixty letters from the vassal-king Rib-Hadda of Byblos in Lebanon begging for Akhenaten's aid against the encroachment of the rival kingdom of Amurru, which Akhenaten replied to with increasingly annoyed refusals until Rib-Hadda was ultimately killed - Akhenaten did ultimately manage to preserve Egypt's hold over most of the Levant in the face of the growing Hittite Empire to the north. Should he live longer and Tutankhaten avoid an early death, Egypt may have been able to keep most of the Levant under its influence rather than lose Syria to the Hittites, as Tutankhaten/amun's successor Ay did after he provoked a Hittite invasion by assassinating a Hittite prince who was en route to marry Tut's widow Ankhesenamun.

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