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Akhenaten and the Religion of Light

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Amenhotep IV (later known as Akhenaten) reigned during the Eighteenth Dynasty. He defied tradition and centered worship upon one deity, the sun god Aten. In this book, the author provides a concise, accurate and very readable account of his reign. A summary is also provided of the nineteenth-century scholars (Lepsius and Champollion to name a few) who discovered and first interpreted the ruins of Akhenaten. The author gives a religious background of Akhenaten and his father's beliefs; he also discusses the founding of the city of Akhenaten, the belief in monotheism and the processes by which Tutankhaten becomes Tutankhamen the successor. The book offers an excellent bibliography for further consultation of the subject. It is one of the best books on the subject of this heretic pharaoh. Recommended reading for all.

Although very short and readable, this book is not recommendable to those who never read anything about Pharaoh Akhenaten and his place in Egyptian history. Retrieved from a lecture given by the author, it works best as an inventory of all that was ever written about Egypt's "Heretic King" and his religious revolution, since his discovery by German scholar Lepsius in 1843, down to 1995, when it was published. And, as its title proclaims, the book focuses on Akhenaten's doctrine, the Amarna theology.

Aware that Egyptologists usually infer too much from too little, Herr Hornung is excessively cautious in his approach, always avoiding any labeling of his biographee, whether as the tragic saint glorified by Breasted and Weigall, whether as the decadent fanatic despised by Redford and Aldred, whether as the true founder of Judaism hailed by Freud and the Rosicrucian. He has no opinion about Akhenaten's possible co-regency with his father or with his successor, whoever he (Smenkhkare?), or she (Nefertiti?), might be; he doesn't know what happened in his last years, ignores the debate over the mummy found at Tomb 55 in the Valley of Kings, and has no idea where Tutankhamun came from. He is not sure of anything, though he mentions most of the theories proposed by other authors. All he seems sure of is the basic tenets of Akhenaten's religious ideas.

And this is very interesting, because one of the author's most avoided "clichés" is precisely the pre-Christian feature of this very dramatic character. "Akhenaten as a pacifist who ruined Egypt as a world power in Dinasty 18, as a king caught up in the unreal, sham world of the Horizon of Aten, his new capital, where he lived out his teaching and conducted his search for the divine - these were clichés that would have long-lasting influence. Though Tomas Mann overcame these clichés in his nuanced treatment of the king, he succumbed to the parallels with Christianity and attempted to categorize Akhenaten as an early Christian figure." Yet, Akhenaten's religion is based on a Holy Trinity to begin with, composed by Aten, himself and Nefertiti, what drives Hornung to question the monotheistic character of Atenism, although he doesn't seem equally willing to dispute Christianity's monotheism. Besides, Aten, the One God, shines only over the King and his family, and the King and son of God is reported to have said to his Father: "There is no other who knows you." Thirteen centuries later, another Son of the One God proclaimed in the very same way: "No one comes to the Father but by me."

At the Epilogue, the author fell into the precipice of sheer speculation he avoided so carefully, by writing on page 121 that "Akhenaten had founded no congregation; he had no disciples or apostles to carry on his work after his death. There was only his small circle of followers, who were now bereft of a reference point." How can he be so sure of that, we wonder, specially since he mentions in the next page some "undercurrents that remain hidden to us might certainly have exercised an influence"?

Hornung's one serious mistake was stating, on page 116, that shortly after Akhenaten's disappearance the royal court moved to Memphis, and he persists on this absurdity by adding, on page 121, that following the abandon of Akhetaten, the new city build by the King, "Thebes would never again be the capital".

His final remarks on the character he treated so impersonally are positive at first. "Here we come to the critical point. In Amarna religion, for the first time in history, an attempt was made to explain the entire natural and human world on the basis of a single principle. Like Einstein, Akhenaten made light the absolute reference point, and it is astonishing how clearly and consistently he pursued this concept in the fourteenth century BC, making him in fact the first modern human being. Indeed, modernity also strives to describe the universe with a single formula, to explain it on the basis of a single principle; the attempts to do so do not cease."

And then:

"But Akhenaten demonstrated with unusual clarity that such one-sidedness is doomed to failure; all we repress and ignore will overtake and overshadow us. Akhenaten was perhaps the first fundamentalist in history, and for this reason, he remains even today a very contemporary figure who can scarcely be denied respect and sympathy in any critique of him."

Hornung once again demonstrates his ability to pull together nuances of abstruse facets of Egyptian theology. I only wish this book was about twice as long with more extensive footnotes. Nevertheless, I couldn't put it down until it was finished and it provided me with new ways of looking at Akhenaten's extraordinary reign and its place, not only in Egyptian history, but in world History

"For the first time in history, an attempt was made to explain the entire natural and human world on the basis of a SINGLE principle. Like Einstein, Ahkenaten made light the absolute reference point, and it is astonishing how clearly and consistently he pursued this concept in the 14th century B.C.E., making him in fact the first MODERN human being." (p. 125)

Akhenaten's revolutionary change from polytheism to monotheistic belief in only one god helped unify Egypt.

The subjective controversy that plagues the history of Akhenaten is an anticipative backlash from exoheretics to the academic practice of historiography. When emotional superfluous definitions to the meaning of heresy are discarded, it becomes obvious (for the right reasons) that Akhenaten was indeed a heretic. As a dissenter from orthodox religious beliefs, he was, by definition, a "heretic king".

Hornung's book delves into Akhenaten's radical dissent from Egypt's traditional polytheism, and his establishment of the world's first instance of monotheism. The belief was in Aten, whom many mistakenly believe was depicted by the solar disk. This book makes it clear that Aten was actually not the sun disk, but rather the LIGHT that is in the sun and which, radiating from it, calls the world to life and keeps it alive. It was no more or less an icon than Judaism's Star of David, or Christianity's Cross of Jesus, or Islam's calligraphic symbol. Early text of a boundary stelae reads, "sculptors do not know him."

The parallels Hornung draws between today's 3 major monotheistic religions and Akhenaten's precedent are many and presented in clear detail. But the author is careful to emphasize that the temporal interval is too great to infer a DIRECT influence from the Amarna Period on the monotheism of the Hebrew Bible over half a millennium later.

Hornung's book is full of interesting details, such as Egypt's use of swine for street-side waste removal, the use of a bread and beer barter system pre-dating coinage, descriptions of Amarna-Period home construction techniques for efficient indoor climate control, the first-time use of the Hyksos-introduced war chariot for peacetime transportation by the Pharoah, the emergence of a new expressionistic art form in place of traditional static deptictions, the rise of new forms of architecture, the increased use of flower offerings in place of animal sacrifices, the meaning and mutation of Akehnaten's name, and much more.

In regard to the new impressionistic art form of the Amarna Period, Hornung points out that Akhenaten's supposed "sickly" depiction in sculpture and painting, with his feminine hips, pot belly, swollen lips and chin, receding forehead, elongated neck and crown can be understood by comp0aring it with schools of modern art that deal freely with the human form. In his sub-chapter on "The Grotesque Pharoah", Hornung eloquently dispels emotional assumptions that the Pharoah had a "sick ugliness and nervous decadence" about him. Akhenaten's supposed "repulsive ugliness" is a result of opinion towards a new impressionistic art form and not a logical analysis of the Pharaoh himself. Hornung explains the motive behind this new art form and the rules that define it.

Hornung concludes his book with an analyses of why monotheism failed to catch on after Akhenaten's death. Among them, the radical departure his new religion had with comfortable traditional beliefs of the afterlife, the fact he left no male heir to the throne, and the iconoclasm which in the mind of Egyptians in particular cases meant their own consignment to oblivion, and other things to name a few. Though Akhenaten's monotheism lingered on into Tutankamon's 3rd regnal year, it was simply too radical a departure from the norm given the period's socioeconomic status. In this sense, it was a religion ahead of its time.

My only point of contention with this book is the brief chapter titled, "Dark Years". It is a chapter that deals with Akhenaten's relationship with the mysterious Kiya, the supposed disappearance of Nefertiti, the Dakhamanzu affair, and Akhenaten's marriage to his older daughters to elevate their status in lieu of no male heir to his throne. Though the author clearly focuses on Akhenaten's religion of light, I would have enjoyed reading more into Akhenaten's personal life in these mysterious later years: in context and without slant as other authors have done. But given the author's expressed intent and the title of the book, the lack of this additional information does not degrade the quality of this book as a positive contribution to Egyptian historiography.

This work serves as a very useful overview of the historical progression and the basic tenets of Akhenaten's religion of light. The author punctiliously lists the sources on which his statements are based, which provides a useful reference for the reader who wants to check the ancient sources for themselves. Some of these references, however, assume that the reader will already have some familiarity with the events being narrated and though this is not a major problem, the reader with little knowledge of Akhenaten is sometimes left wishing for a little more background information. The main reason I have given the book only 3 stars ( though its information value certainly warrants at least 4), is that Horning scrupulously avoids making any kind of inference as to the reasons behind Akhenaten's abrupt break with Egypt's traditions until the very last page of the book. In a way, this avoidance is praiseworthy, since Egyptologists often infer too much from too little. On the other hand, I believe that this is precisely the point that most readers are interested in exploring. The avoidance becomes problematic on the final page. Here, Horning suggests that Akhenaten was perhaps the world's first fundamentalist, trying to explain the entire human world based on a single principle. He claims that such a fundamentalist viewpoint will always be doomed to failure and thus we have much to learn from Akhenaten's example. I would have found the book much more interesting and enjoyable if this hypothesis had been introduced from the start and then developed throughout the book. As it is, it is tacked on as a kind of coda, and the reader is left to decide whether any of the evidence given in the book actually supports such an inference or not.

Stories on the ancient Egyptian civilization command the attention of many as no other ancient extinct civilization does, the Mayans, Aztecs and the Hindus included. May be this is ascribable to the relatively recent (less than 200 years) deciphering of the intricate Egyptian hieroglyphic script by the French mathematician Jean-François Champollion, a feat which expanded in more than 3.000 years the horizon of humankind, or maybe this is a kind of perverse and doctrinarian boomerang effect of old English colonies against its colonizers, demonstrating that whatever be the powerfull cultures - and armies - behing the colonizing Western powers, they would never attain the magic and the glory Egypt did at its apogee. The names of Cleopatra, Tutankhamen, Ramses, Champollion and many others somehow associated with Egypt culture and its glorious history are almost household names to many of us, demonstrating the intimacy Western and even Eastern (mostly specially Japanese, keen not to accept the supremacy of Chinese over them) readers have vis-'a-vis Egiptology. Sure, beneath all this there is a kind of "who first?" contest between the peoples, and most especially some governments, vying for the primacy of scientifically establishing who was the first craddle of civilization in the planet. See, in this regard, the recent efforts of the Chinese and even the Israeli government to find the earliest traces of civilization in their territories, thus displacing the Mesopothamia as the incumbent craddle of civilization.

"Akhenaten and the religion of Light", written in the 1990's by the German scholar and Egyptologist Eric Hornung, and magnificently translated into English, is a very small booklet about the cultural revolution brought about by the pharaoh Akhenaten (son of Amenophis III) , who during his 30 + years reign changed many of the religious creeds and cult practices of the time, being referred to by many as the first true monotheistic ruler of the world. To some scholars, he was the first individual of the Planet Earth, in the sense that he made a giant step in the dark in order to advance human understanding about oneself. If this was exactly not so, given that many others scholars point out that Egypt was first and foremost monotheist in its origin before adhering to polytheism, at least the pharaoh Akhenaten was the bold founder of a new religious and cultural movement which sent rippling waves trough years to come, given the huge impact his reforms had in almost every aspects of the daily life of his time. In his view, the only and sole God was the god Aten, represented by the sun rays, being in its essence Light, the creator of all existent creatures of the world. The religious revolution set by Akhenaten (who was called Amenophis IV when ascended to the throne but changed his regal name to Akhenaten, thus dismissing the importance of the heretofore powerfull god Amen) had even a big impact in the concepts of the Egyptian Afterlife, almost debunking Osiris as the god of the heretofore important Egyptian netherworld.

Despite all the hoopla that surrounds the very attractive theme of monotheism, being even used by Sigmund Freud in his invenctives against Judaism and Christianism in his book Moses and Monotheism, the life and the death of the pharaoh Akhenaten is shrouded in mistery and secrecy and not too many details of his life and of his royal family are produced out of the excavations made in the territory in Middle Egypt that he designated to be his future home and temple to the God Aten, where he settled with his family and famous first wife Nefertite and harem, living a reclusive life dedicated foremost to religious affairs, almost foregoing important aspects of Egyptian external affairs with its neighbours. In fact, his relics are virtually non-existent and many of the information gathered are collected from burial grounds of his followers in the Egyptian bureaucracy.

Despite the conciseness of the text, this is a very invigorating approach to the life of this important pharaoh, who by many was compared with the likes of Saint Paul, Saint Francis and even Albert Einstein, this latter due to the importance both men put in light as an inspirational power to the creation of life on Earth. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Any work by Hornung is always very good. Akhenaten's religion has always been problematic for historians, just as it was for the ancient Egyptians. There is also the modern problem of being biased in favor of monotheism. I found the book profound in the issues it discusses, clarifying and ultimately unconvincing.

This is a pretty specialized topic, but if it is one you are interested in, this is the book to buy. Very informative, reads easily, and doesn't shy away from the specifics the way a lot of books do.

It is clear that the author strives diligently for objectivity. He explains a theory and always offers a counter-theory throughout the book. This, while admirable, grows tiresome. This is certainly in part because I am no expert in the field but I imagine that an Egyptologist would conclude that simply rehashing old information that could be obtained from other sources without offering a new interpretation or new information is scholastically useless. Thus, we have to regard the book as an introduction to Akhenaten and his religion.

As one reviewer pointed out most people who buy this book are trying to learn about the religion. In this I think the author fails to communicate effectively. I finished the book and felt that I still did not have a grasp on the topic. All I have is facts with no guidance as to how to put them together to form a general picture. Since the book is useless for an expert it should be useful the layman and in this it fails as well. I was certainly not looking for any spiritual revelations but I wanted to understand more about the religion and its historical context. I do but not nearly as much I would have expected.

Regarding Akhenaten himself, I also know very little after reading this book. Again, I have a lot of facts but no sense of the man. As an introduction the author should enable the reader to see the forest through the trees. I believe he fails at this.

To add insult to injury is the epilogue and afterword wherein Hornung who, as mentioned above, goes out of his way to be objective throughout the book, decides to weigh in on the meaning of Akhenaten and his religion by proclaiming that the lesson to be learned from him is that "fundamentalism in all its forms" is a bad thing. Huh? To delve into the absurdity of this conclusion would take an entire book. Fundamentalism in "all its forms" is the cement that holds civilization together. Without Egyptian "fundamentalism" Hornung would have nothing to study. The author is entitled to his opinion, of course, but these statements seem especially bizarre after the style of the preceding text.

I will certainly read some of the authors whom Hornung cites in the book and would recommend others do the same. I do not really see how this particular book would help anyone, expert or layman, understand more completely or to a satisfying degree Akhenaten and his Religion of Light. Some of this may be the translator's fault, some may be mine, but ultimately I believe that Hornung just doesn't deliver enough punch. Four stars for the actual data contained in this book. Two stars for the book qua book. Hence a three star rating.

As a Rosicrucian I really enjoyed reading this book about our first traditional Grand Master