RELIGN M132 Chapter Notes - Chapter N/A: Amenhotep Iii, Eighteenth Dynasty Of Egypt, Khepri

• School: UCLA
• Department: Religion, Study of
• Course: RELIGN M132
• Professor: Kathlyn Cooney

Document Summary

As early as the old kingdom, egyptian religion had tended to attribute supreme power to one god, and to subordinate the other gods to him. But while increasingly heaping attributes of universal power on the sun-god re, the religion remained essentially polytheistic. The worship of the sun-disk (aten) as a manifestation of the sun-god re had been growing since the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty and reached prominence in the reign of amenhotep iii. It was amenhotep iv who converted the supreme god into the sole god by denying the reality of all other gods. Thus the king eliminated the clash between the claims of the "one" and the "many. " But this was a radical break with the past. His doctrine was profoundly uncongenial and gave great offense. The great hymn to the aten is an eloquent and beautiful statement of the doctrine of the one god. He alone has created the world and all it contains.