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Akhenaten the Heretic Pharaoh
A Famous Egyptian
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Akhenaten the Heretic PharaohAkhenaten ruled Egypt from Amarna. He changed the state religion to Atenism and caused upheavel throughout Egypt by closing the temples to other gods. Akhenaten was known as Amenhotep IV when he was crowned .a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. He was born to Amenhotep III and his Chief Queen Tiye in 1379 BC or 1362 BC. Amenhotep IV succeeded his father after Amenhotep III's death. |
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Akhenaten's chief wife was Nefertiti, who has been made famous by her bust found at Amarna and currently on display in the Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin.
After becoming Pharaoh, Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten (Glorious Spirit of the Aten) and introduced Atenism, raising the previously obscure god Aten to the position of supreme deity.
He built a new capital, Akhetaten ('Horizon of the Aten'), at the site known today as Amarna.
He also oversaw the construction of some of the most massive temple complexes in ancient Egypt, including one at Karnak and one at Thebes. In these new temples, the Aten was worshipped in the open sunlight, rather than in dark temple enclosures, as the old gods had been.
Akhenaten is also believed to have composed the Great Hymn to the Aten.
In Year 9 of his reign Akhenaten declared a more radical version of his new religion by declaring Aten not merely the supreme god, but the only god, and that he, Akhenaten, was the only intermediary between the Aten and his people.
Aten's name is also written differently after Year 9, to emphasise the changes in the official religion, which included a ban on idols and all other images of the Aten, except the rayed solar disc with each ray ending in a hand.
Akhenaten and Nefertiti had six known daughters: Meritaten, Meketaten, Ankhesenpaaten, later Queen of Tutankhamun, Neferneferure and Setepenre.
Akhenaten built a tomb at in the Royal Wadi in Akhetaten (Amarna) but his body was probably removed after the court returned to Thebes, and reburied somewhere in the Valley of the Kings. His sarcophagus from the Royal Wadi Tomb was hacked apart and has since been reconstructed and is exhibited at the Cairo Museum in the courtyard.
Recent investigations of the damaged coffin from KV55 have confirmed the likelihood that it is one of the inner coffins from the Akhenaten burial. The coffin is housed on the second floor of the Egyptian Museum at Cairo.
Smenkhare , either his son or brother, may have been his co-regent and is thought to have survived Akhenaten, possibly becoming sole Pharaoh for less than a year. There is another theory that Smenkhare was the throne name for Nefertiti, who briefly became pharaoh after her husband's death.
In any case, the next successor was certainly Tutankhaten , later, Tutankhamun. Tutankhamun may have been Akhenaten's son by his secondary wife Kiya.
Play Akhenaten's Word Search Puzzle Game at Suzie Manley's Egyptian Word Search Games
