Solar
The Aten
jtnHow it changed
The only serious attempt to make Egyptian religion exclusive, and it failed completely. Akhenaten closed temples, erased Amun's name from monuments and moved the capital to a new city in the desert. The Aten has no myth and no image beyond the disc, and access to it ran through the king alone, which is probably why nobody else missed it. Within a generation of his death the temples reopened, his city was abandoned, and later king lists simply leave him out.
Cult centre
Akhetaten, modern Amarna
Best attested
Eighteenth Dynasty, roughly two decades under Akhenaten
Family
None. It has no consort, no parents and no children, which is the point.
Epithets
- “The living Aten”
- “Lord of every land”
How to recognise the figure
A plain disc with rays ending in small human hands, several of them holding ankh signs to the royal family's noses. No body, no face, no animal.
Worshipped at
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