← All sources
The Great Hymn to the Aten
When
c. 1350 BCE, Eighteenth Dynasty
Where it survives
Carved in the tomb of the courtier Ay at Amarna
What it is
The fullest statement of Akhenaten's religion: the sun disc as sole creator, giving life to Egypt and to foreign lands alike, with the king as the only intermediary. It is also, by a distance, the finest surviving Egyptian religious poetry.
Read it with this in mind
Its resemblance to Psalm 104 has been argued over for a century and remains unresolved. Neither direct dependence nor pure coincidence is demonstrable, and confident claims in either direction are going well beyond the evidence.
Other sources