Sunday, 5 July 2009

Akhenaton

King Amenhotep IV was a pharaoh in ancient Egypt of the 18th dynasty (c. 1353–1335 BC). During his reign Amenhotep displaced all the Egyptian gods with a single deity, the sun god, Aten, in honour of whom he built many temples. The pharaoh renamed himself Akhenaton meaning, “It is well with Aten.” This was the first concerted attempt to establish a form of monotheism (the worship of a single god). However his religious reforms were detested and his successor Tutankhamen restored the traditional Egyptian religion with the original gods. The Aten temples were demolished, and Akhenaton became known as "the Enemy."

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