Atenism

Atenism or Atonism was a short-lived religion in ancient Egypt, founded by the pharaoh Akhenaten in the 14th century BC.

O Thou sole god, whose powers no other possesseth. —Great Hymn

The birds flutter in their marshes, / Their wings uplifted in adoration to thee. —Great Hymn

Quotes from Atenism

Praise of Aton by king Ikhnaton and queen Nefernefruaton

• Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of heaven,
  O living Aton, Beginning of life!
  When thou risest in the eastern horizon of heaven,
  Thou fillest every land with thy beauty;
  For thou art beautiful, great, glittering, high over the earth;
  Thy rays, they encompass the lands, even all thou hast made.
  Thou art Re, and thou hast carried them all away captive;
  Thou bindest them by thy love.
  Though thou art from afar, thy rays are on earth;
  Though thou art on high, thy footprints are the day.
  • [The Splendour of Aton]

• When Thou settest in the western horizon of heaven,
  The world is in darkness like the dead.
  They sleep in their chambers,
  Their heads are wrapt up,
  Their nostrils stopped, and none seeth the other.
  Stolen are all their things, that are under their heads,
  While they know it not.
  Every lion cometh forth from his den,
  All serpents, they sting.
  Darkness reigns (?),
  The world is in silence:
  He that made them has gone to rest in his horizon.
  • [Night]

• Bright is the earth,
  When thou risest in the horizon,
  When thou shinest as Aton by day.
  The darkness is banished,
  When thou sendest forth thy rays,
  The Two Lands [Egypt] are in daily festivity,
  Awake and standing upon their feet,
  For thou hast raised them up.
  Their limbs bathed, they take their clothing:
  Their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning,
  Then in all the world, they do their work.
  • [Day and Man]

• All cattle rest upon the herbage,
  All trees and plants flourish,
  The birds flutter in their marshes,
  Their wings uplifted in adoration to thee.
  All the sheep dance upon their feet,
  All winged things fly,
  They live when thou hast shone upon them.
  • [Day and the Animals and Plants]

• The barques sail up-stream and down-stream alike.
  Every highway is open because thou has dawned.
  The fish in the river leap up before thee,
  And thy rays are in the midst of the great sea.
  • [Day and the Waters]

• Thou art he who createst the man-child in woman,
  Who makest seed in man,
  Who giveth life to the son in the body of his mother,
  Who soothest him that he may not weep,
  A nurse [even] in the womb.
  Who giveth breath to animate every one that he maketh.
  When he cometh forth from the body,
  . . . on the day of his birth,
  Thou openest his mouth in speech,
  Thou suppliest his necessities.
  • [Creation of Man]

• When the chicklet crieth in the egg-shell,
  Thou givest him breath therein, to preserve him alive;
  When thou hast perfected him
  That he may pierce the egg,
  He cometh forth from the egg,
  To chirp with all his might;
  He runneth about upon his two feet,
  When he hath come forth therefrom.
  • [Creation of Animals]

• How manifold are all thy works!
  They are hidden before us,
  O Thou sole god, whose powers no other possesseth.
  Thou didst create the earth according to thy desire.
  While thou wast alone:
  Men, all cattle large and small,
  All that are upon the earth,
  That go about upon their feet;
  All that are on high,
  That fly with their wings.
  The countries of Syria and Nubia,
  The land of Egypt;
  Thou settest every man in his place,
  Thou suppliest their necessities.
  Every one has his possessions,
  And his days are reckoned.
  Their tongues are divers in speech,
  Their form likewise and their skins,
  For thou divider, hast divided the peoples.
  • [The Whole Creation]

• Thou makest the Nile in the Nether World,
  Thou bringest it at thy desire, to preserve the people alive.
  O lord of them all, when feebleness is in them,
  O lord of every house, who risest for them,
  O sun of day, the fear of every distant land,
  Thou makest [also] their life.
  Thou hast set a Nile in heaven,
  That it may fall for them,
  Making floods upon the mountains, like the great sea;
  And watering their fields among their towns.
  How excellent are thy designs, O lord of eternity!
  The Nile in heaven is for the strangers,
  And for the cattle of every land, that go upon their feet;
  But the Nile, it cometh from the nether world for Egypt.
  Thus thy rays nourish every garden,
  When thou risest they live, and grow by thee.
  • [Watering the Earth]

• Thou makest the seasons, in order to create all thy works:
  Winter bringing them coolness,
  And the heat [of summer likewise].
  Thou hast made the distant heaven to rise therein,
  In order to behold all that thou didst make,
  While thou wast alone,
  Rising in thy form as living Aton,
  Dawning, shining afar off and returning.
  • [The Seasons]

• Thou makest the beauty of form, through thyself alone.
  Cities, towns and settlements,
  On highway or on river,
  All eyes see thee before them,
  For Thou art Aton of the day over the earth.
  • [Beauty Due to Light]

• Thou art in my heart;
  There is no other that knoweth thee,
  Save thy son Ikhnaton.
  Thou hast made him wise in thy designs
  And in thy might.
  The world is in thy hand,
  Even as thou hast made them.
  When thou hast risen, they live;
  When thou settest, they die.
  For thou art duration, beyond thy mere limbs,
  By thee man liveth,
  And their eyes look upon thy beauty,
  Until thou settest.
  All labour is laid aside,
  When thou settest in the west;
  When thou risest, they are made to grow
  . . . . . . for the king.
  Since thou didst establish the earth,
  Thou hast raised them up for thy son,
  Who came forth from thy limbs,
  The king, living in truth,
  The lord of the Two Lands Nefer-khepru-Re, Wan-Re,
  The son of Re, living in truth, lord of diadems,
  Ikhnaton, whose life is long;
  [And for] the great royal wife, his beloved,
  Mistress of the Two Lands, Nefer nefru aton, Nofretete,
  Living and flourishing for ever and ever.
  • [Revelation to the King]

Quotes about Atenism

• If this were a new religion, invented to satisfy our modern scientific conceptions, we could not find a flaw in the correctness of this view of the energy of the solar system. How much Akhenaten understood, we cannot say, but he certainly bounded forward in his views and symbolism to a position which we cannot logically improve upon at the present day. Not a rag of superstition or of falsity can be found clinging to this new worship evolved out of the old Aton of Heliopolis, the sole Lord of the universe.
  • Sir Flinders Petrie, A History of Egypt (1899), Vol. II, p. 214.

• Either for the temple service or for personal devotions the king composed two hymns to Aton, both of which the nobles had engraved on the walls of their tomb chapels. Of all the monuments left by this unparalleled revolution, these hymns are by far the most remarkable; and from them we may gather an intimation of the doctrines which the speculative young Pharaoh had sacrificed so much to disseminate. They are regularly entitled: “Praise of Aton by king Ikhnaton and queen Nefernefruaton”; and the longer and finer of the two is worthy of being known in modern literature. The titles of the separate strophes are the addition of the present author, and in the translation no attempt has been made to do more than to furnish an accurate rendering. The one hundred and fourth Psalm of the Hebrews shows a notable similarity to our hymn both in the thought and the sequence.
• In this hymn the universalism of the empire finds full expression and the royal singer sweeps his eye from the far-off cataracts of the Nubian Nile to the remotest lands of Syria. These are not thoughts which we have been accustomed to attribute to the men of some fourteen hundred years before Christ. A new spirit has breathed upon the dry bones of traditionalism in Egypt, and he who reads these lines for the first time must be moved with involuntary admiration for the young king who in such an age found such thoughts in his heart. He grasped the idea of a world-dominator, as the creator of nature, in which the king saw revealed the creator’s beneficent purpose for all his creatures, even the meanest; for the birds fluttering about in the lily-grown Nile-marshes to him seemed to be uplifting their wings in adoration of their creator; and even the fish in the stream leaped up in praise to God. It is his voice that summons the blossoms and nourishes the chicklet or commands the mighty deluge of the Nile. He called Aton, "the father and the mother of all that he had made," and he saw in some degree the goodness of that All-Father as did he who bade us consider the lilies. He based the universal sway of God upon his fatherly care of all men alike, irrespective of race or nationality, and to the proud and exclusive Egyptian he pointed to the all-embracing bounty of the common father of humanity, even placing Syria and Nubia before Egypt in his enumeration. It is this aspect of Ikhnaton’s mind which is especially remarkable; he is the first prophet of history. While to the traditional Pharaoh the state god was only the triumphant conqueror, who crushed all peoples and drove them tribute-laden before the Pharaoh’s chariot, Ikhnaton saw in him the beneficent father of all men. It is the first time in history that a discerning eye has caught this great universal truth. Again his whole movement was but a return to nature, resulting from a spontaneous recognition of the goodness and the beauty evident in it, mingled also with a consciousness of the mystery in it all, which adds just the fitting element of mysticism in such a faith.
  • J. H. Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest (1905), pp. 371–6.