Amon was the king of all gods, and Ra was the sun god. However, later in the process, they combined to form Amonra. He became the central god of the temple. The Amonra religion became so powerful that it is accepted by many authorities that the word amen in Islam and amen in Christianity come from Amon. In fact, if we look at it, although there are many prayers and supplications to Allah in the Quran, it is not used even once. Amon, meaning hidden or accepted, is a prayer ending word that first passed to the Hebrews in Egypt and then to the Christians.
If we consider the effect that a power that had such an impact on the religions that came after it could have on the Pharaohs, we can more easily understand that a revolutionary leader's rebellion against this authority was an inevitable outcome.
And that pharaoh would be Akhenaten. Pharaoh Akhenaten, whose real name was Amenhotep IV, was born in the mid-1300s BC. When he was a little boy, his father had brought Egypt to a magnificent power and united the country under one roof. But there were some things that needed to change for Akhenaten. He was determined to get rid of the chaos created by all these gods and the influence of the priests in the administration. In the 5th year of his reign, he and his subjects went to Amarna, far away from the center, the city of Thebes (Luxor), and founded a new city. His dream was to create a rich city dedicated to his own god. This was a dream of tremendous change. He wrote the following inscription on the border of the city he founded in Amarna.
"No nobleman led me to this. No man in my land led me to this. My father, the god Aton, led me to this. He told me to build for him."
This plan would shake the ancient Egyptian kingdom to its foundations. Thousands of people followed the pharaoh, who had absolute power and authority, to Amarna and began to build the city. They were all there to worship the god Aton.
But this dream would not last long. It was completely abandoned 20 years after the new city was founded. The god Akhenaton believed in, Aton, was not the God we believe in, but the sun itself. Aton was already one of the gods in the fairy Egyptian Pantheon from ancient times. His popularity had been increasing for a long time. We see this frequently in the hymns and eulogies Akhenaton wrote to the sun, which he accepted as a god.
"Even if you are far away, your rays are on the earth. Even if you are on people's faces, your traces are invisible," he said.
According to Akhenaten, since the sun was visible everywhere, all people had to serve it. Another hymn he wrote to the sun is as follows.
"How beautiful it is that you appear on the horizon of the heavens,
O Aton, who lives in the essence of life!
When you were born on the horizon of the east
"You fill the whole country with your beauty"
Akhenaton also had a huge temple built for his god Aton in the city of Amarna. This temple had a very different architecture than all the other Egyptian temples. Because it was open and the sun's rays of Aton should have hit it. As can be clearly seen from the depictions and the ruins of the temple, there were thousands of altar stones in the temple. Every morning at sunrise, tons of meat, fruit, vegetables and wine were placed on these altars accompanied by hymns, and the sacred lights of the sun would rot these foods and take their essence. Although archaeologists think that the people of a city where such a huge amount of food products were offered to the god lived in prosperity and abundance, the bones unearthed in the excavations carried out in the city of Amarna show us how a terrible despotism turned a nightmare into reality. In fact, in this city dedicated to the god Aton, the more important function of food than meeting human needs was to offer it to Aton. In almost all the bones found, anemia due to hunger and incomplete physical development were revealed. Akhenaton was also very unlucky in the workers he employed to build the new city for Aton. The analysis of the bones found belonged to workers who were not even 18 years old yet.
With the effects of this oppression, hunger and torture, the excitement brought by the revolution and the god of the pharaoh, Aton, slowly began to fade and the city began to be abandoned. When Akhenaton died, Tutankhaton, who was 10 years old, took the throne. Tutankhaton changed his name to Tuthankhamon, paving the way for the worship of Amon and other pagan deities again. When the young pharaoh died at the age of 18, the priests of Amon performed a memorable ceremony for Tutankhamun, as a sign of the restoration of the old colonial and pagan order. The pharaoh was placed in his already prepared tomb, to be found centuries later by Howard Carter, while the names of Akhenaton and many of his descendants were erased from the temple walls.
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