© Thierry BENDERITTER 2002-2008

 

The Amarna period is one of the most exciting in the history of Ancient Egypt. It is also the one which has given rise to the most work and controversy.

 

Our aim here is not to be exhaustive on the subject but to offer the reader a vision which attempts to be objective as a function of the historical data which seem to be confirmed. Nevertheless, there remain several points subject to discussion or interpretation.

 

..."The Amarna Heresy" ...or "the Amarna Experiment" will attempt to overthrow the traditional beliefs of a multi-millenarian civilisation

With the reign of Akhenaten, the ancient land of Egypt will come to know an exceptional period of agitation and one of the most fascinating religious and spiritual experiments in the history of humanity.

 

Under the impetus of the pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) and his beautiful and famous spouse Nefertiti (Fig 26), that which we are used to calling "The Amarna Heresy" (from the name of its capital Amarna) or "the Amarna Experiment" will attempt to overthrow the traditional beliefs of a multi-millenarian civilisation.

 

fig 26

This is a subject which is very much "à la mode" and several works appear regularly on Akhenaten and Nefertiti, of variable quality and which, unfortunately, often reflect the dreams of their authors rather than the reality of the documentation, and that when they are not completely desecrated by soap or other advertisements.

 

But even among professional Egyptologists, the mere mention of this period often brings passionate reactions and taking of sides, so important being the subtended questions for religious history and the history of ideas in general.

 

It must be said that the personality of Akhenaten and the significance and extent of his action and his idea have been judged in various ways. At the end of the 19th century, the great English Egyptologist, Sir Flinders Petrie, the first to understand Akhenaten's historical importance, described him both as the first monotheist and the first individual in history and wrote "a man who was indisputably a genius and who managed to crush the thousand-year-old shell of habits, superstitions and conventions of society and courageously resisted the power of the clergy and other dignitaries". Freud in "L'homme Moïse et la religion monothéiste (The man Moses and monotheistic religion)" saw a filiation between the prophet and the king (see HERE — sorry, it's only available in French).

 

Nowadays, many historians have overturned this judgement and many of them consider Akhenaten as a tyrant, a fanatical despot or even a madman and an atheist!

 

Well, let's try to see things a bit more clearly using the authenticated facts available to us while proposing plausible, if not certain, hypotheses.

 

To do this, we must go back in time to around 1350 BCE in the imperial Egypt of the New Kingdom at the time of the father of Akhenaten, the pharaoh Amenhotep III.