© Charles Chandler

 

Like the Hebrews, they were literate, and they were practical. To say that the suppression of Judaism caused the emergence of the Phoenicians would be unsupportable, except that it was the same region, at the same time, and by the same means. The fact that the Phoenicians didn't leave any trace of being adherents of Judaism doesn't necessarily mean much — nobody in Canaan did during this period, and Judaism did indeed survive underground, since it certainly resurfaced in the 600s bce under Josiah. So the Phoenicians could have been closet Hebrews, as much as anybody in Canaan.

 

And Atenism spread from there into Cilicia (i.e., the south-east coast of Asia Minor, bordering Syria). We know this

1. by the name of its capital: Atana,
2. by the name of the god they worshiped there: Watna,
3. by the contemporary name of the region: Kizzuwatna, and
4. by the insistence of its ruler (Shunashshura) that official correspondence be addressed to the Sun instead of to him personally.^1:187

Atenism also inspired the Greeks. A variety of artifacts from the Amarna Period have been found in Greece, so we know that they were in communication with each other.^2:39 And one of the main city-states that emerged during the Archaic period was Athens, named for Athena. The name itself isn't of Greek origin, and the Athenians deny any Dorian influence. So they got the name from the only other people in contact with them: the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Cilicians. And what does "Athena" mean in those areas? First, changing a "t" to a "th" was common during the 19^th Dynasty,^3:154 so "Atena" would have been the earlier form. Second, the "-a" suffix in Greek is the feminine modifier. So the original root was "Aten," the god of Akhenaten and Ramose. To confirm the identification (to the ancients as well as to us), Akhenaten's personal emblem was the ankh, meaning life (Greek: ankhi), and Athena's nickname was onka.^4:9:12:2