Need Information about a Egyptian Paroh?

Question

What was unusual about the religious beliefs of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten? What impact do you think he might have had on later history? Why would he have made so many enemies

Answer 1

These are just part of what I found from two sites. I did not copy and paste the whole article from both sites. hope I helped


*He made some major, but rather short-lived changes to various aspects of ancient Egyptian culture, the most notable one being his religious revolution. Akhenaten also made major changes in the ancient Egyptian art style, and presented himself in a very different manner from any of his predecessors.

*The nature of Akhenaten's revolution is well established--he overthrew Egyptian polytheism in favor of the worship of a single god, Aten--but the reason behind it is still unknown. Many people have offered theories.

Some historians have suggested that the same religious revolution would have happened even if Akhenaten had never become pharaoh at all. However, considering the violent reaction that followed shortly after Akhenaten's untimely death, this seems improbable.

*The reasons for Akhenaten's revolution still remain a mystery. Until further evidence can be uncovered, it will be impossible to know just what motivated his unusual behavior.

*Akhenaten is principally famous for his religious reforms, where the polytheism of Egypt was to be supplanted by monotheism centered around Aten, the god of the solar disc. This was possibly a move to lessen the political power of the Priests. Now the Pharaoh, not the priesthood, was the sole link between the people and Aten which effectively ended the power of the various temples.

*Akhenaten built a temple to his god Aten immediately outside the east gate of the temple of Amun at Karnak, but clearly the coexistence of the two cults could not last. He therefore proscribed the cult of Amun, closed the god's temples, took over the revenues. He then sent his officials around to destroy Amun's statues and to desecrate the worship sites. These actions were so contrary to the traditional that opposition arose against him. The estates of the great temples of Thebes, Memphis and Heliopolis reverted to the throne. Corruption grew out of the mismanagement of such large levies.

Answer 2

Akhenaten was the world's first true iconoclast, or "image breaker." In forsaking the worship of many gods for the worship of just one god, in a spiritual sense, Akhenaten put "all of his eggs in one basket," and completely disrupted ancient Egyptian daily life and belief systems.

He also failed his people as Pharaoh. How? Because one of the most important functions the Pharaoh performed was the religious ceremonies in the temples which in turn kept the Cosmos functioning as it should: i.e., the sun rising and setting every day, the Nile flooding to the right height at the right time, no plagues or civil unrest. The ancient Egyptians called this concept of everything going as it should, "Ma'at," a term meaning, "Divine Right Order." Pharaoh was the intermediary between the ancient Egyptians and their many gods -- he kept things going.

When Amonhotep IV became Akhenaten, he did more than just become the first pharaoh to change his name. A person's name was very important in ancient Egypt, just as it is today, but even more so, because the ancient Egyptians believed in the magical power of their name. "Amonhotep" means "Amon is satisfied," while "Akhenaten" meant "Of service to the Aten."

Besides changing his personal name (his coronation name remained the same), Akhenaten turned himself over to the worship of the sun disk, the Aten, and turned his back on Amon and the many other gods. He abandoned the gods his countrymen had worshipped and trusted for millennia to keep their lives safe and orderly. He closed the temples, which put hundreds if not thousands of priests out of work. He even had the name Amon chiseled out of public monuments. Then he moved the capital of Thebes to a barren location many miles north, to a place called Akhetaten, "The horizon of the Aten." In doing all that, he disrupted Ma'at in a big way. That's the why of his making so many enemies.

It also seems that in his later reign, Akhenaten also turned his back on far flung Egyptian territories in Palestine and to the South, eventually losing them, which lost Egypt prestige and revenue as well. This would have also angered the priesthood and the nobles who were opposed to Atenism.

I do not think it is any coincidence that the Hebrews were in Egypt while Akhenaten, the world's first recorded monotheist, was Pharaoh, and years later came out of Egypt as monotheists themselves. There are many parallels between Akhenaten's famous "Hymn to the Aten," which praises all creation, and the later Psalm 150 of the Hebrew Bible.

Many years after Akhenaten's death, the Pharaoh Horemheb erased all traces that he could find of Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamon, and Aye from historical records. The city of Akhetaten was abandoned and fell into ruins and forgotten. Ironically, this also helped protect the modest tomb of a boy king who would come to represent ancient Egypt: Neb-Kheperu-Re Tutankhamon ... the famous King Tut.

Answer 3

The unusual thing about Akhenaten was that he was unsatisfied with polytheism. He wanted the whole of Egypt to no longer worship local cheif gods, but to all worship the Sun God, Aten. It was the first attempt at monotheism in Egypt and it didn't last after his reign ended and Tutankhamun took the throne, reestablishing polytheism. Many other empires tried to cooperate with Akhenaten because he had some control over Nubia and therefore he had a lot of Nubian gold and the wealth of Egypt towered over other societies. His biggest enemies were probably the high priests in Egypt who had to change the chief gods to Aten everywhere.

Answer 4

There are some that belive that Ahkenaten's movement was also inspired by politics. In those days, the priests were a very powerful political class and very wealthy as well. By changing the religious beliefs and advocating a new set of beliefs, he was taking power and wealth away from the priests. That was bound to cause resentment among the priestly class.

Answer 5

He changed the Egyptian religion to monotheistically worship the Aten.
He neglected his duties as king.

Answer 6

He believed in the Sun God and tried to reform the religion into a montheic one.....as you can imagine the priests were none to happy with him....

Answer 7

Akhenaten believed it was ok to have gay orgy's.