Hornung - Akhenaten and the Religion of Light

A New Reltctott

there a¡e a few inscriptions from the beginning of his reign, and further hymns. Thus, for written sources regarding Akhenaten's religion we can only consult certain illuminating passages from the tomb inscriptions of his officials. It speaks to the clarity and simplicity of this religion that such meager sources nevertheless yield a general picture,

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A New nelþon

allowing us to gain some familiarity with its essential characteristics. But there is also pictorial evidence: rePresentations of the god Aten and the royal family, and lavish depictions of architecture and other motifs in the tombs of officials, which furnish us with an insight into temples and palaces. Akhenaten endeavored to promul8ate his teaching through mnemonic images, especially the sun disk with its rays but also scenes of his family. These motifs were stiPulâted and obligatory leaving the artists litde latitude, but the abundance of new pictorial motifs must have aroused a feeling that an¡ thing could be expressed figuratively. This continued to have an effect long after Akhenaten; an unprecedented wealth of religious images was developed during the Ramesside Period

No Divine Revelation Akhenaten left no holy scripture, so what he founded does not belong to the religions of the book. A¡d a "\Mord of God" is altogether inconceivable in this new religion, for the newly promulgated god remained silent The Aten himself did not spealq rather, his preacher Akhenaten spoke about him. We must t-hus rely on evidence stemming from the inscriptions of the king and his officials. The inscriptions frequendy mention a "teaching" or "instruction'of Akhenaten's, which he placed in the hea¡ts of his subjects. To be sure, the Egyptian word used for it, sebayt, also designates the wisdom literature handed down in writing from as early as the late Old Kingdom, but in the Ama¡na Period it seems in fact to be exclusively a matter of a teaching and instruction imparted orally by the king; nowhere is there a trace of religious tractates. For a monarch of the New Kingdom, it is astonishing how little Al