Page 103 - Perished Nations

But there is a Pharaoh in Egyptian history
who is very different from the others. This Pha-
raoh defended belief in a single Creator and
was subjected to great resistance by the priests
of Ammon, who profited from the polytheistic
religion, and some soldiers who supported
them, and so he was finally killed. This Phara-
oh was Amenhotep IV who rose to power in
the fourteenth century BC.
When Amenhotep IV was enthroned in 1375
BC, he came across a conservatism and traditi-
onalism which had been lingering for centuries.
Until then, the structure of the society and the
relations of the public with the royal palace had
carried on without any change. The society
kept all its doors firmly shut to all external

Amenhotep IV events and religious innovations. This extreme
conservatism, also remarked by ancient Greek
travellers, was caused by the natural geographical conditions of Egypt as
explained above.
Imposed on people by the Pharaohs, the official religion required an
unconditional faith in everything old and traditional. But Amenhotep IV
did not adopt the official religion. The historian Ernst Gombrich writes:
He (Amenhotep IV) broke with many of the customs hallowed by an age-
old tradition. He did not wish to pay homage to the many strangely sha-
ped gods of his people. For him only one god was supreme, Aton, whom
he worshipped and whom he had represented in the shape of the sun. He
called himself Akhenaton, after his god, and he moved his court out of re-
ach of the priests of the other gods, to a place which is now called El-Amar-
na. 34
After the death of his father, young Amenhotep IV was subjected to gre-
at pressure. This oppression was caused by the fact that he developed a
religion based on monotheism by changing the traditional polytheistic re-
ligion of Egypt, and attempting to make radical changes in all fields. But

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