Page 59 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

Akhenaten’s Hymn to Aten
Amenhotep IV, more commonly known as Akhenaten, created a religious upheaval in Egypt by introducing the worship of Aten, god of the sun disk, as the chief god. Akhenaten’s reverence for Aten is evident in this hymn.
Hymn to Aten
Your rays suckle every meadow.
When you rise, they live, they grow for you.
You make the seasons in order to rear all that you
have made,
The winter to cool them,
And the heat that they may taste you.
You have made the distant sky in order to rise therein, In order to see all that you do make.
While you were alone,
Rising in your form as the living Aten,
Appearing, shining, withdrawing or approaching,
You made millions of forms of yourself alone.
Cities, towns, fields, road, and river—
Every eye beholds you over against them,
For you are the Aten of the day over the earth. . . .
The world came into being by your hand, According as you have made them. When you have risen they live,
When you set they die.
You are lifetime your own self,
For one lives only through you.
Eyes are fixed on beauty until you set.
All work is laid aside when you set in the west. But when you rise again,
Everything is made to flourish for the king. . . . Since you did found the earth
And raise them up for your son,
Who came forth from your body: the King of Upper
and Lower Egypt, . . . Akh-en-Aten, . . . and the Chief Wife of the King . . . Nefert-iti, living and
youthful forever and ever.
Q What does Akhenaten’s Hymn to Aten tell you about the religion of the Egyptians and Akhenaten’s attempt to change it? Why did so many Egyptians oppose the basic premise of the hymn?
Source: Pritchard, James; Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament–Third Edition with Supplement. a 1950, 1955, 1969, renewed 1978 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
Akhenaten’s attempt at religious change failed. It went too far in asking Egyptians to ignore their traditional ways and beliefs, especially since they saw the destruction of the old gods as subversive of the very cosmic order on which Egypt’s survival and continuing prosperity depended. At the same time, Akhenaten’s preoccupation with religion caused him to ignore foreign affairs and led to the loss of both Syria and Canaan. Akhenaten’s changes were soon undone after his death by those who influenced his successor, the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun (toot-ahng- KAH-muhn) (1347–1338 B.C.E.). Tutankhamun returned the government to Thebes and restored the old gods. The Aten experiment had failed to take hold, and the Eight- eenth Dynasty itself came to an end in 1333 B.C.E.
thirteenth century B.C.E. by the “Sea Peoples,” as the Egyptians called them, destroyed Egyptian power in Ca- naan and drove the Egyptians back within their old frontiers. The days of Egyptian empire were ended, and the New Kingdom itself expired with the end of the Twentieth Dynasty in 1069 B.C.E. For the next thou- sand years, despite periodic revivals of strength, Egypt was dominated by Libyans, Nubians, Persians, and finally Macedonians after the conquest of Alexander the Great (see Chapter 4). In the first century B.C.E., Egypt became a province in Rome’s mighty empire.
Daily Life in Ancient Egypt: Family and
Marriage
Ancient Egyptians had a very positive attitude toward daily life on earth and followed the advice of the wisdom literature, which suggested that people marry young and establish a home and family (see the box on p. 23).
Egyptian Civilization: “The Gift of the Nile” 21
The Nineteenth Dynasty managed to restore Egyp- tian power one more time. Under Ramesses (RAM-uh- seez) II (ca. 1279–1213 B.C.E.), the Egyptians regained control of Canaan but were unable to reestablish the borders of their earlier empire. New invasions in the
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