Page 302 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

when Akhenaten’s grandfather, the fourth Thothmes, had come
to the throne, they appeared to have succeeded, for he openly
acknowledged that Ra had promised him the throne on an oc­

casion when he fell asleep at the foot of the sphinx of Memphis.
That had forced the Amon priests in Thebes to open action.
They had made it clear to Teie’s husband, Amenhotep III, when

he in turn ascended the throne, that they would only recognize
his wife as royal and divine if he openly showed his preference
for Amon by rebuilding the great temple at Thebes. The eyes of
the princesses’ grandmother grew hard as they recalled the

deadly insult which she had been forced to swallow, for the
temple had, in fact, been rebuilt. But in the replanning of the tem­
ple they had come across the little shrine to Aten, the god of

the solar disc.
Now, both Amon and Ra were believed to be gods of the
sun, explained their grandmother, with varying attributes, and
at first she and Amenhotep had believed that Aten was merely
another name for Ra. They had seen their chance for a subtle

revenge on the priests of Amon, and had enlarged the shrine of
Aten to the status of a temple. For if Ra obtained a foothold in
Thebes, they would be able to play off one college of priests

against the other. But with the guidance of the young priest Ai,
whom the Amon priesthood had appointed to the new Aten
temple, they soon saw that Aten was the only true sun-god,

though they had felt it politic not to recognize the god too
openly. They had even called their son Amenhotep like his
father, with a name incorporating the name of the old god.

And it was as Amenhotep IV that he had come to the throne in
1377 b.c., when the children’s grandfather died.
Teie would pause in her story there and tell of the childhood
of her son, their father—how he had been a dreamy boy who,

tutored by Ai, had soon recognized the living presence of Aten.
He had only been eleven years old when Amenhotep III had
died, and for some years he had remained at Thebes, with the

government carried on in his name—not without conflict—by
Teie and the chief priest of Amon. But their father' had never
been able to dissemble, said his mother, and he could not bear
to reign under a name which by implication recognized a false