Our Ancient Egypt

The facts on Akhenaton found in temples and shrines indicate that the pharaoh did not stop with changing his name and moving the capital. He publicly declared Aten to be the only god. His only exception to own rule appears to have been in regards to the god Re. Akhenaton then went on to claim he was the only human being who could commune with Aten. He subsequently outlawed the worship of Amon, sealed the temples that had been dedicated by other ancient Egyptian pharaohs to the worship of Aten and barred the priests. Nothing seemed to be safe from the pharaoh's destruction if it had a reference to Amon on it, including his own father's cartouches. Akhenaton's actions earned him no favor with the Egyptian people. Following his death, references to the king were demolished; much as he had demolished earlier references to Amon. Unlike most ancient Egyptian pharaohs, the people of Egypt seemed to be determined to erase the memory of the ruler who had tried to force his own brand of religion

There has been much speculation that Moses' written laws and Akhenaton's monotheism were one and the same, or at the very least inspired by the pharaoh's take on a monotheistic religion. Some people have even gone so far as to speculate that Moses was Akenaten and ruled Egypt before becoming exiled to the desert.

Pharaoh Akhenaton (akenaten) established a new religion the cult of Aton, or Aten, the sun god or solar disk, sometimes referred to as solar monotheism which he believed to be a universal, omnipresent spirit and the sole creator of the universe, that was in the fifth year of his reign, the king changed his name from the royal designation Amenhotep IV "Amon Is Content" to Akhenaton "Beneficial to Aton" or Aton is satisfied. Nefertiti’s name was expanded to Neferneferuaten “Beautiful Is the Beauty of Aton”-Nefertiti. That same year king Akhenaton moved his capital to a new site some 200 miles (300 km) north of Thebes, was "Tell el Aamrna" was a virgin site on the east bank of the river Nile .

This capital named Akhetaton means "Horizon of the Aton". This city devoted to the celebration of Aton, and he ordered the obliteration of all traces of the polytheistic religion of his ancestors. He also fought bitterly against the powerful priests who attempted to maintain the worship of the state god Amon, or Amen. This religious revolution had a profound effect on Egyptian artists, who turned from the ritualistic forms to which they had been confined to a much more realistic representation of nature as evidence of the all-embracing power of the sun, Aton. A new religious literature also arose

Pharaoh Akhenaton was born to Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye

King Akhenaton, one of many ancient Egyptian pharaohs, is perhaps best renowned for his loyalty to one deity at a time when the rest of the world, by and large, worshipped several gods. He is certainly the only one of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs to promote a monotheistic religion. This was not to occur again until the Roman Empire took control of Egypt and Christianity was instituted as the official religion.

Ikhnaten was the last important ruler of the 18th Dynasty and notable as the first historical figure to establish a religion based on the concept of monotheism.