Who is amenhotep akhenaten

But it is not the only reason. The same resistance to change was also present in the field of arts. Art was supposed to remain unchanged and last for eternity. They practically reduced tomb painting to paint by numbers—you put down a grid, you fill it in.

So, even in a field like arts that is intertwined with creativity, change was not a virtue. In the field of politics, the resistance to change was manifested in the central role of the pharaoh in the society. The never-changing position of the pharaoh as the center of the whole system determined the fate of the country. This is a transcript from the video series History of Ancient Egypt. Watch it now, on Wondrium. Another unchanging institution in ancient Egypt was religion.

The Egyptians had worshiped the same gods for 2, years. Amun, Ra, and Osiris were the only gods worshiped for two millennia. Although at specific points, one god gained more importance than the others, there were just three of them. The Divine Order, or maat , was also unchangeable. With this firmly established conservative background, a pharaoh took over who turned the country and its never-changing pillars upside down.

Learn more about practicing Egyptian religion. When the older son died, the younger brother, who had never been mentioned before, became the king. He believed in one deity, the Aton, which is often represented by the sun disk. Akhnaton believed that the sun was the only symbol powerful enough to represent the unknowable Great Spirit — the Aton.

The sun, which provides light and heat and helps plants grow, was enough evidence for him to believe in it. Amenhotep IV was very skeptical about the other deities because they did not possess strong or obvious evidence of their power like the Aton.

When his brother, Thutmose, died, Amenhotep became the heir to the throne. Also, women assumed a more prominent role, especially his beloved wife Queen Nefertiti. One revelation is the ubiquity of gypsum as a working material. Gypsum can be used as a stone, but its main use at Amarna was as a powdered material, which with various admixtures can produce anything from a hardening plaster, to an adhesive, to a concrete. Gypsum had long been employed in Egypt as a mortar, a ground for painting, and for its adhesive qualities, but at Amarna it was used to create great long foundation levels, to build up platforms, and in a few instances to form large concrete blocks that functioned like stone.

It was used as a mortar for talatat and glue for inlay. It may even have been used to create a whole large stela surface in the newly discovered boundary stela H. And it was used to adhere the elements of the composite statuary created at Amarna, and apparently to construct some balustrades from a three-dimensional mosaic of pieces.

The combination of flourishing and inventive composite methods with the ubiquitous use of gypsum-based adherents has the appearance of an acceleration of technological change that constitutes a kind of breakthrough, whether or not it had any validity when Amarna and Amarna systems were abandoned. The city offers a good deal of information about the spiritual concerns of its people, although the disparate evidence leaves many gaps and questions.

As for involvement in the official Aten religion and the temples, officials presumably commissioned some of the temple statuary of the royal family or small-scale temple equipment at workshops distributed throughout one whole zone of the city. Some of the society at least also seems to have had particular access to certain parts of the temple: the Stela Emplacement area toward the back is one example.

Moreover, the huge bakeries attached to the Great Aten Temple, along with the many hundreds of offering tables in the temple, point to wide distributions of food, and these could be tied to broad accommodation within areas of the temple enclosure, possibly in connection with the festivals of the Aten promised on the boundary stelae. In their homes, officials might exhibit devotion to the royal family as the children of the Aten, sometimes constructing small chapels in gardens alongside their houses for their own or perhaps neighborhood use.

From the perspective of the small finds attached to houses and burials of the wider populace, there is very little overt evidence of attention to the new god, although such attention might not be well manifested in such finds for a variety of reasons. What is clear is that there was no absolute prohibition on other gods: material remains testify to continued interest in household gods like Bes and Taweret Recent excavations have revealed the long-unknown cemeteries of the general populace.

In contrast, the recently excavated South Tombs Cemetery of the general populace shows ample evidence of use, probably holding about 3, individuals.

A few of these individuals had a coffin or a stela or a piece of jewelry While there was certainly no mention of traditional funerary religion involving Osiris in the royal or elite tombs, there was some variability in the South Tombs Cemetery: one burial had a coffin apparently representing the Sons of Horus. The remains present many points of interest, but perhaps most surprising is the evidence of duress and poor diet well beyond that known for other typical New Kingdom populations.

The profile of the population in terms of age at death also indicates to researchers that an as yet unidentified epidemic scoured the population. Other cemeteries have been identified, and more excavation is anticipated. Nefertiti, Meritaten, the mysterious pharaoh Smenkhkare, and the female pharaoh Ankhetkhepherure—for whom the chief candidates in discussions so far have been Nefertiti and Meritaten, the eldest daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti—and ultimately Tutankhaten Tutankhamun all have roles.

Energetic scholarly discussion of the events of this period and the identity, parentage, personal history, and burial place of many members of the Amarna royal family is ongoing. Apparently in the reign of Ramesses II, the formal buildings of Akhetaten were completely destroyed, and many of their blocks reused as matrix stone in his constructions at Hermopolis and elsewhere. The site had presumably been abandoned. Hill, Marsha. Amarna Project. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, Arnold, Dorothea.

See on MetPublications. Freed, Rita E. Markowitz, and Sue. D'Auria, eds. Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Gabolde, Marc, et al. Actes du Colloque le 18—19 novembre Montpellier: -, Kemp, Barry J. Murnane, William J.

Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt. Edited by Edmund S. Atlanta: Scholars Press, Seyfried, Friederike, ed. English version. Stevens, Anna. Oxford: Archaeopress, Vergnieux, Robert, and Michel Gondran. Paris: Arthaud, Visiting The Met? Taweret amulet with double head. Face from a Composite Statue, probably Queen Tiye. Fragment of a Queen's Face. Pair of Clappers. Akhenaten Sacrificing a Duck. Nose and lips of Akhenaten.

Tile with persea fruit and leaves. Two Princesses Nina de Garis Davies. Talatat with Offerings in the Temple. Blue-painted Storage jar. Scene of Fishing and Fowling. Fragmentary Statuette of a Vizier. Statue of two men and a boy that served as a domestic icon.