ABSTRACT
Germany was asked several times to return the world-famous bust of Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten, the pharaoh to whom Karl Abraham devoted a long essay. The bust is one of the prime exhibits at the Neues Museum in Berlin. Around the turn of the twentieth century, a series of excavations was underway in Amarna, a city on the Nile that was founded by Akhenaten. In creating Aten, Akhenaten put in place a single universal god who was equally close to all creatures, a monotheist religion. Abraham stressed Akhenaten's ethics, which involved a far-reaching sublimation of all sadistic urges. Akhenaten rejected all expressions of hatred and violence, just as Jesus Christ later did, and wanted to rule only though love. There is an important similarity between Abraham and Akhenaten. Both dismissed their father's religion. Akhenaten foreswore the Amen cult and replaced it with his mother's Aten cult, of which he created a version entirely his own.
