ABSTRACT
Amongst all the mass of the religious literature of Ancient Egypt, there is no document that may be considered to contain a reasoned and connected account of the ideas and beliefs which the Egyptians associated with the god Ȧten. The causes of his rise into favour towards the close of the XVIIIth dynasty can be surmised, and the principal dogmas which the founder of his cult and his followers promulgated are discoverable in the Hymns that are found on the walls of the rock-hewn tombs of Tall al-‘Amârnah; but the true history of the rise, development and fall of the cult can never be completely known. The word ȧten, https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315870755/e3a65d60-d4a9-4a56-bcb8-bdc326166f32/content/fig55_01_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> or ȧthen https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315870755/e3a65d60-d4a9-4a56-bcb8-bdc326166f32/content/fig55_02_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>, is a very old word for the “disk” or “face of the sun,” and Ȧtenism was beyond doubt an old form of worship of the sun. But there were many forms of sun-worship older than the cult of Ȧten, and several solar gods were worshipped in Egypt many, many centuries before Ȧten was regarded as a special form of the great solar god at all. One of the oldest forms of the Sun-god worshipped in Egypt was Ḥer (Horus), who in the earliest times seems to have represented the “height” or “face” of heaven by day. He was symbolized by the sparrowhawk https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315870755/e3a65d60-d4a9-4a56-bcb8-bdc326166f32/content/fig55_03_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>, the right eye of the bird representing the sun and his left the moon. In later times he was called “Her-ur” or “Her-sems,” the “older Horus,” and it was he who fought daily against Set, the darkness of night and the night sky, and triumphed over him.
