Akhenaten's Radical Changes During The 18th Dynasty

Akhenaten or Amenhotep IV made some radical changes to the Egyptian Empire during the 18th Dynasty. Many modern historians see him as quite significant for his time because of his revolutionary views on changing the Capitol from Thebes, his new artistic style and his change to the religion. However, for his time, there is evidence that his radical change was not fully supported in the kingdom and that because he didn’t have the support, his legacy died with him along with his lineage and name. Although he was a significant person, his foreign affairs was damaging due to Akhenaten neglecting his duties. Whether he was revolutionary or rebellious, he was a significant man for his time and into the modern world.

The first significant change which

This is where the idea was planted for Akhenaten that Aten was “above all other gods” (Tim Maynor, 2011) and believes that Aten is everywhere and visible to everyone. That he is a god of everyday life. Ultimately Amenhotep III created himself as the God and tipped the power away from the priests of Amun, and thus, the Priests of the Old God were unhappy as they had lost their significant power and believed that Aten was eclipsing their power. When Akhenaten became king after his fathers death, he believed that if a pharaoh was God, then he should have no competition, and therefore, Akhenaten, to modern historians “[undid] 1500 years of tradition and rattle[d] Egypt to its foundation” (Tim Maynor, 2011). At first, Akhenaten escalated the conflict with the priests that his father had started. He ordered the temples of Amun-Rah to be closed and consequently banned the god, in which he was struck from that period of history through Amun-Rah’s name being struck from the temple walls. Thus, because of Amun-Rah being removed from the temples, and Aten being the supreme God, he created the first monotheistic

This was one of Akhenaten’s “most important act [moving] the imperial capital” (Richard Fazzini, 1973), and was found by Sir Flinders Petri who is the founder of Modern Egyptology. When Petri discovered the “lost town” (Tim Maynor, 2011) he discovered on the various stones that there were no scenes of offerings to the gods. After his father had passed, Akhenaten destroyed the remnants of the Supreme God Amun-Rah from the temple walls. Seeing that the town of Thebes was still under a great deal of influence from Amun-Rah and that he wanted to “outdo Karnak and outdo his father” (Tim Maynor, 2011) and therefore created a town “400km North of Thebes [around] 1348 BC” (Tim Maynor,2011) in which he called a “Sacred territory called the “Horizon of the Sun’s Disks”” (Heather Pringle, 2014). Akhenaten promised the people that they would be protected by the Sun God Aten and not Amun-Rah. Akhenaten built “palaces for himself and his family [and] shrines dedicated to the pure power of the sun” (Heather Pringle, 2014) and it would be everyday that they would go through the town, showing the power of Aten. The town was made in the middle of the desert and was made from what appeared to be “40000 people from the old town and brought to Amarna where they [built] the 1.5 square mile city” (Heather Pringle, 2014) but to Barry Kemp an Egyptologist from