117: Adoring Ra (or Where Did Akhenaten Get His Ideas?)

The History of Egypt Podcast

Dominic Perry

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2019

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Precursors to Atenism. The god Aten has a long history; and in the 18th Dynasty, many Egyptians were praising the sun god in a variety of forms (Ra, Atum, Horakhty, Aten, Khepri etc). Akhenaten's reforms were radical, but they have some obvious roots. Looking at several religious texts, side by side, we can see how the sun god became a major, universal deity at this time... Date = 1400-1360 BCE King = Akhenaten Queen = Nefertiti Location = Thebes and Amarna Website: www.egyptianhistorypodcast.com. Support the show via Patreon www.patreon.com/egyptpodcast. Make a one-time donation via PayPal payments. Music by Keith Zizza www.keithzizza.com Sistrum by Hathor Systrum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7pYdPOS4yw. Select Bibliography: Jan Assmann, Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom, 1995. Norman de Garis Davies, The Rock Tombs of el-Amarna, Vol. IV: The Tombs of Penthu, Mahu and Others, 1906. Online edition at Archive.org. Norman de Garis Davies, The Rock Tombs of el-Amarna, Vol. VI: The Tombs of Parennefer, Tutu, and Aye, 1908. Online edition at Archive.org. Aidan Dodson, Amarna Sunrise, 2014. Jean Saint Fare Garnot, “Notes on the Inscriptions of Suty and Ḥor (British Museum Stela No. 826),” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 35 (1949): 63-68. James K. Hoffmeier, Akhenaten & The Origins of Monotheism, 2015. Erik Hornung, Akhenaten and the Religion of Light, 1999. Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 2, 1976. William J. Murnane, Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt, 1995. OIP, The Tomb of Kheruef, 1980. Online edition at University of Chicago. Donald B. Redford, Akhenaten the Heretic King, 1987. Online edition at Archive.org. H.M. Stewart, “A Possibly Contemporary Parallel to the Inscription of Suty and Hor,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 43 (1957): 3-5. Stephen Quirke, The Cult of Ra: Sun-Worship in Ancient Egypt, 2001. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to the History of Egypt podcast.
0:14.1	Episode 117, Adoring Ra.
0:18.4	An exploration of some of the roots of Arcanatan's religious movement, as we see it
0:24.4	during the 18th dynasty. Celebration of the sun god, Ra or rei, or Atum rei, was growing in popularity
0:32.9	during this time period, and although Arcanatan took it to a very visible extreme, many of
0:39.5	his ideas were present and popular in the cultural discourse of his time. This episode is brought
0:47.1	to you by Steve, Claudia and George, who generously became patrons back in 2018. Thank you very much for supporting the show, folks,
0:56.5	and especially for sticking with me for over a year.
1:00.2	I am incredibly grateful to you.
1:02.0	This episode is for you.
1:04.4	To everyone listening to the show,
1:06.5	thank you very much for joining me.
1:08.4	I hope you enjoy the story. Our discussion today takes place primarily in the mid-18th dynasty, between 1,300 and 1360 BCE, approximately.
1:31.0	We're going to be looking at a series of hymns and prayers,
1:36.6	religious texts carved on the walls of tombs of non-royal individuals who lived during the time of Ammon Hotep III and Amon Hotep the 4th,
1:42.2	later known as Akanatin.
1:47.6	These hymns are dedicated to the sun god Ra,
1:55.1	or Ray, and they glorify him and extol his virtues as the universal creator, one who brings life to earth and creates the world in which humans live. The texts share a number of similarities and help us to
2:03.2	understand how the Egyptians viewed their great god Ra during this time period. As you can imagine,
2:10.6	these have many influences on what came during the reign of Akanaten. We are covering six texts. A short hymn to Aten from a mana,
2:21.4	then two hymns to Ra dedicated by a pair of brothers named Suti and Hor. Also, we look at hymns
2:29.8	to Akanaten made by the courtier Ai, the one who recorded the great hymn to Aten that we saw last
	...

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