Egyptian Heretic

The Egyptian Heretic

The ancient Egyptians worshipped hundreds of gods and goddesses. The most important of these deities has always been believed to be the sun deity. This deity came in several forms depending on the time of day. For instance, in the morning, the sun God would be depicted as Khepri, a scarab beetle who moved the sun disc across the sky. The sun could also take the form ___________________ of Re-Harakhty (Fig. 1), the mighty hawk soaring in the sky, and ___________________ later as Atum, depicted as an elderly man, during the evening. The sun ___________________ was professed to be responsible for everything in creation. In this ___________________ deity’s full power, he was regarded as Amun-Re, king of the Gods. ___________________

He was originally given the name Amenhotep IV, meaning ‘Amun is Satisfied.’ However, five years into his reign he re-identified himself as Akhenaten, meaning ‘Beneficence of the Aten.’ At this same time, he built a new capital at present-day Amarna, formerly known as Akhetaten (Oakes & Gahlin 377). Both of these prevalent issuances were used to steady the progression of Akhenaton’s heretic new philosophical and artistic values. His name change allowed him to portray the celestial association between the Aten, the now-monotheistic sun deity, and himself. Akhenaton believed he was the Aten’s earthly representation, and the masses regarded their pharaoh king as such (Strudwick 75). Following in suit, Akhenaten undermined the traditional pantheistic cult of Amun, the former king of the Gods, and instead built a new capital to honor the Aten. Akhenaton went further to reform this new religion by changing the way the masses were to worship their deity. Before his reign, the masses were to worship in dark, unlit sanctuary temples. Akhenaton instead built temples to the Aten without roofs, as a means to be in the open air and in broad daylight to bask in the Aten’s great life force (Oakes & Gahlin

When carving statues, artists drew guidelines on all sides of the uncarved stone, paying close attention to the horizontal and vertical axes (Watts & Girsh 38). Instead of carving statues fully in the round, many artists opted to leave the main figure(s) connected to its base to support its own weight. Shown here (Fig. 4), is an example of the tradition style of figure statuary; the Pharaoh and his wife are stiff and rigid, showing to their people that their legacy will live on, unmoving, throughout the ages. Under the reign of Akhenaten, many of these traditional ________________________ Egyptian artistic values were cast away in favor of those that portrayed the royal family in a jarring, grotesque way.

One such example, (Fig. 5) exquisitely exhibits the new age artistic values during Akhenaten’s rule. These style changes included feminine curves, full lips, half closed eyelids, elongated faces and necks, as well as a heavy belly and thick thighs. This stylistic representation was the basis for the for the entire royal family during the early years of Akhenaten’s reign, with each royal family member being depicted as a clone of one another. This style quickly eroded when Thutmose, the new master sculptor, took charge