Examples Of Damnatio Memoriae

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The idea of unpersons is not limited to this one novel, but rather it is found in history as well. The ancient Egyptians had an unpopular Pharaoh named Akhenaten who attempted to unperson the entire pantheon of Egyptian gods inorder to focus worship on a single deity. Upon his death Akhenaten was himself unpersoned by an angry public who quickly restored the traditional gods and denounced him as a heretic who was not to be placed on any records of Egyptian Kings. The Romans later developed a term for this called damnatio memoriae which meant 'someone who must not be remembered' and they applied this to anyone who was a disgrace to the empire. A well known example of damnatio memoriae is the teenaged Emperor Elagabalus whose poor life decisions

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