Akhenaten's visionary nature and his sacred prophetic texts have impressed many Christian scholars, who have been inspired by this „Amarna” period of Egyptian history. Can Atonism be considered a harbinger of future Christianity, a vision of divine uniqueness that found its form in later monotheism?
„You ask who are those who lead us to this Kingdom? You ask whether this Kingdom is in heaven? The birds flying in the air, and all living creatures living under the earth and on the earth, and the fish in the sea will lead you there, for the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.“ The Words of Jesus Christ, Papyrus from Oxyrhynchus
Akhenaten and Jesus
With his words in the heading of this chapter, Jesus makes it clear to his disciples that the divine essence is contained in nature itself. By perceiving nature and connecting with it, man reveals the secrets of life hidden within himself. Akhenaten himself sought the same understanding of reality through his religious theories, but 1,500 years earlier. Is it possible, then, that the young Jesus became acquainted with Akhenaten's teachings while staying with the Essenes, who lived in Qumran near the Dead Sea? Some experts claim that the Gospel of Jesus found in the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Nag Hammadi Library is actually the teachings of Akhenaten himself. It is also possible to cite other Christian texts that were inspired by Akhenaten's teachings and are directly based on them. Perhaps the best known of these is Psalm 104, parts of which are actually a translation of the Great Hymn to Aten! The eminent German Egyptologist Jan Assmann agrees: „The trail leads from Akhenaten's magnificent praise of the Sun to Psalm 104 of the Bible.“ Verses 20-30 of Psalm 104 are a translation from Hebrew and a kind of summary of Akhenaten's Hymn to Aten. Akhenaten's amazing hymn begins in Egyptian with the words: “How beautiful is your appearance on the horizon, you dispel the darkness, at your feet lies the world as you created it, you alone are eternal and only through you do people live.' In thirty verses, Akhenaten praised his sun god, without whom nothing would exist. Is this hymn the work of a divine king and philosopher? It can be said that the Bible ensured the immortality of Akhenaten's teachings.
Akhenaten and Moses
Since ancient times, numerous authors have attempted to link Moses with Akhenaten, who promoted the worship of the single god Aten, which was obvious monotheism to them. However, strict monotheism was first demanded of the Israelites by Moses. Nevertheless, in the Second Book of Moses, which is considered the oldest version of the well-known story, monotheism does not play a significant role. According to many assumptions and evidence, Akhenaten built sun temples dedicated to Aten not only in Egypt but also beyond its borders. There is speculation that one of them was also built on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. Can we assume that the Temple of Aten, founded by Akhenaten himself, stood on this sacred hill before King Solomon later built the Temple of the Ark there?
The connection between Akhenaten and Moses can already be found in the work of the Egyptian priest Manetho (around 300 BC). He claimed that the founder of monotheism, whom he called Osarsif (Osarséf), took the name Moses and led his followers out of Egypt during Akhenaten's reign. Manetho probably wanted the Egyptians to be freed from the „false“ monotheistic teaching, which, as I have already mentioned several times, was not actually monotheism in the true sense of the word. The „one“ god Aten was actually a synthesis of all the gods recognised until then. Other polemical texts related to Akhenaten and Moses were also dealt with by authors such as Lysimachus, Tacitus and Strabo. Moses was a prophet raised in Egypt and most likely initiated into the new religion of one god by Akhenaten himself. Some sources even state that Moses was probably the high priest of the temple of Aten in Akhetaten. On the other hand, other theories claim that Akhenaten left Egypt like Moses, surrounded by his faithful followers, to the Promised Land, in order to fully realise his lifelong vision of the one god Aten.
„Adonai,“ the Hebrew term for "my lord," was the same as the Egyptian term for "Aton," and "mos" is an Egyptian, not a Hebrew, word for "child." Dr. Karl Abraham
Dr. Karl Abraham, a predecessor of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, studied the worship of „one god“ and believed that Pharaoh Akhenaten was „the forerunner of mosaic monotheism.“ He also studied the Old Testament and found that it attributed great symbolic significance to the period around 1394 BC, when Moses, the founder of the Jewish faith, took the crown from the Egyptian pharaoh. Abraham believed that Moses, a slave child, was in fact Akhenaten, a descendant of Pharaoh Amenhotep III.
This topic, which is becoming increasingly prominent in the public eye today, was once addressed by Sigmund Freud in his impressive study of Moses and monotheism. He was the one who claimed that Moses and Akhenaten were in close contact. He pondered the fact that Moses was Egyptian and had once held the position of advisor to Pharaoh Akhenaten. Freud concluded that after Akhenaten's death, the priests of Amun in Thebes, whom Akhenaten had rejected and abandoned, gave free rein to their resentment towards him. Belief in Aten was banned and Akhenaten's capital, Akhetaten, was razed to the ground. Freud believed that Moses turned to Akhenaten and expected inspiration and leadership from him. Disappointed and alone in the whirlwind of events, Moses then turned to the Israelites living in Egypt. He sought compensation from them for the loss he suffered when Akhenaten died and his religious philosophy was mercilessly trampled upon. Freud later came up with new arguments that Akhenaten's reign in Akhetaten ended when he was deposed and sent into exile in Sinai around 1361 BC, but later returned to attempt to seize power under Ramesses I. When he failed, he persuaded a group of Hebrew slaves to follow him into the desert, where he could finally realise his vision and create a true religion of one god: Aten.
A very bold and unconventional view of Moses and Akhenaten was recently presented by the well-known Egyptologist, Egyptian Ahmed Osman. In his books Stranger in the Valley of the Kings, Moses: Pharaoh of Egypt, and Moses and Akhenaten, he identifies Moses with Pharaoh Akhenaten. Osman claims that Akhenaten was expelled from Egypt at the end of the 17th year of his reign, together with the Semites, into exile in Sinai.
The exploration and excavations in present-day Amarna, led by William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the founder of Egyptian archaeology, and the findings he collected, revealed much about the history, religion, art and manner of Akhenaten's reign. Interestingly, Petrie found evidence in an Egyptian tomb in Sinai that after Aten was officially „forgotten“ in Egypt, he was still worshipped in this region. Among other artefacts, Petrie discovered the head of a statue of Queen Tiye, Akhenaten's mother.
Another contemporary, writer Ralph Ellis, also offers interesting ideas and speculations about Moses and Akhenaten in his book Jesus, Last of the Pharaohs. Ellis identifies Moses with the firstborn son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, Tuthmos (Tuth-Moses / Moses?), who was Akhenaten's brother and, among other things, a priest of Heliopolis, and who was perhaps supposed to become pharaoh, but suddenly disappeared from the scene. Arthur Weigall also linked the mass exodus of Jews from Egypt with Akhenaten's coup in his articles and believed that at the end of Tutankhamun's reign, the Israelites were expelled from Egypt by General Haremheb, who later proclaimed himself pharaoh.
Akhenaten and Jewish mysticism
It is undeniable that Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, has its roots in Egyptian mysticism, from which it originates. Who made these ancient truths accessible to the Jews? The uplifting and mysterious texts of the ancient Jews included not only writings and books such as the Torah and Midrash, but also Kabbalah, a collection of ancient secret texts. Since the 12th century, Kabbalah has been a collective term for esoteric Jewish teachings. The term is derived from the Hebrew QBLH (= that which we receive). In essence, Kabbalah is a teaching about the psychoenergetic nature of man and his place in a holographically ordered universe. Its teaching on the hierarchy of worlds corresponds entirely to ancient Egyptian Hermeticism. Here we find evidence that Kabbalah was taken from ancient Egyptian mysticism. This is also supported by the fact that Kabbalists do not continue to develop Kabbalah. The most important Kabbalistic work is the Zohar (full name Shefer-ha-Zohar, Book of Splendour), which is usually said to have been written around 1290 AD. Given the many other indications, it is clear that the Zohar must have been written over a long period of time as a compilation of various texts collected in the distant past. However, its true origins are lost somewhere deep in Egypt's past, like the information that Akhenaten's followers took with them from Egypt... What has been preserved from Egyptian mysticism in Jewish Kabbalah, but also in Greek Hermeticism, was most likely preserved thanks to Manetho, the high priest of the Heliopolis temple. It is likely that two other Egyptian scholars, Petosiris, advisor to the 30th dynasty pharaoh Nectanebo, and Bytis, also contributed to the transformation of ancient Egyptian sacred texts. Today, these texts are called Hermetic, after the Hellenised name Hermes (Trismegistos), who was none other than the Egyptian god of writing and learning, Thoth.
Akhenaten and the Books of Moses
Kabbalah is referred to as a teaching that was passed down orally through generations before it was recorded. We can therefore assume that Kabbalah was the subject of the Books of Moses, which were originally written in ancient Egyptian. Their author was most likely Akhenaten himself, who allegedly had enough time during his twenty-five-year exile in Sinai to write down everything he knew. Only when favourable political circumstances arose, probably between the death of Pharaoh Haremheb and the first ruler of the 19th dynasty, did he lead his followers out of Egypt after failing to regain power over Egypt. The following facts about the Books of Moses, which are included in the Bible, are worth mentioning. Egyptian words appear in a strikingly high number, especially in the first two books. It therefore seems logical that these first two can be attributed to Moses – Akhenaten. The occurrence of these words, which have Hebrew equivalents and would not have been necessary if the original texts had not been in Egyptian, supports the theory that these books were indeed written in Egyptian.
Nag Hammadi – the secrets of the papyrus codices
Nag Hammadi is an Egyptian site where Muhammad Ali Samman discovered the so-called Gnostic library in 1945. It consists of a total of thirteen Coptic papyrus codices that were stored in a clay pot. Some of the texts were irretrievably lost when some of the pages were mistakenly used for kindling. However, thanks to a priest named Al-Qummus Basiliyus Abd el Masih, the vast majority of the texts eventually found their way into the hands of scientists. The thirteen papyrus codices contain mainly writings on Gnostic teachings. Until then, these teachings had been known exclusively from the writings of their opponents, especially the Church Fathers, who fought relentlessly against Gnosticism. The Nag Hammadi codices are the first material to testify directly to these teachings and are therefore of immense importance for the study of Gnosticism. Writings that had long been considered lost or merely the figment of the imagination of „perverted” archaeologists showed the world that some things may be quite different. Christian Gnostics, an intellectually-minded minority within the Christian sect, thus contributed to the existence of an alternative interpretation to the canonised biblical gospels. This historical ray of light is mainly represented by four apocryphal, or non-canonised, texts: the Gospel of Thomas, the Dialogue with the Saviour, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Mary. Each of these writings, like the well-known canonical gospels, represents a particular early Christian school, of which there were many at the time when the first Christian texts were written. The originals of these apocryphal texts date from roughly the same period as the canonical gospels, i.e. the end of the second century, and were recorded in either Greek or Aramaic. Their translations, found in Nag Hammadi in a much better state of preservation, are written in Coptic and were produced two centuries later. Some are very old and may preserve ancient traditions independent of the canonical gospels (e.g., the Gospel of Thomas), while others attempt to reinterpret the canonical texts or offer a new, alternative view of Jesus as a Gnostic saviour. The authors and copyists of these texts are Gnostics, probably from the nearby monastery of St. Pachomius, who hid them from destruction by zealous supporters of the official faith.
„The kingdom of God is within you and all around you. Not just in buildings made of wood and stone. Split a piece of wood, and I will be there; lift a stone, and you will find me...“ The Apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas
In 1945, a scroll was discovered in Nag Hammadi that is described as the mysterious words of Jesus Christ. The scroll containing the apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas has been declared by scholars from around the world to be an authentic record of Jesus' words. The Vatican refuses to recognise this gospel and labels it heresy, as it would undermine the authority of the Church and call into question its pillars, established by the Council of Nicaea. Akhenaten is similarly referred to today by some experts who draw information from the few preserved remains of the Amun priesthood and also the first rulers of the 19th dynasty (Seti I and Ramesses II), as from this time onwards there is evidence of the systematic destruction of texts and all monuments and references to Akhenaten. The aforementioned apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas, sometimes also called the True Gospel of Jesus, is linked by some researchers to Pharaoh Akhenaten, who lived fourteen centuries before Jesus. Because he is considered by many historians to be the founder of monotheism, he is also regarded as an exceptional being who gave the world a philosophy for which the world was not yet ready at the time. And so it may have happened that fourteen centuries later, his texts were taken up by none other than Jesus himself...
Excerpt from the book by writer and journalist Miloš Matula Akhenaten and Nefertiti, Pharaohs of the Sun
This article was published with the kind permission of of the magazine Sphere
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