El Amarna in Chaos

by Damien F. Mackey “But in the field of history nothing is established for ever: the discovery of new sources, or simply a new perspective on events, can call into question an almost official historical truth which has been long-accepted by everyone”. Michael Benoit, The Thirteenth Apostle (p. 355). Who was Akhnaton? Who, or what, influenced him? What was he trying to do? Part One: The Exodus? If Egyptology had got it right with its Sothic dating of the reign of Akhnaton to c. 1350 BC, then a quite common view that would have Akhnaton as a contemporary of the Hebrew Moses, or even as Moses himself, might make one pause to consider its possibility. For such was the radical religious revolution in Egypt, as brought about singlehandedly by the most unusual of pharaohs, Akhnaton, that the likes of Sigmund Freud, and others, have concluded that the apparent monotheism that the pharaoh enforced upon Egypt had influenced Moses into becoming a monotheist. “Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, even considered that Moses may have been inspired by Akhnaton. In his book Moses and Monotheism, published in 1939, he argued that the Hebrews had been followers of Akhnaton’s religion, and that their god was actually the Aten” (Graham Phillips, Act of God, Pan Books, 1998, p. 171). There are not a few today who claim – or who wonder whether – Akhnaton was, in fact, the prophet Moses. A well-known example of this is the Islamic scholar, Ahmed Osman, who made this very identification in his book, Out of Egypt. The Roots of Christianity Revealed (1999). I critically reviewed the book in my articles: Osman's ‘Osmosis’ of Moses. Part One: The Chosen People https://www.academia.edu/44650799/Osmans_Osmosis_of_Moses_Part_One_The_Chosen_People and: https://www.academia.edu/44650907/Osmans_Osmosis_of_Moses_Part_Two_Christ_The_King But there are others who argue that Akhnaton cannot properly be called a monotheist. Rather, they say, Akhnaton was a henotheist. Henotheism (Greek "one god") is a term coined by Max Müller, to mean devotion to a single primary god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities. Müller stated that henotheism means "monotheism in principle and polytheism in fact". He made the term a center of his criticism of Western theological and religious exceptionalism (relative to Eastern religions), focusing on a cultural dogma which held "monotheism" to be both fundamentally well-defined and inherently superior to differing conceptions of God. https://www2.nau.edu/~gaud/bio301/content/heno.htm This was Dr. I. Velikovsky’s take on the religion of Akhnaton. He wrote Oedipus and Ikhnaton in 1960. Dr. Velikovsky had also thought that the cataclysmic Thera (Santorini) eruption - which some date to the time of Akhnaton (wrongly, I believe) - was a dramatic backdrop to the biblical Plagues of Egypt and the Exodus. This is yet another factor that has prompted some (e.g. Graham Phillips, op. cit.) to connect Moses to the time of Akhnaton. Dr. Velikovsky himself had re-dated Akhnaton and the whole El Amarna (EA) era to the time of kings Ahab of Israel and Jehoshaphat of Judah, c. 850 BC, some 500 years after the conventional date for Akhnaton. Unfortunately, the who influenced whom of history gets seriously derailed by the conventional chronology coupled with a poorly documented biblical chronology. For instance: - Law of Moses likenesses are also discerned in the Code of Hammurabi, a famous king of Babylon. No one could deny these similarities; - To King Sargon of Akkad is attributed a legendary story of his rescue from a basket in a river that is clearly like the Exodus account of baby Moses; - Egyptian literature has a famous Tale of Sinuhe, which professor E. Anati rightly noted ‘shared a common matrix’ with the account of Moses’ flight from Egypt and sojourn in the land of Midian; - Ramses II is dated to c. 1300 BC, and is claimed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus; - Akhnaton’s Sun Hymn is very much like King David’s Psalm 104. Instinctively, historians will conclude in every case that Moses borrowed - from Sargon; from Hammurabi; from Sinuhe; and that David (if he existed at all) borrowed from Akhnaton. Instinctively, it is always concluded that the biblical tales were the beneficiary of (borrowed from) the pagan original (so-called) versions. Refreshingly, G. Phillips, who adheres to the conventional chronology, has stated (op. cit., p. 172: “… Akhenaten took his ideas from the Hebrews”. The revised chronology turns things upside down. - Hammurabi, now dated to c. 1000 BC, post-dated Moses by half a millennium; - Tale of Sinuhe appears late, in New Kingdom texts; - Ramses II, now to be shifted from c. 1300 BC, to c. 700 BC; - Akhnaton well post-dates Moses. The only exception is Sargon of Akkad who did indeed pre-date Moses by some centuries. However, the written legend of him as a baby in a basket well post-dates Moses, emerging around the time of Ashurbanipal (c. 700 BC). Moses was not Akhnaton, nor, chronologically, could he have been influenced by Akhnaton. Part Two: Monotheism, henotheism, or polytheism? What was Akhnaton trying to do? The account of Atenism that I shall be following here – that prompted me to write this current article, in fact – will be based upon Chapter Seven: “The One God”, of Graham Phillips’ book, Act of God, already referred to. P. 155: “The most remarkable aspect of Akhenaten’s revolution in religious thought is that it apparently springs into existence – seemingly from nowhere – the moment he becomes king. Apart from passing allusions, there is only a handful of references predating Akhenaten’s reign which seem to give the Aten any real significance”. Here Phillips gives four such earlier cases, from Amenemhet I of the Twelfth Dynasty to Amenhotep III, Akhnaton’s father. Graham Phillips’ statement above (p. 155) had already set my mind thinking in the direction that Akhnaton may have been a foreigner, an invader of Egypt – and certainly not one involved in any sort of Exodus. And when did such a foreign invasion of Egypt occur, one that attacked Egypt’s old religion? (- discounting the Hyksos invasion which, revised, occurred not long after the Exodus). That was the invasion of the Syrian Arsa, or Aziru, as referred to in the Great Harris Papyrus. (More on that later in this article). Now, there was a prominent Syrian (or Amurru) named Aziru at the very time of Akhnaton, and he, Dr. I. Velikovsky has identified (rightly, I believe) with the Syrian king, Hazael, of the Bible. On this see e.g. my articles: Is El Amarna’s Aziru Biblically Identifiable? https://www.academia.edu/19589826/Is_El_Amarna_s_Aziru_Biblically_Identifiable?sm=b and: Is El Amarna’s Aziru Biblically Identifiable? Part Two: Aziru of Papyrus Harris https://www.academia.edu/19601864/Is_El_Amarna_s_Aziru_Biblically_Identifiable_Part_Two_Aziru_of_Papyrus_Harris?sm=b P. 156: “… Atenism is even stranger than it first appears: before Akhenaten’s reign this new supreme deity was not really considered a god at all”. P. 157: “From the Karnak Talatat, together with the relief from early tombs that managed to escape desecration, we learn that Akhenaten had seemingly proclaimed the Aten supreme deity the moment he became pharaoh …”. … “From the beginning Akhenaten sees himself as a prophet …. Akhenaten described himself as ‘Divine Ruler of Thebes’.” P. 158: “Although the Aten is supreme god and Akhenaten is its only prophet from the outset of the reign, there appears to have been no suppression of the old religion for the first four or five years. In fact, the high priest of Amun was still active in the year 4, overseeing the cutting of stone for a royal statue. However, by the year 5 Akhenaten proscribed the cult of Amun-Re, closed the god’s temples, and made a complete break from the past by founding his new city on a virgin site not previously sacred to any god”. My comment: Na’aman the Syrian had, upon his conversion, taken a pile of Israeli soil to Syria. 2 Kings 5:17: ‘… please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the LORD’. “Throughout the first half of his reign, Akhenaten seems to have been struggling to find a conventional Egyptian context with which to convey his new religious concept. … The full title by which Akhenaten refers to his god in his early regnal years is: ‘Re-Herakhte, who rejoices in the horizon in his aspect of the light which is in the sun-disc’.” P. 159: “However, Akhenaten clearly does not see his god as Re-Herakhte. Namely, ‘the light which is in the sun-disc’. In an attempt to distinguish his deity from any previous god, however, Akhenaten has its name contained in a double cartouche. All the same, it appears that his subjects still found it difficult to grasp the idea that the Aten was something other than Re-Herakhte”. Prior to my reading of Graham Phillips’ book, I had been accepting of Dr. I. Velikovsky’s view that Akhnaton was a henotheist, having devotion to a primary god amidst a whole host of other gods. Now, thanks to Phillips, I am of the quite different opinion that Akhnaton was imposing monotheism upon Egypt, albeit a practical monotheism, it necessarily having to be adapted to a culture that was riotously polytheistic. Na’aman had this problem upon his conversion. 2 Kings 5:18-19: ‘But may the LORD forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to bow down and he is leaning on my arm and I have to bow there also—when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the LORD forgive your servant for this’. “‘Go in peace,” Elisha said”. P. 163: ‘There are three essential aspects of Akhenaten’s god which sets it apart from all other Egyptian deities: • It is the one and only universal god. • It appears to have had no name. • It cannot be represented by a graven image.” My comment: Re the first point, recall here Na’aman’s (2 Kings 5:15): ‘Now I know … that there is no god in all the earth except in Israel’. On pp. 164-165, Graham Phillips will show, from relevant scriptural quotations, that these three points were also the very essential aspects of the God of Moses. Akhnaton was not a henotheist. He was enforcing a one supreme deity upon a completely polytheistic Egypt. Akhnaton did not live in the time of Moses, but at the time of the Split Kingdom of Israel (Ahab, Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, Ben-Hadad I). Part Three: Who was Akhnaton? The Great Harris Papyrus (GHP) tells of the invasion of Egypt by “a certain Syrian”, Arsa (Iarsu), or Aziru, and this I take to relate to the unconventional reign of Akhnaton in Egypt (Papyrus Harris I, 75: 2-6; Breasted 1905: IV, 198-9): The land of Egypt was overthrown from without and every man was thrown out of his right; they had no chief for many years formerly until other times. The land of Egypt was in the hands of chiefs and of rulers of towns; one slew his neighbour great and small. Other times having come after it, with empty years, Iarsu, a certain Syrian was with them as chief. He set the whole land tributary before him together; he united his companions and plundered their possessions. They made the gods like men and no offerings were presented in the temples. (Quote taken from N. Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, 1994, p. 270) To subdue the land of Egypt so completely was no mean accomplishment. It would defy the best efforts of the mighty neo-Assyrian kings, until Ashurbanipal managed fully to accomplish it in the C7th BC (conventional dating). Now, as we know from the EA letters, a certain Syrian, Aziru, was a contemporary of Akhnaton. He is considered to have been one of the vassal kings subservient to the successive EA pharaohs, Nimmuria (Amenhotep III) and Naphuria (Akhnaton). Dr. I. Velikovsky had identified the EA Aziru with the biblical king of Syria, Hazael; and he had identified Aziru’s predecessor, Abdi-ashirta, with Hazael’s alleged father (the Bible does not make this connection, I believe), Ben-Hadad. I fully accept Velikovsky’s twin identifications here. He was able to make this most striking observation in the case of Hazael (in Ages in Chaos, I, 1952): In the only dialogue preserved in the Scriptures in which Hazael participates, there are three turns of speech that also appear in his [EA] letters. The context of the dialogue - the question of whether the king of Damascus would survive, and the statement that he, Hazael, the new king, would cause the cities of Israel to go up in smoke - is also preserved in the el-Amarna letters. It is therefore a precious example of the authenticity of the scriptural orations and dialogues. In my university thesis, I took the identification further. Thus: Hazael = Aziru (EA) = Aziru (GHP): David Rohl had shown that the Syrian GHP name could be rendered as Hazael. I wrote: Rohl will, in his explanation of the name Arsa, by which he designates the ‘Syrian’ Aziru, even come to the conclusion - interesting in my context - that this name can be rendered as ‘Asa-el’, which is equivalent to Hazael; though Rohl himself will actually look to date this Arsa to the time of king Asa of Judah (early C9th BC, conventional dating). Here is Rohl’s account of this: ARSA: also written Arsu or Irsu. However the hieroglyph usually transcribed as ‘u’ was invariably vocalised as ‘a’ (e.g. Hut-waret = Haware; Hut-Hor = Hathor). • The link between the Israelite Arsa and the Arsa of the Egyptian texts is intriguing but there is another identification possibility. The short name Asa could be a hypocoristicon of a longer nomen containing a theophoric element. The name Asa-el (‘El has made’) does occur in 2 Chronicles 17:8 …. The name Asa combined with the theophoric element El is attested at this time …. Asa, like the king of Damascus Hazael (Aramaean Haza-ilu) …. But can we now extend this Hazael/Aziru identification even further, to incorporate Akhnaton himself? That would at first seem most unlikely, given the universal view that EA’s Aziru was a vassal, and correspondent with, Akhnaton. However, as I have shown in various articles, supposed vassal kings, writing to EA pharaohs, do not necessarily name any pharaoh in their letters. See e.g. my article: To whom was Baalat-neše writing? https://www.academia.edu/37765661/To_whom_was_Baalat_ne%C5%A1e_writing Now the same situation I seem to find in the case with Aziru of EA. He, assassinator of his alleged father, Abdi-ashirta, then taken in as an ally by the Hittite emperor, Suppiluliumas, never actually names Akhnaton (Naphuria). The kings who do refer to the pharaohs by their throne names tend to be the eastern Great Kings, of Babylon (Karduniash), of Mitanni, and of Assyria. (There is also a western coastal king). Thus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarna_letters EA# Letter author to recipient EA# 1 Amenhotep III to Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil EA# 2 Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil to Amenhotep III EA# 3 Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil to Amenhotep III EA# 4 Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil to Amenhotep II EA# 5 Amenhotep III to Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil EA# 6 Babylonian king Burna-Buriash II to Amenhotep III EA# 7 Babylonian king Burna-Buriash II to Amenhotep IV EA# 8 Babylonian king Burna-Buriash II to Amenhotep IV EA# 9 Babylonian king Burna-Buriash II to Amenhotep IV EA# 10 Babylonian king Burna-Buriash II to Amenhotep IV EA# 11 Babylonian king Burna-Buriash II to Amenhotep IV …. EA# 14 Amenhotep IV to Babylonian king Burna-Buriash II EA# 15 Assyrian king Ashur-Uballit I to Amenhotep IV EA# 16 Assyrian king Ashur-Uballit I to Amenhotep IV EA# 17 Mitanni king Tushratta to Amenhotep III EA# 18 Mitanni king Tushratta to Amenhotep III EA# 19 Mitanni king Tushratta to Amenhotep III EA# 20 Mitanni king Tushratta to Amenhotep III EA# 21 Mitanni king Tushratta to Amenhotep III EA# 22 Mitanni king Tushratta to Amenhotep III EA# 23 Mitanni king Tushratta to Amenhotep III EA# 24 Mitanni king Tushratta to Amenhotep III EA# 25 Mitanni king Tushratta to Amenhotep III EA# 26 Mitanni king Tushratta to widow Tiy EA# 27 Mitanni king Tushratta to Amenhotep IV EA# 28 Mitanni king Tushratta to Amenhotep IV EA# 29 Mitanni king Tushratta to Amenhotep IV EA# 30 Mitanni king to Palestine kings EA# 31 Amenhotep III to Arzawa king Tarhundaraba EA# 32 Arzawa king Tarhundaraba to Amenhotep III(?) …. EA#156 Amurru king Aziri to pharaoh #1 EA#157 Amurru king Aziri to pharaoh #2 EA#158 Amurru king Aziri to Dudu #1 EA#159 Amurru king Aziri to pharaoh #3 EA#160 Amurru king Aziri to pharaoh #4 EA#161 Amurru king Aziri to pharaoh #5 …. The Syro-Palestinian kings do not tend to do this. Thus Akhnaton (Naphuria) and Aziru do not necessarily cancel out each other. Akhnaton still can be the Syrian Aziru (= Hazael), the invader of GHP, who closed the temples and who made the gods like men (i.e., non-gods). This new scenario now opens the door for those “empty years” of GHP to mean (Grimal, op. cit., ibid.): “A number of ‘empty’ years designate a period when the throne was effectively considered to be vacant because it was occupied by a usurping line”. To the two questions: Who was Akhnaton? What was he trying to do? I have so far concluded in this article: Akhnaton was Hazael of Syria (Aram) = Aziru of EA. Akhnaton was attempting to impose Mosaïc monotheism upon a polytheistic Egypt – not at the time of Moses, though, but in the Divided Kingdom period (of Ahab, Ben-Hadad, Jehoram). But why? What could possibly have prompted an apparently ruthless king of Syria – who had even assassinated his long-reigning Syrian predecessor – to subdue Egypt and to undertake the herculean task of trying to turn the Egyptians into monotheists? The answer to this lies in ‘The Sinai Commission’. The prophet Elijah had been commanded by Yahweh at Horeb (I Kings 19:15-17): ‘Go back the way you came. Go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael as king over Aram. Also anoint Jehu as king over Israel. He is the son of Nimshi. And anoint Elisha from Abel Meholah as the next prophet after you. He is the son of Shaphat. Jehu will put to death anyone who escapes Hazael’s sword. And Elisha will put to death anyone who escapes Jehu’s sword’. to wipe out the House of Ahab and to uproot Baalism. Hazael was to be at the head of this divine commission. But, again, why choose a Syrian to do this work? Jehu and Elisha, yes, they were Israelites sternly opposed to Baalism, but what sort of affiliation had they with this Syrian? The answer to this is, plenty, if the Syrian were one upon whose very person the prophet Elisha had worked a miracle. I refer to Na’aman the leper, who was a Syrian captain. He, I have previously identified with Hazael: Na’aman and Hazael https://www.academia.edu/42245731/Naaman_and_Hazael But there was also a spiritual miracle, a metanoia, involved. Na’aman had vowed never again to worship idolatrously. He was now entirely Yahweh’s man. Legend has it that this Na’aman had actually been the cause of the death of king Ahab of Israel, the one who had mortally wounded him with an arrow. As Hazael (presuming he were), he also took the credit in the Tell Dan inscription for the demise of Jehoram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah – a victory that the Bible accredits to Jehu. As Elisha foresaw, Hazael was to cause havoc in Israel - though Elisha must nevertheless have consented to it. Mary of Nazareth must have detested with all her maternal instincts what was being done to her Son, who actually referred to the Na’aman incident with Elisha (Luke 4:27): ‘And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed--only Naaman the Syrian’, but she consented to it as being the fulfilment of a long-expected divine plan for the salvation of humanity: ‘Let it be it done unto me according to thy word’ (1:38). So, at some stage, Hazael also subdued Egypt, possibly with Assyrian assistance since the contemporaneous Asuruballit of Assyria will later be called by his descendant, Adad-nirari, “subduer of Musru [Egypt]”? Relevant to this situation of the land of Egypt under Syrian occupation, Graham Phillips has written (op. cit., p. 153): “So different was everything about the Amarnans that some scholars even concluded that they had not been Egyptians at all, but foreign settlers who had merely adopted the Egyptian language”. (A correct estimation, I believe). Hazael would have felt some of the same sorts of tensions as he had, as Na’aman, when he – though now a monotheist – had had to move in a polytheistic (Rimmon) environment under the rulership of Ben-Hadad I (as previously discussed). As in the time of pharaoh Hatshepsut under the influence of Solomon, Davidic wisdom began to pervade Egypt. On this, see e.g. my article: Solomon and Sheba https://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba I have already referred to the commonly noted likenesses between Akhnaton’s Sun Hymn and King David’s Psalm 104 (with David having the precedence). And Akhnaton at Akhetaton, like Hatshepsut with Thebes, and David with Jerusalem, determined to rest there, “[Akhnaton] swore that he would never again leave the holy city” (G. Phillips, op. cit., p. 58). Akhnaton, like Oedipus (as noted by Dr. Velikovsky), did indeed slay his father, under the guise of Aziru having slain Abdi-ashirta. Was this father, then, Amenhotep III ‘the Magnificent’, the Nimmuria of EA? “But in the field of history nothing is established for ever: the discovery of new sources, or simply a new perspective on events, can call into question an almost official historical truth which has been long-accepted by everyone”. Michael Benoît, The Thirteenth Apostle (p. 355).