/ Forum > Guardian's Egypt's Ancient Egypt Bulletin Board /
/ Copies to TOL General Theology & alt.bible.prophecy /
/ Topic > Tombs and Temples / January & February 2002 /
/ Subtopic > The Complete TEMPLES OF ANCIENT EGYPT /
.
> On 6Feb Bern wrote: textman, The people of AE believed
> Akhenaten was a mad man. So did most of his court that
> turned against his religion almost as soon as he was dead.
.
On 7Feb textman replies: This is so because it is human nature
to resist new things. In the same way, political people are more
prone to be pragmatic and practical than religious. So I don't
think that the judgments of these people proves much. Jesus
was also accused of being a madman, and likewise had his
traitors to deal with. Yet he turned and shook the pillars of
the world in a way that even mighty Alexander could envy.
.
> How do you consider the mental stability of a man that will
> order workman to go throughout the length of the country
> opening tombs and climbing to the highest columns of
> temples to hack out the glyphs giving the name of Amen,
> including those in the cartouches of his father.
.
Mental stability is not the issue here. Although I agree that he
certainly had a wire down about Amen, I hardly think his methods
fall outside the norms of rational behavior ... for a pharaoh, I
mean. After all, Akh-en-Aton did not invent the hammer and
chisel approach to dealing with ideas and memories. It was done
by pharaohs before him, and after him. With all this blotting of
names and memories going on all the time, I can well understand
Rameses’ urgent need to offset ‘the danger of blotting’ by
building things bigger and Bigger and BIGGER! Hey, you want to
talk about crazy pharaohs? I think that Rameses II is a much
better candidate for the couch trip than Akh-en-Aton ...
.
> His religion did not last because he did not have the
> intelligence to simply make the Aten the chief god as
> other kings had done in the past when Amen was made the
> chief god. He attempted to be the son of the Aten and
> the pope of his new religion and he blew it.
.
I couldn't disagree more. The religious reform failed chiefly
because *both* the people and (especially) the priests were
incapable of embracing a whole new vision of Creation and the
Creator. If either one or the other of these groups had accepted
the challenge of the new faith, then the history of Egypt would
have been *very* different from what it was!
.
When you suggest that the black pharaoh should have played
it smart by not being so darned monotheistic, you demonstrate
a serious lack of appreciation for the spiritual breakthrough
involved in the unity, presence, and centrality of the Aton. And
when you refer to him as 'the pope' you are resolving again to
the ancient categories of priest in order to define Akh-en-Aton
in "acceptable" terms.
.
Now I have tried to show that these priestly categories do NOT
apply to Akh-en-Aton *because* they do NOT fit the facts. I
rather suspect that this minor detail is of no concern to the vast
majority of Egyptologists because they simply don't care about
this matter enough to give a hoot in the first place! But let us
nevertheless imagine that some of the readers hereabouts *do*
give a hoot about the truth of things. What then? If the king was
not a priest or a god, then what was he? Consider the following
list, and then consider that Akh-en-Aton manifests ALL of these
characteristics:
.1) a prophet seeks and promotes the truth.
2) a prophet denies and resists error
3) a prophet acts with power and conviction
4) a prophet is of use and value to God
5) a prophet praises and worships God
6) a prophet teaches the people, and leads them in prayer
7) a prophet is a tradition-breaker and a tradition-maker
8) a prophet is a writer and/or an original thinker
- the almost concise one – textman ;>
x
Goto Next Dialogue
textman
*