“Great Hymn to the Aten”

About the Author

The “Great Hymn” does not have a byline or an inscriber’s mark, so we cannot be sure about its authorship. Nonetheless, a reasonable theory is that Akhenaten himself composed it. Akhenaten was the son of King Amenhotep III and Queen Tiyi. He had an older brother, Thutmose V, and only became crown prince after this sibling died. Scholars have speculated that Akhenaten was introduced to sun worship by his maternal uncle, Anen, who served as a priest at Heliopolis, the “City of the Sun,” in Lower Egypt. Based on the king’s curious, elongated portraits, some scholars have also argued that he suffered from a disease that affected his growth, such as Fröhlich’s syndrome or Marfan’s syndrome. Neither hypothesis has been proved, however, and the latter seems exceedingly hypothetical given the absence of Akhenaten’s mummy from the archaeological record. It is important to remember that Egyptian art was never intended to look “realistic” and therefore should not be used as a basis for medical diagnoses.

One thing that can be said with confidence is that Akhenaten disliked traditional religion from the outset of his reign. He gives the reason in an early speech that is partly preserved on two talatat. (Talatat are Akhenaten’s distinctive 27-by-27-by-54-centimeter stone blocks, which are relatively small and easy to handle.) The king states that he has studied sacred writings and has learned that cult statues—the “bodies” of the gods—fall to ruin, no matter what costly materials go into their construction. He declares that the single exception to this rule is the heavenly vessel of the mysterious solar creator.

Akhenaten’s speech is significant because it contains the germ of his later thought. The king’s temples at Amarna did not have roofs or cult statues, for he believed that the one true divine body was the sun itself. Indeed, in relief carving and hieroglyphic writing, Akhenaten eventually discarded all of the old images of the gods, depicting only the Solar Orb, with its rays ending in hands holding the symbols for life (ankhs, or looped crosses) and dominion (waset scepters). As far as the authorship of the “Great Hymn” is concerned, another possibility is that the tomb owner, Ay, wrote it. A likeness of Ay, who himself became a pharaoh, was found near the text of the “Great Hymn.”