THE GREAT ATEN

These passages show that Aten, at the time when the hymns from which they are taken were composed, was regarded as the material body of the sun wherein dwelt the god Ra, and that he represented merely the solar disk and was visible emblem of the great Sun-god.

In later times, coming to protection afforded to him by Amen-hetep III, the great warrior and hunter of the XVIIIth Dynasty, other views were promulgated concerning Aten, and he became the cause of one the greatest religious and social revolutions which ever convulsed Egypt.

After the expulsion of Hyksos, Amen, the local god of Thebes, as the god of the victorious princess of that city, became the head of the company of the gods of Egypt, and the early kings of the XVIIIth Dynasty endowed his shrine with possessions, and gave gifts to his priesthood with a lavish hand.

In spite of this however, some of these kings maintained an affection for the forms of the Sun-god which were worshipped at Heliopolis, and Thothmes IV, it will be remembered, dug out the Sphinx from the sand which had buried him and his temple, and restored the worship of Ra-Harmachis. He was not the only monarch who viewed with dismay the great and growing power of the priests of Amen-Ra, the "king of the gods" at Thebes.