FROM
AKHENATON AND THE RELIGION OF LIGHT
Erik Hornung - Translated by David Lorton
T H E R E L I G I O U S B A C K G R O U N D
THE NEW SOLAR THEOLOGY
The religious ideas with which Akhenaten grew up were those of the "New Solar
Theology," which Jan Assman, in particular, has investigated. It is to be encountered
in hymns and rituals and in the Books of the Netherworld of Dynasty 18.
At its core is the daily course of the sun, which guarantees the continued existence
of the Cosmos.
The Sun god renews his creation every morning, but he also descends nightly into
the netherworld, where his revivifying light wakes the dead to new life in the depth
of the earth.
The entire Cosmos is dependent upon light and the sight of the God, but this light
must be continually regenerated into the darkness; it must overcome dangers and
hostile forces whose most powerful embodiment is the enormous serpent Apopis.
These menacing forces are defeated, and the New Solar Theology reflects deep
trust in the reliability of the sun. This god, whose visible cult image was the sun and
whom the Egyptians worshipped under several names, was the creator of the other
gods; he was thus the unique God of the Gods, hidden and inscrutable in his essence,
and therefore especially worshipped as Amun, whose name means "Hidden One."
The remoteness of the god is constantly stressed, though he was also immanent in
his rays. The visible light on which all creation depended shone upon a world filled
with mythic concepts, which Akhenaten would eliminate in their entirety.
The Creator renewed his work each night in the depths of the netherworld, where he
effected his own regeneration and, at the same time, wakened the dead to new life.
Setting each evening, he had a share in the fate of death; in the course of the New
Kingdom, it became customary to view Osiris, god of the dead, as a form of the Sun
god, so that he ruled not only this world, but the next one as well.
Next to this potent luminary, the other divine powers ran the risk of fading into insigni-
ficance.
