continued
T H E R E L I G I O U S B A C K G R O U N D
HIS FATHER'S POLICIES
It appears that Amenophis III tried to prevent this single god from gaining the
upper hand by stressing the multiplicity of deities in Egypt, especially in connec-
tion with his festival of renewal.
In addition to the series of Sekhmet statues, he commissioned a further series of
statues, on whose bases he was designated as "beloved" of a very great variety
of deities, among them less important and specifically local ones.
Similar epithets occur on an extensive series of large scarabs connecting the king
with numerous deities.
There were definitely tendencies - and not only at the royal court - that ran counter
to the New Solar Theology and its elevation of a single god over the entire pantheon,
in a manner that was altogether too one-sided and, in that respect, un-Egyptian.
But the plurality of deities was not replaced in principle by this unique and distant sun
god, and they remained in exestence along with the Aten in the early years of Akhen-
aten.
From a modern, strictly logical point of view, it would take only one small step to turn
this unique god, this God of All Gods, into a single one who tolerated no other deity be-
sides himself.
Akhenaten in fact took this step, though only as the final consequence of his reflec-
tions concerning the divine and the gods. First, however, he made a RELIGION (as
Jan Assmann observes) out of the New Solar Theology with which he had grown up.
