Will CotN feature Ankhenaten?

[Afterburner]

I've always thought that the reign of Ankhenaten was one of the more interesting periods of Ancient Egypt. He threw every religious precept aside and declared monotheism in Egypt (worshipping a Sun God named Aten).

Pharaoh didn't even touch upon his reign, which immediately preceeded Tutankhamen's reign. Just wondering if we might see him in CotN?

[Keith]

I've always thought that the reign of Ankhenaten was one of the more interesting periods of Ancient Egypt. He threw every religious precept aside and declared monotheism in Egypt (worshipping a Sun God named Aten).

Pharaoh didn't even touch upon his reign, which immediately preceeded Tutankhamen's reign. Just wondering if we might see him in CotN?
A brief and unusual period. If the game is designed around a single lifespan, it probably would be possible to make something interesting of this period. Since the period lasted only one reign and everthing reverted back afterwards, who knows. Time will tell.
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[Miut]

He certainly ignored his kingdom and people during that time, leaving his colonial rulers to their own devices when they begged for help against uprisings. His diety was as unlike any Jewish or Christian concept of god as it could be. The Aten was only blessing the royal family, no one else, and they passed it on to the people. Akhenaten was something a despot, people forget how ruthlessly he suppressed the worship of Amun and the other godds, disbanded the temples and their land, leaving hundreds of people penniless. Then he uprooted his capital and headed out into the wilderness.
He showed a callous disregard for his people and their lives, leaving even visitng royalty and ambassadors to stand for hours under the hot sun without shade and water.. I have no respect for him as a ruler, I am afraid.

However, knowing something more about Akhetaten the city would be great as I did a lot of research on it for a short story, and there is a great site called the Armana Project.. where they are trying to piece more and more together from that period. I believe it has about the best ground plan of a palace existing. Palaces were built of mud bricks, only the works for the gods were made of stone to keep the rule of Maat functioning, and thus the prosperity of Egypt.

http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk//Welcome.html Nice Armana house plans on this site, and I think 3D ones too..
http://www.museum-tours.com/amarna/news0902.htm
FABULOUS rendition of Nefertiti's temple here...
http://kate.stange.com/egypt/egyptpics/neftemple.jpg

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[EmperorJay]

I agree, from a citybuilder point of view, Amarna could provide an interesting mission.

[Ken Parker]

Akhenaten was something a despot, people forget how ruthlessly he suppressed the worship of Amun and the other godds, disbanded the temples and their land, leaving hundreds of people penniless.
His rule was an attempt to restore pharaonic primacy over the priesthood, which had accumulated enough wealth and power to seriously damage the royal family's authority. There was no distinction between politics and religion -- the very notion of separating the two never would have occurred to a people who worshipped their king as a god -- so knocking back the priestly class was a political move. Akhenaton's revolution was on its surface an attempt to redirect thousands of years of traditions, but deeper down a move to re-centralize power in the pharaoh.

This post is just a historical comment, not a hint about our game's content. Don't read anything between the lines. :)

[Ineti]

His rule was an attempt to restore pharaonic primacy over the priesthood, which had accumulated enough wealth and power to seriously damage the royal family's authority. There was no distinction between politics and religion -- the very notion of separating the two never would have occurred to a people who worshipped their king as a god -- so knocking back the priestly class was a political move. Akhenaton's revolution was on its surface an attempt to redirect thousands of years of traditions, but deeper down a move to re-centralize power in the pharaoh.

IIRC, it didn't work. Once Akhenaton was gone, the country resumed polytheism, and the priests remained powerful.

Trivia: Tutankhamen changed his name from Tutankhaten once Akhenaton was gone.

[Tony Leier]

Speaking of Amarna, this is pretty neat:

http://www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/Projects/Amarna/Model/model.htm

[Ineti]

Speaking of Amarna, this is pretty neat:

http://www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/Projects/Amarna/Model/model.htm

Great link. Thanks!

[martouf]

ankhenaten's wife was nefertiti. some say that they were both the same person. Because of anhkenaten's unusually shaped body. Some believe he was deformed because of generations of inbreeding. Egyptian royalty believed in keeping the royal blood within the family

-martouf

[Azeem]

Not everyone really agrees about the reign of Akhenaten. To some, he may be an early religious revolutionary. To another, he was a callous politician. Because it is so far back in history, there's no definite way we can know. I'd be interested in having the Amarna period included, despite the fact that it was so short-lived.

[Ineti]

Not everyone really agrees about the reign of Akhenaten. To some, he may be an early religious revolutionary. To another, he was a callous politician. Because it is so far back in history, there's no definite way we can know.

I think that's one of the many reasons ancient Egypt has such appeal (to me anyway). It's so old, and the information we do have is so scattered, and new finds are being made every day, a lot of what happened is subject to interpretation and there's room for several points of view.

[Keith]

ankhenaten's wife was nefertiti. some say that they were both the same person. Because of anhkenaten's unusually shaped body. Some believe he was deformed because of generations of inbreeding. Egyptian royalty believed in keeping the royal blood within the family

-martouf
The story is that Nefertiti was the daughter of one of the Captains of the army, IIRC. I'm going by what I recall from the PBS broadcast of the a program entitled Egypt's Golden Empire, where they covered the story of Armana.
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[martouf]

Not everyone really agrees about the reign of Akhenaten. To some, he may be an early religious revolutionary. To another, he was a callous politician. Because it is so far back in history, there's no definite way we can know. I'd be interested in having the Amarna period included, despite the fact that it was so short-lived.

leading up to akhenaten's reign, the priests had a lot of power over Egypt. Akhenaten denounced all of the gods and replaced them with a new deity, the Aten. Without the other gods, and the priests run out of the temples, this gave Egpyt back to Pharaoh Akhenaten. I would really consider Akhenaten a politician rather than a religious revolutionary. I would also call him a bad pharaoh, in the long run, he was just thinking about himself. He killed many people who were against his new "cult." Also he moved Egypt's capital to a barely finished city in the middle of the desert called Armana. Many of the citizen's died of lack of food and water and other necesities. I wuoldnt blame the Egyptians for trying to rub him out of their history.

-martouf

[Azeem]

Again, it is all very subjective.

I think it would be rather fascinating to play as Pharaoh Akhenaten himself or perhaps later pharaohs that are trying to restore order to Egypt after the Amarna period.

[Miut]

His rule was an attempt to restore pharaonic primacy over the priesthood, which had accumulated enough wealth and power to seriously damage the royal family's authority. There was no distinction between politics and religion -- the very notion of separating the two never would have occurred to a people who worshipped their king as a god -- so knocking back the priestly class was a political move. Akhenaton's revolution was on its surface an attempt to redirect thousands of years of traditions, but deeper down a move to re-centralize power in the pharaoh.

This post is just a historical comment, not a hint about our game's content. Don't read anything between the lines. :)

Ken,
Yes, spot on, but he started out traditionally as they have found remains of temples built by him in Karnak that were to Amun .. or one of the usual trinity. (sorry, history books in transit from UK at moment) Then he came up with this new religion.

From all I have read about the Armana period, it seems the religion came first for him as Akhenaton does not come across as politically astute because under his neglect of his people, their welfare, and his colonies and allies, Egypt's power outside its own borders waned dreafully. Had he not died, Egypt would have likely been destroyed. And Akhetaten was barely started being built to his specifications where Aten led him to a spot in the desert that was more than usually sun baked. (there's a boundary stele proclaiming that Aten led him there)
It is now thought in certain circles that the driving force for religious and political power changes might well have been Nefertiti, who was the granddaughter of Akhenaten's Chancellor Aye, who himself later became Pharaoh himself after Tutankhamun's untimely death. Aye married Ankhesunamun who promptly disappeared from royal paintings after her marriage. Letters from her to the Hittites asking for a bridegroom to avoid marrying one of her "servants" have been found and it is generally accepted this was Aye. He only lived for about 4 years as Pharaoh, if memory serves me...

Nefertiti unlike any Queen before her (except Hatshepsut who ruled as a Pharaoh for her son or nephew- sorry, this is from memory as I said) features almost the same size as Akhenaten in many carvings and statues. This was unprecedented. Also she built a temple in the Karnak compound, one which was demolished and found as wall in-filling in another temple. I think hers is known as the Rose Temple cos of redness of stone.. Anyway Egyptologists have used computers to put together all the fragments and form images of what the walls would have looked like, and there are some sites in the web where you can see reconstructions of some walls. Again this was a rare occurrence for a Queen to be so active in political/religious life. I don''t believe any other temple in Karank is attributed to a Queen - unless it is Hatshepsut.

And finally, all paintings etc of them show them again the same size and both receiving blessing rays - epitomized by the hands on the ends of the rays - from Aten. Again a total departure from the norm. Only Pharaoh received the gods' blessings, he passed them to all his people, including his queen.

Akhenaten was also the only Pharaoh till you get to the Cleopatra Ptolomeys who married so many of his own daughters and attempted to father children on them. It is something of a misconception that Pharaohs always married their kin. This I did get out of an Egyptian history book, it's not my theory. :)

The rule was, the throne could only be inherited from the women's line. The heir had to marry his sister to inherit and rule because women couldn't rule. (That has always bothered me - so matriarchal in one way, isn't it?)
The royal daughters could only marry into Egyptian royalty, not outside so many didn't marry.. but the Princes could marry out of Egyptian royalty. Not all marriages between brother and sisters were to father children either, some were in name only, same with some father and daughter marriages.
That's why Pharaoh could have foreign wives as well as Egyptian ones. And why Ankhesunamun applying to the Hittites for a husband could well have been such a crime in the eyes of her people that she was wiped out of history after marrying Aye and conferring kingship on him...

The main thing Akhenaten did was to break the Rule of Maat, which to Egyptians was like breaking the pillars underpinning the very fabric of the universe. He forbade the people to worship any god but Aten as well as the priests, whom he had slaughtered. Well, the orders came from Pharaoh but as I said, it might have been Nefertiti.. He may have centralized power but he then squandered it with the result that kingdom after his death was worse off and even more in the grip of the Amun priesthood because they had to be appeased.

Very complex times, and rich with theories and suppositions - in one way I wish we knew more facts, and in another, I'm glad we don't because it is fun to suppose..;)

Keith,
Horhemheb was the general I think you meant, and he ruled after Aye.

[Ken Parker]

Fascinating post, Miut. Thanks for taking the time to write it up.

[Keith]

While poking around on the net I came across this site by the Akenaten Research Team:

http://www.ijebu.org/conquerors/akhenaton/ (http://www.ijebu.org/conquerors/akhenaton/)

It's a very interesting read and goes into more details about his rule.
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[Miut]

Ken,
NP, I love Ancient Egypt and learn as muxch about it as I can, when I can. :)

Keith,
Interesting Link, but a very Christianized and somewhat flawed view of Akhenaten. (I *always* get my Tuthmoses and Amenophis's mixed up!)

Try this site for a less idealistic and more realistic view of the Heretic Pharaoh. :) http://www.touregypt.net/18dyn10.htm
Tour Egypt is not just a tourist site, it is also one of the most informative ones on Egypt including articles by and about Hamass, the Director General of the Gaza Project, and a member of the Egyptian government - in the Cultural area.

From there...
" In the early years of Akhenaten's reign, for instance, Nefertiti was an unusually prominent figure in official art, dominating the scenes carved on blocks of the temple to the Aten at Karnak. One such block shows her in the age-old warlike posture of pharaoh grasping captives by the hair and smiting them with a mace hardly the epitome of the peaceful queen and mother of six daughters. Nefertiti evidently played a far more prominent part in her husband's rule than was the norm."
Strange how the Ijebu site say he hated war yet there are these actual carvings of Nefertiti, and he and his wife were known to disport in warrior pursuits, like wild chariot races, unheard of for a Queen to particiapte in.

From your Ijebu Link,
"Although she presented him with seven daughters and he longed for a son, he did not take another wife as was the custom. " Not true at all .. he took most if not ALL of his daughters as wives, even replacing Nefertiti with one as Great Royal Wife on her death.. This is a rewriting of history by the Ijebu site, I think.

From Tour Egypt site,
"Tragedy seems to have struck the royal family in about Year 12 with the death in childbirth of Nefertiti's second daughter, Mekytaten; it is probably she who is shown in a relief in the royal tomb with her grief-stricken parents beside her supine body, and a nurse standing nearby holding a baby. The father of the infant was possibly Akhenaten, since he is also known to have married two other daughters, Merytaten (not to be confused with Mekytaten) and Akhesenpaaten (later to become Tutankhamun's wife)."

your Link,
" But alas! the young Dreamer-King--he was only fourteen when he came to the throne--was to learn, like all others who try to create perfection, that mankind was not ready for it. The soldiers, who had fought under his mighty father in Lebanon, Tyre, Sidon, and Ethiopia, conquering city after city, and returning laden with loot and wives, were chafing with inaction. The commander-in- chief of his army, mighty Horemheb, was urging him to conquest. The people, too, wanted to see the stolen wealth from other nations flowing into the empire as of yore.

Troubles multiplied. The priests of Amen, seeing the wealth that had formerly come to them going to the worship of the new God, began to conspire against the Pharaoh. Thereupon Akhenaton, who up to now had been tolerant, showed the weight of his hand. He repressed them and ordered the name of Amen to be hammered out of every monument in his empire, and that of the new God inscribed in his place. He went so far as to have it removed from the tomb of his father, and to banish the word "Gods" from the vocabulary."

Hmm.. This is what Tour Egypt says, backed by archeological evidence..
"At first, the king built a temple to his god Aten immediately outside the east gate of the temple of Amun at Karnak, but clearly the coexistence of the two cults could not last. He therefore proscribed the cult of Amun, closed the god's temples, took over the revenues. He then sent his officials around to destroy Amen’s statues and to desecrate the worship sites. These actions were so contrary to the traditional that opposition arose against him. The estates of the great temples of Thebes, Memphis and Heliopolis reverted to the throne. Corruption grew out of the mismanagement of such large levies. To make a complete break, in Year 6 the king and his queen, left Thebes behind and moved to a new capital in Middle Egypt, half way between Memphis and Thebes. "

So having thrown the Amun priests out, and taking control of the estates of the largest temples at Thebes, Memphis and Heliopolis, he can't choose good people to run them, or run them himself - he squanders it by mismanagement.. then leaves the mess he's made and heads out into the desert to make a new capital city. Not exactly the actions of a man of strong moral fibre as the Ijebu site says he is.

As for his hymn to Aten, Tour Egypt says this, a quote from the same hymn which is ommitted from the Ijebu site,
"It sums up the whole ethos of the Aten cult and especially the concept that only Akhenaten had access to the god: 'Thou arisest fair in the horizon of Heaven, 0 Living Aten, Beginner of Life…there is none who knows thee save thy son Akhenaten. Thou hast made him wise in thy plans and thy power.' No longer did the dead call upon Osiris to guide them through the after-world, for only through their adherence to the king and his intercession on their behalf could they hope to live beyond the grave."

Not at all like Christianity, or even a forerunner of it, this concept of Akhenaten's for one god who only recognized him and his family and no one else.
As for the rest of the Kingdom, far from being a Father figure to his people as the Ijebu site would have us believe, this is what happened..
"The standard bureaucracy continued its endeavors to run the country while the king courted his god. Cracks in the Egyptian empire may have begun to appear in the later years of the reign of Amenhotep III; at any rate they became more evident as Akhenaten increasingly left government and diplomats to their own devices. Civil and military authority came under two strong characters: Ay, who held the title 'Father of the God' (and was probably Akhenaten's father-in-law), and the general Horemheb (also Ay's son-in-law since he married Ay's daughter Mutnodjme, sister of Nefertiti). Both men were to become pharaoh before the 18th Dynasty ended. This redoubtable pair of closely related high officials no doubt kept everything under control in a discreet manner while Akhenaten pursued his own philosophical and religious interests."

I note the Ijebu site says "So what is the Ijebu Initiative? Our primary goal is to create a repository that catalogs events as they truly occurred in history." I think with Akhenaten they have confused idealism with historical facts. :) After all, we do have records to support the Tour Egypt view of Akhenaten's reign. ;)

[Keith]

You should correct their information if you feel it wrong. I just came across it by accident and it looked like it had some interesting infromation. Not all historians agree with the facts...even the same facts. ;)
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[Miut]

Very true. :)
But there is more known about Akhenaten than is thought if you look because of the fact the Egyptians were even better bookkeepers than the Romans, with screeds of records. This gives us information indirectly about the times even though traces of him as Pharaoh have been obliterated.

[Keith]

Very true. :)
But there is more known about Akhenaten than is thought if you look because of the fact the Egyptians were even better bookkeepers than the Romans, with screeds of records. This gives us information indirectly about the times even though traces of him as Pharaoh have been obliterated.
On can only wonder at the information that lost with fire of the Great Library in Alexandria. It might have made things all so much clearer.
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[Ken Parker]

At the risk of hijacking this thread, did anyone else see this story (http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/132/science/Guatemalan_murals_show_sophistication_of_ancient_M aya+.shtml) yesterday? It has nothing to do with CotN or Egypt, but does relate to the nature of archeology and the historic record.
In the sweltering bowels of a ruined Mayan pyramid, a 10-hour drive to the nearest grocery store, archeologists are painstakingly uncovering 2,000-year-old murals that elaborately depict an early creation mythology.
ADVERTISEMENT

Though they have been chipping away at the rock face for more than two years, the archeologists continue to be astonished by the artistic sophistication of the paintings, which predate the Maya's Golden Age by 800 years.

"It's as if you didn't know the existence of the Renaissance," said William Saturno, the University of New Hampshire archeologist who discovered the murals three years ago. "You know the art of the 19th century and you think it's the high point . . . when suddenly someone stumbles into the Sistine Chapel and looks at the moment where God touches the hand of Adam."

Saturno's find, widely considered the most important development in Mayan archeology in 50 years, has provided an unprecedented window into the Pre-Classic Maya, the dominant civilization inhabiting southern Mexico and northern Central America from 1,000 BC to 250 AD.

[Afterburner]

At the risk of hijacking this thread, did anyone else see this story (http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/132/science/Guatemalan_murals_show_sophistication_of_ancient_M aya+.shtml) yesterday? It has nothing to do with CotN or Egypt, but does relate to the nature of archeology and the historic record.

Here are some pics of the murals:

http://www.peabody.harvard.edu/SanBartolo.htm

[Keith]

I guess the thing of it about Meso-American culture is that it just doesn't seem to hold the alure of an Egypt, Greece, Rome or any of the cultures from Asia, Asia Minor or the "orient". Meso-America just isn't "ancient" enough for me. http://community.vugames.com/Images/emoticons/shrug.gif

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[Ken Parker]

Relax, Keith, my post in no way endorses the meso-American game suggestion or gives any hint of what we are thinking about. I just thought that it would interest anyone who's reading the Akhenaton discussion. My point was that you never know when archeologists will stumble across an unexpected finding that rewrites our knowledge of some historical figure.

[Elvenwarrior2001]

"At the risk of hijacking this thread." Not worries...I think your hijacking is most welcome. Plus most threads end up a little off topic anyhow. ;)

Elven

[Keith]

Relax, Keith, my post in no way endorses the meso-American game suggestion or gives any hint of what we are thinking about. I just thought that it would interest anyone who's reading the Akhenaton discussion. My point was that you never know when archeologists will stumble across an unexpected finding that rewrites our knowledge of some historical figure.
No problem Ken, I wasn't inferring that you were thinking along the lines of a meso-American game just yet. I'm just expressing my opinion on the subject and why I don't find it as appealling as the others I mentioned. I'm always interested in what archeologists find.

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[Celebithil Dae]

well, extremely interesting :)

Thanks for the story and link :D

[Keith]

So did anyone watch the National Geographic program on PBS last night? I was able to catch parts of it, but will watch the entire program when it re-run in my area later this week.

Edit:
Here's some Mayan related links for those interested:
Mesoweb (http://www.mesoweb.com/welcome.html)
Kaminaljuyu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaminaljuyu)
Yamada Language Center (http://babel.uoregon.edu/yamada/guides/mayan.html)
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[Rachelc258]

<say that they were both the same person. Because of anhkenaten's unusually shaped body. Some believe he was deformed because of generations of inbreeding. Egyptian royalty believed in keeping the royal blood within the family
>>

I believe I saw somewhere (PBS, though I can't remember which show) that there was less inbreeding then previously thought (they were looking at mummies' DNA).

As to Ankhenaten's depiction, another explanation was that it was stylistic. Especially if you look at how other guys were depicted.

[Miut]

Loved the Mayan pix. Amazing the colors are still so vivid.

Akhenaten's statues were meant to be viewed from below looking up, which is often forgotten in this age when we can easily get eye-to-ey with them. ;) So the sculpture takes into effect the perspective distortions of looking at them from ground level.

I had heard the Egyptian gov didn't want DNA samples taken of any of the Armana period pharoahs or suspected royal family members for fear they might just be hailed as Jewish Patriarchs.. imagine what a hornet's nest *that* would make! Doesn't bear thinking about.. *shudders*