Akhenaton
AKHENATON (or Akhenaten) was the tenth pharaoh of Egypt's eighteenth dynasty (c. 1352–1336 BCE) and the founder of the earliest historically documented monotheistic religion. Son of Amenhotep III and the chief queen, Tiya, Akhenaton succeeded to the throne as Amenhotep IV and took a throne name meaning "the sun's ultimate perfection, unique one of the sun," reflecting the traditional Egyptian belief that the pharaoh derived his physical being, as well as his authority, from the sun god, ruler of the world. Marriage to his chief queen, Nefertiti, produced six daughters, the first and third of whom, Meritaton and Ankhesenpaaton, were to play important roles at the end of his reign and during its aftermath. In addition, a minor queen, Kiya, gave him another daughter, whose name is not known, and Akhenaton may also have fathered, by one or both queens, the two men who eventually succeeded him as the pharaohs Smenkhkare and Tutankhamen.
At the time of Akhenaton's accession, Egypt's most important deity was Amun, "king of the gods," whose chief cult center lay in the state temples of Karnak and Luxor at Thebes (modern Luxor). Amun was worshiped as the transcendental creator, existing independently of the world he had created; this characteristic is encapsulated in his name, which means "hidden." Throughout the eighteenth dynasty, Egyptian theologians wrestled with the problem of reconciling Amun's primordial and transcendent nature with the traditional Egyptian concept of the gods as the elements and forces of the world's daily existence.
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