[UA] Akhenaten

[Emily Dresner-Thornber]

> Sudden thought: how do the religious orientations of archetypes affect the
> Invisible Clergy as a whole and subsequent godhead? Is monotheism such a
> powerful force in the world because a whole bunch of monotheist folks began
> ascending in the ancient world?
>
> After all, we don't have a concrete death for Akhenaten. A book that I was
> reading recently ("The Head of God") claims that he didn't die, but went
> into exile in the Sinai, and returned years later to lead his faithful to
> life in a new land. If you can't pick where that story comes from, go back
> to Bible school.

Upon reading this, I was, in fact, reaching for my Coke.  Luckily, I
wasn't consuming it, for spewing Coke on a keyboard is dangerous business.

While we don't have the guy's body, we have plenty of written literature
from the Egyptians, Akkadians, and in Ugartic that says, in a nutshell,
"Holy Crap, he's dead!"

There's some fine archeological conspiratorial nonsense about Akhenaten,
his brother-in-law Smenkekarre, the priests at Heliopolis, and
assassinations that is fun to read and would make a fine setting for a
game, especially a UA one, but the sad fact is that the man probably died
suddenly of a stroke at the young age of 33. (30-35 is where it is
generally placed.)  He left gobs of literature behind, and as far as we
can tell, he suffered seizures.  Ah, to be inbred.

Here's the issue with your fine Moses theory:

- The first instance of the word Israel appears on the Stele of Merenptah.
This assumes that the existance of Israel occured right about there, or
thereabouts in glacial Egyptian time.  It also appears with the verbs for
"to smite" and "to run over with a chariot until paste."  Interestingly,
it refers to Israel as a person (singular) rather than people (plural).
If we assume the Exodus actually occured, we can make an inference that
the Exodus happened within the last hundred years of the creation of that
Stele.

-- Akhenaten was one of the last Pharoahs of the 18th Dynasty.  The
progression is like so:

	Akhenaten, Tutankhaken, Ai, Horemheb, Ramesses I, Seti I, Ramesses
II, Merenptah.  End of 18th to the Mid-21st Dynasteys.

- The time period between the end of Akhenaten and the beginning of
Merenptah is about 150 years.

- By the time he was Moses, he would have been nearly 180 years old.
That's one very old Egyptian dude.  The desert preserves, sure, but c'mon.
He must have had some excellent wrinkle cream.

> Here's an Archetype for Akhenaten: Son of God (in a personal sense, rather
> than the ritualistic sense of most pharaohs). He was clearly booted by
> Jesus, though (who also had a personal relationship with God as a father).
> There are undoubtedly other people who channeled the archetype, but it's 2
> am here and I can only be so clever at this hour.

Except Akhenaten did not believe he was the Son of God.

The nomen he gave himself is "The Soul of the Sun."

He believed he _was_ God.

That, I suspect, is a different ascention entirely. :)

**********
Emily K. Dresner-Thornber
Freelance Writer
zenith at evilkitten.org

"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur."




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