“A strange fact in the history of the Egyptian religion, which was recognized and appraised relatively late, opens up another point of view. It is still possible that the religion Moses gave to his Jewish people was yet his own, an Egyptian religion though not the Egyptian one.” “In the glorious Eighteenth Dynasty, when Egypt became for the first time a world power, a young Pharaoh ascended the throne about 1375 B.C., who first called himself Amenhotep (IV) like his father, but later on changed his name—and not only his name. This king undertook to force upon his subjects a new religion, one contrary to their ancient traditions and to all their familiar habits. It was a strict monotheism, the first attempt of its kind in the history of the world, as far as we know; and religious intolerance, which was foreign to antiquity before this and for long after, was inevitably born with the belief in one God. But Amenhotep’s reign lasted only for seventeen years; very soon after his death in 1358 the new religion was swept away and the memory of the heretic king proscribed. From the ruins of his new capital, which he had built and dedicated to his God, and from the inscriptions in the rock tombs belonging to it, we derive the little knowledge we possess of him. Everything we can learn about this remarkable, indeed unique person is worthy of the greatest interest.” “Everything new must have its roots in what was before. The origin of Egyptian monotheism can be traced back a fair distance with some certainty. In the Schools of Priests in the Sun Temple at On (Heliopolis) tendencies had for some time been at work developing the idea of a universal god and stressing his ethical aspects. Maat, the goddess of truth, order, and justice, was a daughter of the sun-god, Re. Already under Amenhotep III, the father and predecessor of the reformer, the worship of the sun-god was in the ascendant, probably in opposition to the worship of Amon of Thebes, who had become over-prominent. An ancient name of the sun-god, Aton or Atum, was rediscovered, and in this Aton religion the young king found a movement he had no need to create, but one which he could join.” “Political conditions in Egypt had about that time begun to exert a lasting influence on Egyptian religion. Through the victorious sword of the great conqueror Thothmes III Egypt had become a world power. Nubia in the south, Palestine, Syria, and a part of Mesopotamia in the north had been added to the Empire. This imperialism was reflected in religion as universality and monotheism. Since Pharaoh’s solicitude now extended beyond Egypt to Nubia and Syria, deity itself had to give up its national limitation, and the new god of the Egyptians had to become like Pharaoh—the unique and unlimited sovereign of the world known to the Egyptians. Besides, it was natural that as the frontiers extended, Egypt should become accessible to foreign influences; some of the king’s wives were Asiatic princesses, and possibly even direct encouragement of monotheism had penetrated from Syria.” “Amenhotep never denied his accession to the sun cult of On. In the two hymns to Aton which have been preserved to us through the inscriptions in the rock tombs and which were probably composed by him, he praises the sun as the creator and preserver of all living beings in and outside Egypt with a fervor such as recurs many centuries after only in the psalms in honour of the Jewish God, Jahve. But he did not stop at this astonishing anticipation of scientific knowledge concerning the effect of sunlight. There is no doubt that he went further: that he worshipped the sun not as a material object, but as a symbol of a divine being whose energy was manifested in his rays.” Sigmund Freud “Moses and Monotheism” Page 21
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 11:04:56 +0000
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