Who was the heretic pharaoh?

Answer 1

The name if the Heretic Pharaoh was Pharaoh Amenhotep IV more commonly known as Akhenaten when he changed his name. Akhenaten means “beloved of Aten”. The Amenhotep Dynasty had long since worshiped the sun Gods as the chief and supreme of the Gods from whom the Pharaohs were believed to be descendent form and that they themselves acted as the sun God in human form as a matter of divine right. Amenhotep the IV took this a step further and decided to make the literally sun disk the ONLY God the people could worship. He called this Sun disk Aten, he rejected the previous sun god of Atum, Ra and Among Ra and had their temples and Priesthoods shut down and confiscated, and then abandoned Thebes, the previous Capital and built a new one he called Tell el-Amara meaning “Horizon of the sun disk.

However, contradictory to popular belief his religion was NOT a monotheist religion it was an Atheist one. According to Atenism, only the Royal family was allowed to worship Aten, because they were his descendants and thus only ones who could speak to him. As such he closed down all the temples of the previous Gods and dissolved their priesthoods: Priests were no longer seen as speakers for the Gods, common people could no longer go to the temple to pray to the Gods or bring the Gods gifts and even the household shrines and relics of the common people were forbidden. The only way the common people could worship Aten, was to worship Akhenaten and his wife Queen Nefertiti and their children. Even the concept of the Afterlife among the divine was changed to show the deceased worshipping Akenaten and Nefertiti in the Afterlife. Naturally, these policies were very unpopular among the common people who continued to worship in secret and they disliked being forced into this new religion, nor did they like this “disk in the sky” as a God.

Following Akhenaten’s death, his wife Nefertiti and his brother who both ruled for a short time, attempted to keep these policies alive, but it was for not when Akhenaten’s son Tutankhaten and his wife Ankhesenaten, took the throne and, under pressure from the Priests restored the old faith and reopened the temples, returned to thieves and solidified the break by changing their names to Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun, respectively.

After which Akhenaten was branded as the heretic King and great care was taken to remove any evidence of is rule. The topic is fascinating and there are tons of books on the subject, all of which can be found at any local library. Some of the best sources can be found here:

·

Silverman, David P, Jennifer House Wegner, Joseph W. Wegner. Akhenaten & Tutankhamen:

Revolution and Restoration

. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Museum of

Archeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, 2006.

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Aldred, Cyril.

Akhenaten: Pharaoh of Egypt—a new study. New York NY, Toronto:

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McGraw-Will Book Company, 1968.

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Redford, Donald B. Akhenaten, the Heretic King.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

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Kemp, Barry J. The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People. London: Thames & Hudson, 2012. Print.

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Akhenaten - One of the Many Books of Hermes: As Told by Meritaten and Tutankhaten (tutankhamun)

. Xlibris Corp, 2012. Print.

Answer 2

The heretic pharaoh was Akhenaten, who ruled ancient Egypt during the 14th century BCE. He is known for his revolutionary religious reforms, including the promotion of a monotheistic worship of the sun god Aten, which differed from the traditional polytheistic beliefs of ancient Egypt. His reign was short-lived, and after his death, the traditional religious practices were restored.