Akhenaten

In the 18th Dynasty, Akhenaten posed the only real challenge to Egyptian religion with his Aten heresy

Ancient Egyptian Religion, Part 7 — Roots Too Deep to Dislodge

We have been watching the force and flow of three concepts in the stream of Egyptian culture and religion through the course of this series — order, duality, and divine magic — which informed Egyptian thought and practice for more than 3,000 years. The business of this article is to go back into the deep past and look at the roots of Egypt’s religious and socioeconomic culture, and then to test the durability of those formative ideas by examining the only major departure — the 18th Dynasty heresy of Akhenaten — which, by threatening the ancient heritage, actually reconfirmed it. [more…]