akhen-aten

Updated: May 7, 2025

The king altered his throne-name, “Amen-hetep,” to “Akhen-Aten,” “The glory of the Sun’s Disk”; his young daughters received names compounded with “Aten,” whilst the courtiers found it advisable to strike out “Amen,” if this chanced to form part of their own names, and to substitute for it “Ra,” as having more or less the same significance as “Aten.” “The doctrine,” as the new dogmas were called in inscriptions at Tell el Amarna, was regarded as so entirely a matter of home politics in Egypt, that the officials of Syria and Palestine—all foreigners—do not seem to have received any formal information regarding it.

Carl Niebuhr - The Tell El Amarna Period