Evaluation of the historical reconstruction seen in the short story “Akhenaten, Aten and Religion”

Abstract

The reconstruction of events that happened in the past can be quite a difficult task, especially when there are lots of factors relating to a certain section in history that cannot be controlled at all. For example, archaeological evidence doesn’t have one specific way of interpretation or simply blanks in history. Historical reconstruction can get even more complicated when historical accounts cannot be validated. These can be misleading to those who read history without the evaluation of sources or without researching archaeological evidence that potentially could disprove certain claims. A good example of this is Akhenaten, a unique figure in Egyptian history. Akhenaten, originally called Amenhotep IV, succeeded his father, Amenhotep III, as the tenth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty (Dorman, 2018). He is noted for changing the religion, art, and social structure of Egypt dramatically and founding “Atenism,” a completely new kind of religion that focused on the worship of one single god——Aten, characterized as a solar disc, a creator of lives and the chief god of the universe. Due to the peculiarity of the change and the elimination of elements of Egypt’s traditional social and religious order, after his reign, priests and succeeding rulers restored the traditions, destroying his religious architecture and gradually erasing the heretic king from history (Kemp, 2014). Based on how his successors described him, it can be seen that in later times, he was portrayed as a tyrant or a villainous character. However, modern historiography re-evaluates this claim, leading to a debate about the nature of Akhenaten’s new religion and his reign. This essay presents the basic facts of the period and evaluates the reconstruction of Akhenaten’s reign in the form of a short story, “Akhenaten, Aten and Religion,” and uses archaeological evidence.