Page Content (OCR)
158 destroyed. Nevertheless, the remains that archaeologists have found throw enough light on Akhenaten and his religion. The notion that the worship of the Aten was a form of monotheism—worship of a sole universal creator—stems primarily from some of the hymns to the Aten that have been found; they include such verses as “O sole god, like whom there is no other . . . The world came into being by thy hand.” The fact that, in a clear departure from Egyptian customs, representation of this god in anthropomorphic form was strictly forbidden sounds very much like Yahweh’s prohibi- tion, in the Ten Commandments, against making any “graven images” to worship. Additionally, some portions of the Hymns to Aten read as if they were clones of the biblical Psalms— O living Aten, How manifold are thy works! They are hidden from the sight of men. O sole god, beside whom there is no other! Thou didst create the earth according to thy desire whilst thou wast alone. The famed Egyptologist James H. Breasted (The Dawn of Conscience) compared the above verses to Psalm 104, begin- ning with verse 24— O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all; the Earth is full of thy riches. The similarity, however, arises not because the two, Egyp- tian hymn and biblical Psalm, copy each other, but because both speak of the same celestial god of the Sumerian Epic of Creation—of Nibiru—that shaped the Heavens and created the Earth, imparting to it the “seed of life.” Virtually every book on ancient Egypt will tell you that the “Aten” disc that Akhenaten made the central object of worship represented the benevolent Sun. If so, it was odd that in a marked departure from Egyptian temple architecture that oriented the temples to the solstices on a southeast- THE END OF DAYS