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159 northwest axis, Akhenaten oriented his Aten temple on an east-west axis—but had it facing west, away from the Sun at sunrise. If he was expecting a celestial reappearance from a direction opposite to that of where the Sun rises, it could not be the Sun. A close reading of the hymns reveals that Akhenaten’s “star god” was not Ra as Amon “the Unseen,” but a different kind of Ra: it was the celestial god who had “existed from primeval time... The one who renews himself” as it reap- pears in all its glory, a celestial god that was “going afar and returning.” On a daily basis, those words could indeed apply to the Sun, but on a long-term basis, the description fitted Ra only as Nibiru: it did become unseen, the hymns said, because it was “far away in heaven,” because it went “to the rear of the horizon, to the height of heaven.” And now, Akhenaten announced, it was coming back in all its glory. Aten’s hymns prophesied its reappearance, its return “beauti- ful on the horizon of heaven . . . Glittering, beautiful, strong,” ushering a time of peace and benevolence to all. These words express clear messianic expectations that have nothing to do with the Sun. In support of the “Aten is the Sun” explanation, various depictions of Akhenaten are offered; they show (Fig. 68) him and his wife blessed by, or praying to, a rayed star; it is the Sun, most Egyptologists say. The hymns do refer to the Aten as a manifestation of Ra, which to Egyptologists who have deemed Ra to be the Sun means that Aten, too, repre- sented the Sun; but if Ra was Marduk and the celestial Mar- duk was Nibiru, then Aten, too, represented Nibiru and not the Sun. Additional evidence comes from sky maps, some painted on coffin lids (Fig. 69), that clearly showed the twelve zodiacal constellations, the rayed Sun, and other members of the solar system; but the planet of Ra, the “Planet of Millions of Years,” is shown as an extra planet in its own large separate celestial barque beyond the Sun, with the pictorial hieroglyph for “god” in it—Akhenaten’s “Aten.” What, then, was Akhenaten’s innovation, or, rather, di- gression, from the official religious line? At its core his “transgression” was the same old debate that had taken place The Cross on the Horizon