Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Echnaton: gegen Amon; Pharao als Mittler zwischen Gott und Mensch

Kurzinhalt: The revolt of Akhenaton against the Amon of Thebes has a complex structure; dennoch: kein Monotheismus

Textausschnitt: The revolt of Akhenaton against the Amon of Thebes has a complex structure. It is both institutional and spiritual, both revolutionary and reactionary. The institutional aspects are easy to grasp
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In spite of its universalist and egalitarian aspects, however, the hymn is neither monotheistic, nor does it proclaim a redeemer god for all men. The creation of the Aton is more radical than any of the preceding attempts to arrive at an understanding of the nature of divinity, but it still lies within the range of the polytheistic myth ... Akhenaton proceeded by excluding other gods, in particular, the hated Amon. But his very zeal in eradicating the name of Amon from the inscriptions, thereby to destroy his effectiveness magically, shows that the Amon was a reality for him that had to be taken into account. Moreover, ...
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The position of the Pharaoh as the exclusive mediator between god and man was re-established with a vengeance. The personal religiousness of the people, which had been growing ever since the First Intermediate Period, was to be diverted to the Pharaoh as the god on earth. At least that is what Akhenaton attempted. The Osiris cult was severely repressed. The inscriptions from the tombs of the officials reveal the new emphasis on the monopoly of divine radiation that was held by the administration under the king. In the tomb of Tutu, a high court official under the regime, the king is described as the son of Aton, living in truth, coming forth from the rays of the sun-god, and established by him as the ruler over the circuit of Aton. The god endows the king with his own eternity and makes him to his likeness; the king is the emanation of the god. Aton is in heaven, but his rays are on earth; and the king, being the son of the rays, is the god's instrument in working his designs on earth. ... The king is "living in the truth" of the god as the god's truth lives in him; and the official executes this truth, and is able to do so, in so far as the king's ka lives in him. The substance of the god, his maat, thus percolates through the realm and ultimately reaches the subjects. But the subject has no access to the Aton directly. When the Aton rises in the world he embraces his beloved son Akhenaton; and the royal son, through his rule and administration, returns the world to the god as his offering. The subject can participate in the circulation of divine substance only through obedience to the Pharaoh.
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The beauty of the hymns to Aton, the "modern" atmosphere of individualism, of intellectual excitement, of realism in art, of humanization of the court ceremonial, and of a general civilizational nervousness, have been a temptation to find in the reforms of Akhenaton more than they contain. To be sure, ...