Akhenaten

The city's religious and ceremonial architecture was planned to accommodate changing beliefs and the rituals and ceremonies that went with them. Most of the deities in traditional human or animal forms had now been replaced by the Aten, a single aniconic god visible in the sky. The Aten was worshipped through his earthly representatives, the king and queen, who presented themselves as divine intermediaries, the sole means of access to the Aten. Palace architecture under­scored this divinisation of the king and his family. Palaces were aligned to the east like temples, and equipped with temple-like features, such as open courts adorned with colossal statues of divinised royalty, like those at the Gem-pa-Aten. They also had balconies where the royal family made ceremonial appearances. The phys­ical setting of these appearances enabled the king, queen and their children to be seen like cult images of gods, divine objects of human veneration (see Plate 2.3). When Akhenaten travelled from his palace at the north of the site to conduct political or sacred business in the buildings of the central city, he drove in a chariot along a road cutting through the centre of Akhet-aten. As he drove along, the people saw him and made obeisance to him, just as the people of the created world worshipped the Aten. Akhenaten's journey through the city may also have been a substitute for the parades of divine images that were such an important feature of traditional religious festivals, especially Theban ones like the Radiant Festival of the Valley.

Although Akhet-aten was built as a performance space for Akhenaten's own theology, its inhabitants were not necessarily all devoted adherents of Aten- worship. The social base of Akhenaten's religious reforms may have been quite narrow, with the pharaoh primarily interested in targeting elites or people he believed would be loyal to him.¹⁵ Perhaps the large population of Akhet-aten illustrates the pharaoh's power to co-opt many people into his plans rather than his ability to persuade them all. Images of gods from the traditional pantheon have been found in non-elite houses and chapels at Akhet-aten. Attachments to these gods and their worship was probably quite resilient, and certainly picked up again quickly at the end of Akhenaten's reign.¹⁶

Two fragmentary papyrus letters from Akhet-aten found in the 1920s may suggest a slighdy different picture of popular belief, however. These letters, both written by a man called Ramose and sent to relatives at Thebes, are among the very few non-royal texts from Akhet- aten. Both letters start with the formula: 'Here I am calling upon the Aten (life! prosperity! health!) to preserve you each and every day as he sets and rises.' The phrase 'I am calling upon the Aten' has been interpreted to mean that ordinary people could request favours from the Aten without first invoking the royal couple as intermediaries.¹⁷ This is certainly possible: it's worth remembering that the evidence for Akhenaten as the sole divine interlocutor was all produced by Akhenaten himself. However, it is also possible that 'I am calling upon the Aten'

Plate 2.3

Akhenaten, Nefertiti and one of their daughters make offerings to the Aten.

Fragment of an alabaster balustrade carved in sunk relief, from the central pal­ace at Akhet-aten, between years 6 and 9 of Akhenaten's reign. Height 56 cm width 52 cm. Petrie Museum of Archaeology, University College London, inv. UC 401.

may be an epistolary clichc invoking the Aten as the local god of Akhet-aten. Other letters from New Kingdom Egypt start off with an invocation to the god of the place from where the letter is written. Therefore Ramose's letters are ambiguous about what the people of Akhet-aten actually believed.