rth according to your desire, while you were alone, With men, cattle, and wild beasts, all that is upon earth and goes upon feet, and all that soars above and flies with its wings (Akhenaten lines 60-65). The Hymn also proclaims the pharaoh as the gods sole representative on earth, and virtually interchangeable with one another. When you rise you make all to flourish for the King, you who made up the foundations of the earth. You who rise them up for your son, he who came forth from your body, ... (Akhenaten lines 122-125). The writing is very beautiful and was inscribed on walls in various tombs.Though much of what Akhenaten was proposing was a drastic change from the traditional beliefs of Egyptian religion, there were some aspects of these reforms shown in "The Hymn to the Aten" that were not that far a cry from much of what was taught and believed in the past. As with the gods of the past, Aten was visible, as in that he could be presented in a painting to the people who worshipped him. This new god, Aten, was allowed to be pictured in the elaborate murals on tomb walls and so on, much the same as the old gods of the prior religion were. Aten was also the embodiment of the sun, as Amon-Re was in the old religion, and was worshipped much the same as Amon-Re was prior to Akhenaten's condemnation of him. Aten was also seen as The Creator of all that was Existing, which also held to the traditional belief that the sun god was the chief creator of the universe. It was also believed in this new religion as in the old one, that the Pharaoh was the next of kin to the sun god, even though the sun god had changed from Re to Aten. It was also believed that the sun god was raised above the other gods, while being able to have his presence encompass everything. None of these ideas were new to the Egyptian people, as they were exhibited in the old religion; however there was much in this new theology that was extremely different from the tradi...
