Questions

I fist learned of Akhenaten maybe sometime in my high school days. My fascination with Ancient Egypt began with the story of Osiris and Isis. Now that isn't how things really were, I know, but who can say how it really was? It was all so long ago. I mean thousands of years. Think of all the stuff that has happened since then.

Good things, like Jesus, bad things, like Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, worse things like Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon and the evillest human being in history, Hitler.

But what fascinates me? Atenism? You know how I love astronomy, and a basic thing, ALL life depends on the Sun. Not that I believe that the Sun is anything but a great ball of hydrogen fusing its life away. Stars live on a timescale inconceivable to an average human mind.

The idea of this basic fact is beautiful and shows that a natural fact is understood.

For whatever reason, whether it was an old Sun cult, a manifestation of Ra, or just plain difference, Amenhotep IV became convinced that the Sun is the only life giving force. You can see it in the art of his time. A sun disc's rays beaming down as hands holding ankhs, the symbol of life.

Akhenaten perhaps went about it the wrong way, saying that what ever anyone else believed was bs. That is a quick way to raise someone's ire. I know this because I KNOW human evolution is a natural fact, not that we just 'appeared' in this present form. Human beings are flimsy creatures as life on Earth goes.

That doesn't mean that I don't believe God created the Universe. I do believe He did. Physicists say that the Big Bang 'just happened'. How do you explain this massive violation of Causality?

The problem with that is, we may live in what is just one universe in a sea of universes, the Multiverse. It is not provable but it is interesting to thing that there are many worlds were things went one way or the other. Like Dubya won in the year 2000 here but maybe in another world, Al Gore won. How things might have been different if that happened? We might not be in the worst economic crisis in 70 years if that had happened.

Back to the point, Akhenaton as a person doesn't fascinate me. He probably was fruity, arrogant, and gosh, he was the king, you know. His ideas fascinate me. The art he commissioned fascinates me. The artifacts, the stories, the people, all fascinating.

And poor Tutankhamen, if he was not so close to that era, perhaps we could have learned more about that time. Why did he die so young? What did he really believe? What happened to his wife? Poor guy, ripped apart to get at the amulets, bracelets, pectorals, and jewels on his person.

Where did he really go after he died? Forever oblivion? Nothing resembling our current beliefs were around in his day. Does he know that people gawk at his golden coffin, which rests in an unstable country? Things set on him to help him on his journey to the afterlife scattered in museums in places far from Egypt.

I hope that science resumes and certain things are found that could help finish the story. Queen Nefertiti is one of these things. Is she still down in the Valley? Somewhere else? If I had any chance to go to school again, I would try to go help search.

Not that I would travel so far from home. The thought actually tickles my anxiety.

It isn't because things are gold and fabulous. I want to know the story. I want to know why it went so wrong. How does Atenism relate to other beliefs of the time? If it did influence the Ancient Hebrews, what then?

It possibly doesn't but you don't know, it was 3,000 years ago. Do you know how long 3000 years is? We'll find out in 5012, should there still be human beings then. I am not certain of that at all.

What would they think of America then? When did it go wrong? We could be living in the time that signaled the long decline of the USA. I hope not, I mean, things have to change but this is not the post to discuss that.

I will always be fascinated with the Amarna Period of the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. It is a pleasant escape from thinking of this life now. I wish I never was.

Somewhere, in a different universe, I never was, a pleasant thought.