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Have been perusing Jan Assmann's paper Akhanyati's [ie, Akhenaten's] Theology of light and time (Jerusalem, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1992.)
Lots of things which were new thoughts for me. For example, Assmann points out that monotheistic religions tend to be founded by an individual rather than evolving over time, and that founded religions tend to be reactions against existing religions, "secondary religions" brought about by "revolution and revelation".
He also suggests that founded religions "base themselves on large bodies of canonized texts", which he calls "textual architectures" (although in Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom he notes that all religious traditions tend to generate canons). Akhenaten's new religion lasted too short a time to "build up such a memory"; but Assmann is able to analyse it through what the few surviving texts don't say. The new hymns don't argue or rail against the concepts they’re trying to replace; they simply erase them through omission. For example, there's no mention of the afterlife, and no struggle against Apophis: "a whole universe of meaning is discarded", with the mythological narrative replaced with only what can be seen with the human eye. The "not-here" and "not-now" have been abolished, argues Assman; there's no creation story, only the Aten as "the source of energy which maintains the world by becoming the world, by constant self-transformation"; and nature in turn responding to the Aten - for example, the response of birds and flowers to the dawn.
Assmann remarks, "God is revealed to the eye, but concealed to the heart – excepting the heart of the king." He explains that in the NK, religion suggested every individual should "take the god into one's own heart", but only the dead actually saw the gods; in Akhenaten's religion, everyone can see God, but only the pharaoh knows him. (Reading this, I realized that unusually for the ancient Near East, this is a silent god, who doesn't create or rule by giving orders.) "People 'see' the god," Assmann concludes, "but they 'listen' to the king." God creates the natural world; the king's teaching and commands create the moral world.
Assmann characterizes the solar religion of the NK as "anti-polytheistic" - what he calls the "crisis of polytheism" - and the religion of Akhenaten as a "radicalization" of that tendency, rather than a total break. Interestingly, like the god of the Hebrews, this god can't be represented; "no craftsman knows him". He is "the living sun", where the word 'nh is cognate to the Hebrew word hayyim, as in the phrase "the living god". (These are amongst several possible connections between these monotheisms which Assman considers.)
And while I'm talking about language, I was very interested by Assman’s explanation of the difference between the verbs hpr, to become, come into being, or develop; and wnn, to exist or persist (Osiris is Wnn-nfr, "who exists in completion"), and their parallel in the two different concepts of time, nhh and dt. (Man! I have to work out how I can make hs with dots and stuff.)
Lots of things which were new thoughts for me. For example, Assmann points out that monotheistic religions tend to be founded by an individual rather than evolving over time, and that founded religions tend to be reactions against existing religions, "secondary religions" brought about by "revolution and revelation".
He also suggests that founded religions "base themselves on large bodies of canonized texts", which he calls "textual architectures" (although in Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom he notes that all religious traditions tend to generate canons). Akhenaten's new religion lasted too short a time to "build up such a memory"; but Assmann is able to analyse it through what the few surviving texts don't say. The new hymns don't argue or rail against the concepts they’re trying to replace; they simply erase them through omission. For example, there's no mention of the afterlife, and no struggle against Apophis: "a whole universe of meaning is discarded", with the mythological narrative replaced with only what can be seen with the human eye. The "not-here" and "not-now" have been abolished, argues Assman; there's no creation story, only the Aten as "the source of energy which maintains the world by becoming the world, by constant self-transformation"; and nature in turn responding to the Aten - for example, the response of birds and flowers to the dawn.
Assmann remarks, "God is revealed to the eye, but concealed to the heart – excepting the heart of the king." He explains that in the NK, religion suggested every individual should "take the god into one's own heart", but only the dead actually saw the gods; in Akhenaten's religion, everyone can see God, but only the pharaoh knows him. (Reading this, I realized that unusually for the ancient Near East, this is a silent god, who doesn't create or rule by giving orders.) "People 'see' the god," Assmann concludes, "but they 'listen' to the king." God creates the natural world; the king's teaching and commands create the moral world.
Assmann characterizes the solar religion of the NK as "anti-polytheistic" - what he calls the "crisis of polytheism" - and the religion of Akhenaten as a "radicalization" of that tendency, rather than a total break. Interestingly, like the god of the Hebrews, this god can't be represented; "no craftsman knows him". He is "the living sun", where the word 'nh is cognate to the Hebrew word hayyim, as in the phrase "the living god". (These are amongst several possible connections between these monotheisms which Assman considers.)
And while I'm talking about language, I was very interested by Assman’s explanation of the difference between the verbs hpr, to become, come into being, or develop; and wnn, to exist or persist (Osiris is Wnn-nfr, "who exists in completion"), and their parallel in the two different concepts of time, nhh and dt. (Man! I have to work out how I can make hs with dots and stuff.)
