“Thou shalt have no other gods before me” Exodus 20:3

A popular misconception regarding Old Testament Judaism is that it was the first monotheistic faith in a generally pantheistic era. The “primitive” religions that surrounded the early Israelites, even those that worshipped Baal or Asherah, had well-populated pantheons, usually in the “portfolio” mould. Thus, in ancient Babylon, you prayed to Enurtu for good fortune in battle, because Enurtu’s portfolio included the arts of war, but he knew bugger-all about gardening – if you wanted your olives to be a bit plumper, then Kishar, Lord of Agriculture was your man… er… god. This system of highly specialised deities is generally regarded as an older and “simpler” belief system, one that was largely swept aside by the monotheistic religions and their all-purpose, Swiss-Army-style God. It’s generally assumed that there was something a bit special about Judaism because Moses and pals were the first to concoct the idea of a single, all-powerful god, without any subordinate pantheon – so it’s unfortunate that the Abrahamic god was emphatically not the first uberdeity on the scene.

Archaeological data from modern day Israel suggests that the Exodus, and hence the emergence of the Hebrew religion, took place around the 12th century BC (the biblical dates suggest a substantially earlier migration, but this is an attempt to create a numerological parallel between the dates of the First and Second Temples, not to accurately record history). Around this time, a particularly interesting sea-change occurred in Egyptian thinking. The death of Crown Prince Thutmose had led to the ascension to leadership of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, a young man with some very unorthodox ideas about religion. As every schoolkid with a yen for mythology knows, the deities of the Egyptian pantheon were among the most diverse and entertaining in history, with their animal heads, cool afterlife arrangements and regular warfare. Amenhotep IV, though was interested in only one of these gods – the sun god Aten.

Aten was an aspect of the more widely-known sun god Ra. Unlike Ra, though, Aten was more abstract, represented only as the disc of the Sun and never in human or animal form. Inscriptions found with these images warn against assuming that they show the form of Aten – they are intended to represent only his transcendent glory, not his person. More importantly, under Amenhotep IV’s rule, Aten was declared to be the only god, creator, sustainer and giver of life. The pharaoh changed his name to Akhenaten (“Spirit of Aten”), disbanded the priesthoods of the other Egyptian gods, and constructed an entire city, Akhetaten (“Aten’s Horizon”) at modern-day Armana, purely for the worship of his god. The temples of other deities were defaced and ruined, idolatry was forbidden and official proclamations declared that “There is no god but Aten.” A clearer example of monotheism would be hard to find.

Sigmund Freud postulated the idea that Moses had, in fact, been a priest of Aten in Egypt, and that after the Exodus he founded his new religion on similar principles. Generally, the evidence for this theory is pretty thin – the dates are approximately accurate for a 12th century Exodus, but there are many tangible differences between Atenism and Judaism, not least the fact that Judaism bears far more similarities to other Semitic faiths, such as those of the Canaanites and Akkadians. It’s more likely that Moses was vaguely aware of the cult of Aten and was struck by the unusual idea of a single god, and that this carried over into the formation of the Hebrew religion.

Akhenaten enjoyed a successful rule, but after his death Atenism went quickly downhill. Deprived of the influence of the Pharaoh, the cult was quickly pounced upon by followers of the old Egyptian faith, and under the reign of the boy-king Tutankhamun the great city of Akhetaten was abandoned, the priesthood dissolved and Akhenaten’s name struck from the histories. Its legacy lived on, though, and survives today in the theology of Judaism, Christianity and Islam –

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One”

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible”

“There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet”

Cheers for that, Akhenaten.