The earth came into being by thy hand, even as thou hast made them.
When thou dost shine, they live,
When thou settest, they die.
Thou, thyself, art length of life;
For men live only by thee.
Eyes are fixed on beauty until thou settest;
All work is laid aside when thou settest in the west,
But when thou risest again, everything is made to flourish for the
king....
Every leg is in motion, since thou didst establish the earth.
Thou raisest them up for thy son, who came forth from thy body.
The King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands,
Nefer-kheperu-Re, Wa-en-Re, son of Re, living in truth, lord of
Diadems, Akhenaton, whose life is long; and for the Chief Royal Wife,
Nefer-neferu-Aton, Nofertiti whom he loves, may she live and flourish
for ever and ever.
Although the Hymn to the Aton clearly grants a favored position to
Egypt, Aton is pictured as holding sway over all peoples, for the sun
brings light and heat to men of every nation. This universalism finds a
modern counterpart in the hymn of Joseph Addison (1712):
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim:
Th' unwearied sun, from day to day,
Does his creator's power display,
And publishes to every land
The work of an almighty hand.
Parallels between the Hymn to the Aton and Psalm 104 suggest that the
poetic expressions of the hymn became a part of the literary heritage of
the Near East. Although Atonism as a religion died a short time after
the death of its chief apostle, Akhenaton, poetic utterances used in
praise to Aton could readily be incorporated into other Egyptian
devotional literature and, eventually, find an echo in the literature of
other lands. While many of the similarities between Psalm 104 and
Akhenaton's Hymn could arise from independent contemplation of the
movements of the sun on the part of people with no contact whatever, the
numerous contacts between Israel and Egypt at least suggest that
devotional language as well as proverbs (cf. I Kings 4:30) were common
knowledge among the two peoples.
The two compositions are basically different, however, in that the
Biblical psalmist acknowledges Yahweh, the God of creation and
providence, as a spiritual being associated with natural phenomena only
as their creator, whereas Aton, Akhenaton's "sole god" is identified
with the disk of the sun. While Akhenaton seems to have spiritualized
the Egyptian sun worship, he never divorced himself completely from it.
Biblical monotheism asserts that the One God made "lights in the
firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth" (Gen. 1:15). The Hymn
of the Aton reaches a high point in the devotional literature of Egypt,
but its monotheism was radically different from that presented on the
pages of Scripture.
VI
THE AFFAIRS OF EMPIRE
The Amarna tablets enable us to see evidences of the decline of Egyptian
power and prestige during the latter years of the reign of Amenhotep III
and throughout the reign of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton). About forty of
them record correspondence between the rulers of Egypt and the rulers of
the major powers of the Amarna Age. We find letters from the Kassite
kings Kadashman-Enlil I and Bumaburiash II of Babylon, from Ashuruballit
I of Assyria, from Tushratta of Mitanni, from the Hittite king
Suppiluliumas, and from an unnamed king of Alashia (Cyprus).