Monotheism is a fairly new innovation when it comes to the history of worship. Yes, Islam has been around for fourteen or fifteen hundred years, Christianity two thousand some and Judaism before that but when you compare them to the Vedic religion which preceded Hinduism and Buddhism, or the religion of the ancient Egyptians, monotheists are still the new kids at school. And I feel terrible pointing this out, but neither Judaism nor Christianity is actually all that monotheistic. Judaism, as seen through the Hebrew Bible (or the Old Testament for you Christians out there) is much more henotheistic. Yes, modern Judaism is monotheistic, no question, but at its inception it is henotheistic; meaning that they worshiped one god over other gods, but were still aware that other gods (those of their enemies and neighbors) existed. Hence the first commandment saying “no other gods before me.” I liken it to passionate fans of sports teams – they recognize that other teams exist, but their team is the one that really matters. Christianity, I argue (though often not very convincingly, I admit), is much more polytheistic than your average Christian would admit to. The triune god is the type of thing we see in other cultures (the Celtic goddess Brigid comes to mind) and like it or not, three gods in one is still three gods and three gods means polytheism. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. On top of that, the Catechismic explanation of Jesus being both 100% god and 100% man sounds very much like the older Hindu concept of avatars. Also, modern Catholicism with its myriad of saints one can call upon in a time of need would sure look a lot like polytheism to Socrates when he stepped out of Bill and Ted’s* phone booth**.
All that being said, monotheism is really quite rare in the annals of history and theology. And when it does happen it’s a long process that grows out of a sense of tribalism that holds one group of gods or one particular god above others and the others eventually drop away and become regarded not just as less important gods, but as utterly false gods. At least, that’s usually the way it goes. In Egypt, monotheism had a very different origin.
We don’t know why it happened but five years into what would turn out to be a seventeen year term as pharaoh, Amenhotep IV changed his name and with it the religion of the land. He became Akhenaten, the worshiper of Aten, and for the first time in Egypt and quite possibly in the world, the newly named Akhenaten made a monotheistic religion the law of the land. His singular god was a far cry from the animal-headed humanoid figures of Egypt’s past – Aten is simply a sun disc with rays of sunlight stretching down like so many arms. And if I’m going to take modern Christianity to task for not really being monotheistic it would be hypocritical of me if I didn’t point out that even the intentional, forced monotheism of Akhenaten’s reign was not a perfect, shining example either. The other gods were seen as mere aspects of Aten, some of the many ways the Sun Disc interacted with the world. Again, this is a bit reminiscent of that most poly of polytheisms: Hinduism. The largest difference being that worshiping the individual aspects (the other gods) was expressly forbidden under Akhenaten whereas in Hinduism acknowledging the avatars or other aspects of the gods is perfectly acceptable. Also, Akhenaten knew better than to ruin a good thing and he kept a pseudo-divinity for himself and his beloved wife Nefertiti.
The interesting thing about Akhenaten’s foray into semi-monotheism is just how miserably it went over with the masses. Which can’t be too terribly surprising. I suspect that if a modern political or religious leader announced that the god or gods people had been worshiping were now illegal and everyone, under penalty of law, must now worship the one and only god (who happens to be a sphere of light named Hank) people would be a bit perturbed. If Akhenaten had Machiavelli as an adviser he surely would have advised against such a move. He eventually had temples to other gods shut down or defaced and created an atmosphere of fear and paranoia in Egypt that would make Big Brother jealous. Certainly many Egyptians still believed in the old gods (Amun-Ra being the supreme one, but not the only one) but open worship of them was scarce and very dangerous.
While many a clandestine prayer or sacrifice may have been made in the hopes that Akhenaten would make the journey to sit before Anubis and have his heart weighed against the feather of maat, it appears that neither god nor man was responsible for the death of the unpopular king. In all likelihood it was his ancestors who ultimately did Akhenaten in. As was the case with many Egyptian rulers before and after him, his gene pool was little more than a polluted puddle of incestuous sludge, leaving the ruler subject to an array of birth defects, genetic disorders, and a weakened immune system. Ironically, the semi-divine royalty were often much weaker, more sickly, and more prone to below average lifespans than were the common rabble for whom incest was appropriately avoided. We don’t know definitively what killed Akhenaten but it is much more likely to have been poor genes than an assassin’s blade.
After Akhenaten’s death things get a little foggy. It seems that there was a female ruler after him, possibly his sister/royal wife and co-pharaoh Nefertiti, but the records are sparse – which is by no means an accident. After the time of Akhenaten and Atenism there was a very intentional purging of any and all record of the forced and failed attempt at monotheism. Even Akhenaten’s son fell victim to much of this purging. Tutankhaten became pharaoh when just a boy and the real powers behind the throne (vizier Ay and Horemheb, both of which later ruled as pharaohs) brought back the old gods and even changed the boy king’s name to reflect the return to the old ways. He became known as Tutankhamun. It’s strange to think that the best known pharaoh in modern times, King Tut, would have been wiped from the history books altogether if the Egyptians of his time had their way. Both his modern popularity and his historic obscurity are in large part due to the radical religious changes forced upon the people of Egypt by his father, Akhenaten. King Tut and the wealth of information gleaned from his tomb may be the most important legacy of Akhenaten’s experiment in monotheism – unless of course, Sigmund Freud was right.
Freud believed that the worship of Aten lead directly to the rise of the most successful monotheistic culture in history: Judaism. According to Freud, Moses was an Atenist priest who, when he lead the Jews out of captivity in Egypt carried with him the belief in a single god, giving rise to Judaism and in turn Christianity and Islam. Freud was well known for his appreciation of mythology, bringing characters like Oedipus and Narcissus into the realm of psychoanalysis, but his theories here are problematic. Much of Freud’s work in psychoanalysis is largely discounted now and that’s the field that he actually created – his work on religion holds even less water. One glaring issue with the ‘Atenism as a direct ancestor to Judaism’ theory is that there is not a jot of historic evidence for the Biblical tale of the enslavement in or exodus from Egypt. Yes, Semitic people interacted with the Egyptians so there’s room for an argument based on cultural transfer of ideas, but bringing the legendary (if not entirely mythic) figure of Moses into the tale doesn’t bolster its credibility.
Admittedly, there is something delightful about the idea of such a failed Egyptian experiment spawning three of the most successful and influential religions in the world but we are a bit light on evidence to draw such a conclusion. What we can conclude is that monotheism is both rare and unlikely to succeed when it is forced, rather than an organic development over many, many years.
*Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is a film responsible for giving us Keanu Reeves and making my peers feel bad when millennials refer to it as “old.”
**A phone booth is an antiquated device made popular in the 20th century. In exchange for inserting metallic moneys (or ‘coins’) into it one could be used to contact your mother when you needed to be picked up from the mall***.
***The mall is Amazon.com that you have to wear pants to.
