The Ancient Egyptian Aten Sun Disk
The Aten represents a unique period in Ancient Egyptian history. The culture had maintained its polytheistic religion for generations…
The Aten represents a unique period in Ancient Egyptian history. The culture had maintained its polytheistic religion for generations before Amenhotep IV took the throne. A few years into his reign, he took both the religion and art of Ancient Egypt in a drastically different direction. Now known as Akhenaten, the pharaoh introduced what is sometimes called the first monotheistic religion. Rather than worshiping many gods and goddesses, Ancient Egyptians would now worship the sun disk known as the Aten.
Akhenaten went so far as to move his capital city to Akhetaten 𓈌, known today as Amarna, and to build temples open to the sun disk he worshiped. The art of this time also departs from a style that hardly changed over 2,000 years. Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti presented themselves with different facial features and a much more voluptuous style than their royal counterparts. In the background of their portraiture you often see the Aten sun disk with its rays reaching through the sky.
Depictions of the Aten last as late as King Tutankhamun’s funerary goods.
The scarf depicts the Aten sun disk and its rays as depicted in the art of Akhenaten’s time. The hieroglyphs translate to the word “Aten”. Fun fact: you can read hieroglyphs in either direction, as is depicted in the design of the scarf.
I encourage you to read more about Ancient Egyptian philosophy, as a social media post can’t do justice to the nuances of an ancient religion.
Aten scarves are available with limited inventory or made-to-order in my Etsy shop.
If you’d like to learn more, you can visit my page or connect with me at the social links below. I’d be grateful for a follow or a like, and if you like the scarves, there are a few available in the shop. A portion of the proceeds from each sale benefits the Theban Mapping Project Library which provides books and literacy programs to the locals of Luxor, Egypt.
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References: Wikipedia
Images © 2022 EEWL
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