Akhenaten was a pharoah of Egypt who, seemingly out of the blue, created an entirely new monotheistic religion, moved the capital of Egypt and founded a new, monotheistic city, and banned the worship of Egypt's ancient and many gods.
A surviving work of that time is called the Great Hymn of Aten, which has lines translated that say:
"O sole god, like whom there is no other!
Thou didst create the world according to thy desire,
Whilst thou wert alone: All men, cattle, and wild beasts,
Whatever is on earth, going upon (its) feet,
And what is on high, flying with its wings."
Though this is a dated English translation, any Muslim should find these words familiar.
What also stands out to me is the removal of the idolization of God Similar to the people of Mecca, where the main God was named Allah, but he was an idol and father of the lesser gods, in Egypt, Aten was their name for the main God, who was depicted as the Sun, and he was the head of a pantheon of lesser gods. Akhenaten went as far as to change the symbol of Aten, from the original Sun hieroglyphic, and forced scribes to write the name spelled out - so that the Sun was not idol-associated with God.
This is just so fascinating. We don't know many of the thousands of prophets that Allah swt sent down, but this figure stands out. Not only was he a pharoah, but he was the father and husband of two of that arguably most famous ancient Egyptians we know - King Tut and Nefertiti, yet there's rarely any mention of this monotheistic man, who might've been a prohpet in popular culture.
Allah swt knows best. We are only given the history that survived and went through many generations of those who might be inclined to change it, since after his death, his son, King Tut, abandoned the religion and the new city that his father had founded.
Here are some sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hymn_to_the_Aten
[link] [comments]
from Islam http://ift.tt/2F8WH7h
No comments:
Post a Comment