Aten

The Solar Disk

Domain: Sun, Light & Life
Alignment: Lawful Good
Element: Light
Relics of Power: Rays with Giving Hands

Speak with Aten

The full Codex

4 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Ancient Egyptians

Region

Nile Valley, Egypt

Period

c. 3100 BC – 400 AD

The Egyptian gods were worshipped for over three millennia along the banks of the Nile, with monumental temples at Karnak, Luxor, and Heliopolis. The pharaohs were held to be divine, and life revolved around cosmic order (Maat) and preparation for the afterlife. The cult endured until the rise of Christianity in Roman Egypt.

At the Opet festival, Amun's sacred barque sailed from Karnak to Luxor amid celebrating crowds. In the temples, priests woke, dressed, and fed the god's statue every day, and the Beautiful Festival of the Valley carried the deities to visit the shore of the dead.

At a glance

Aten is the sun's disk, raised to sole god by the pharaoh Amenhotep IV, who took the name Akhenaten (Ikhnaton). According to Breasted, the name is old and referred to the physical disk of the sun. Under Akhenaten the god received his own capital, Akhetaten (Tell el-Amarna), a new symbol, the disk with rays ending in hands, and hymns that describe him as creator of all peoples. The names of the other gods were erased and their cults suspended. After the king's death, Tutankhamun restored Amun and Horemheb demolished the temples of Aten. The sources are abundant for the hymn and the city; we know little of how ordinary people lived this faith.

11 min read · Reviewed on October 14, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The solar disk, the rays with hands, the light and the ankh

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Anonymous (translation by James Henry Breasted), Great Hymn to the Aten and Short Hymn to the Aten. read
King Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), Boundary stelae of Akhetaten. read
Various vassals and kings (trans. Percy Handcock), Selections from the Tell el-Amarna Letters. read
Norman de Garis Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna, part II: tombs of Panehsy and Meryra II (Archaeological Survey of Egypt, 14th memoir). read

Studies

James Henry Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (1912), lectures IX and X. 1912. open
James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, chapters on Ikhnaton and the dissolution of the empire. 1909. open
E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. I. 1904. open

Name and epithets

Breasted explains that Aten was an ancient name of the physical sun, probably of its disk. The name already appeared twice in the hymn of the two architects of Amenhotep III and titled a royal barge of that king, called…

In the ancient sources

Great Hymn to Aten (long hymn), reign of Akhenaten; Breasted's dates: c. 1375-1358 BC. Copied in a single tomb, that of Eye; about a third was lost to modern vandalism, and the final part comes from an old copy of 1883.…

The myths

The disk before Akhenaten. Breasted shows that Aten did not come from nothing. Under Thutmose III the cult of Amun became a national priesthood, with the high priest of Amun at the head of all the temples of the country…

Worship and archaeology

Breasted insists that the cult of Aten centred on the king. The teaching (the "doctrine") is attributed to him alone, and the nobles of Amarna repeat his phrases in their tombs as proof of loyalty.

How the god was depicted

Breasted describes the symbol created by Amenhotep IV: a solar disk from which diverging rays descend, each ending in a human hand.

What scholars debate

Monotheism or politics?. Breasted calls the movement solar monotheism and sees in it the first universal religion in history, as well as a "return to nature".

After antiquity

After the reform ended, the king's name became a curse and the Aten faith was erased. Even so, Breasted maintains that traces of it remained, and cites hymns to Amun of the following period that attribute to him the pat…

Did you know?

The long hymn says Aten set "a Nile in the sky" for foreigners, and that the Egyptian Nile comes from the underworld.

Codex relic

Rays with Giving Hands. The rays of the solar disk that end in hands, pouring life and light upon all creation.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

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