Aton Hymn

Aton Hymn, the most important surviving text relating to the singular worship of the Aton, a new religious ideology espoused by the ancient Egyptian king Akhenaton of the 18th dynasty. During his reign Akhenaton returned to the supremacy of the sun god, with the startling innovation that the Aton was to be the only god. To remove himself from the preeminent cult of Amon-Re at Thebes, Akhenaton built the city of Akhetaton (Tell el-Amarna) as the centre for the Aton’s worship.

The Aton Hymn, which was inscribed in several versions in the tombs of Akhetaton, describes the solar disk as the prime mover of life, whose daily rising rejuvenates all living things on earth and at whose setting all creatures go to sleep. Like some other hymns of its period, the text focuses on the world of nature and the god’s beneficent provision for it:

Men had slept like the dead; now they lift their arms in praise, birds fly, fish leap, plants bloom, and work begins. Aton creates the son in the mother’s womb, the seed in men, and has generated all life. He has distinguished the races, their natures, tongues, and skins, and fulfills the needs of all. Aton made the Nile in Egypt and rain, like a heavenly Nile, in foreign countries. He has a million forms according to the time of day and from where he is seen; yet he is always the same.

While the Aton is said to create the world for men, it seems that the ultimate goal of creation is really the king himself, whose intimate and privileged connection to his god is emphasized. Divine revelation and knowability is reserved for Akhenaton alone, and the hymn is ultimately neutral with regard to explicating the mysteries of divinity.

Certain passages of the Aton Hymn demonstrate themes shared by a wider literary tradition; portions have been compared in imagery to Psalm 104 (see Psalms).