ATENISM
This article, titled ‘An Introduction to Atenism,’ is reproduced in its entirety from the website of the Akhetaten Fellowship.
(See: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Atenism/site/)
Roughly fourteen hundred years before Christ, at the time Egypt was at the height of her power, King Akhenaten ruled over that great country for a few years.
Akhenaten was a thinker; Akhenaten was an artist; Akhenaten was a saint--the worlds first rationalist, and the oldest Prince of Peace. Through the visible disk of the Sun--Aten--Akhenaten worshipped "the Energy within the Disk"--the ultimate Reality which men of all creeds still seek, knowingly or unknowingly, under a thousand names and through a thousand paths. And Akhenaten styled himself as the Son of that unseen, everlasting Source of all life. "Thou art in my heart," Akhenaten said in one of his hymns, "and no one knoweth Thee save I, Thy Son." And Akhenaten's words, long forgotten, have come down to us, recorded upon the walls of a noblemans tomb--these amazing words in what is perhaps the earliest poem which can be ascribed with certainty to any particular author: "I, Thy Son. . . ."
Akhenaten is one of the very few men who ever put forth such a bold claim. The aim of this website (i.e. the Akhetaten Fellowship site) is to show that, in doing so, Akhenaten was no less justified than any other teacher of the truth, however impressive may appear the success of the latter contrasted with his defeat; however widespread may be his fame, contrasted with the total oblivion in which has lain the Egyptian king, Akhenaten, for the last thirty-three hundred years.
The aim of the website is to show that Akhenaten was one of those few men, and the earliest known, perhaps, among those whose life can be dated.
The failure of Atenism to survive Akhenaten as an established religion can be regarded as one of the tragedies of history. We can explain it; we can even try to redeem it. But the bitter fact remains, for nothing can undo the past.
Other great souls have had disciples to preach their message, martyrs to bear testimony to their greatness in torture and death, missionaries to carry their name and domination to the limits of the earth; they have had commentators, admirers, detractors- -philosophers, poets, artists--to keep their memory alive century after century. But Akhenaten's fate was different. Akhenaten had no sooner died than the fervour of his followers seems to have been spent out. Within a few years, Akhenaten's name was anathematised, Akhenaten's new city, Akhetaten, pulled down stone by stone, Akhenaten's remains profaned and Akhenaten's memory systematically destroyed, without, apparently, a single cry of protest on the part of any of those eighty thousand or more who had, in their zeal, left Thebes with Akhenaten, thirteen years before. Ever since then, until a part of Akhenaten's foreign correspondence and fragments of Akhenaten's hymns were brought to light, some 100 years ago, there was not a man on earth who knew of Akhenaten's existence. And to this very day, notwithstanding the genuine admiration of a learned few for Akhenaten's rational religion of Atenism, there are hardly any people in the world whose daily life Akhenaten fills with his presence.
Why?
Men who are in the habit of judging in haste will at once infer that Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism cannot have been as perfect as those that have become the nucleus of living faiths.
A religion should be judged in itself, independently of its real or apparent influence upon any society, apart from its success or failure among men. And its founder--when it has a founder--is the only man whose life and personality one should consider when speaking of it. Judged in that manner, from the sole standpoint of its inner beauty, Akhenaten's simple and rational religion of Atenism, of which hardly anybody knows, can be compared advantageously with recognised faiths professed by millions of men. And its promoter, Akhenaten, with perhaps not more than one or two living disciples, can nevertheless be ranked among the divine souls that honoured this earth--among those whom we call "incarnations" or "Sons of God."
We can now try to explain why Atenism failed to endure as an organised collective cult. From the little that can be gathered of Atenism through the existing fragments of Akhenaten's hymns and through the history of Akhenaten's life, one can assert, to say the least, that Atenism was far in advance of the time in which Atenism appeared.
The towering superiority of Akhenaten over his fellow-men has no parallel in the mechanical sphere. "Were Atenism invented to satisfy our modern scientific conceptions, Akhenaten's religion of Atenism could not be logically improved upon at the present day," writes Sir Flinders Petrie. Could we imagine a man of the fourteenth century B.C. in possession of the secret of our modern aeroplanes, we would then realise what would have been the mechanical equivalent of Akhenaten's religious revolution. The very idea of it shatters us by its enormity. But, while our imaginary inventor could have safely conquered the world with the help of a single aircraft, Akhenaten failed to convince a minimum number of disciples capable of carrying on his work. Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism "suitable for our own times," met little response in his. Those who could easily have gathered Atenism from Akhenaten's lips and transmitted Atenism to posterity in all its details, were not moved to do so. And we, who would have done so, were not yet born. That is the main reason why nothing was left of Atenism after the thirteen glorious years during which Atenism flourished.
There are other reasons for Atenism's extinction.
One of them is that the religion of Atenism was too rational to appeal to the average people of any time. Another is that Akhenaten himself was too good--and perhaps too farsighted, also--to establish Atenism by means of violence.
Three elements seem to have contributed to the propagation of every widespread religion: a mythology; miracles; and a more or less definite doctrine concerning the hereafter.
But the religion of Atenism seems to have been devoid of all three from the start. That is perhaps why some modern authors have called Atenism a philosophy rather than a religion. But Atenism did possess that stamp of devotion that distinguishes a religion from a philosophy. Atenism was not purely a philosophy, whatever one may say. Atenism even comprised a daily ritual, with hymns and music, incense and flowers. Atenism was a religion, but one which offered its followers, at the same time, rational thought, the warmth of devotion, and a stately display of sensuous beauty.
But there were no marvellous tales connected with Atenism. The one theme that could have become the centre of a whole literature, had the religion of Atenism lasted a little longer, was the life of its Founder, Akhenaten. And that was too simple, too human, too obviously natural to impress the coarse imagination of the commoners.
Akhenaten, in his love of truth, seems to have deliberately stripped himself of all the mystery that had helped his fathers to appear as gods in the eyes of their prostrate people. Akhenaten was of unconventional manners and of kindly approach. Akhenaten's divinity was not the showy privilege of a Sun-born king, or of a prophet, asserted by external signs, but rather the innermost perfection of a man whose heart, will and understanding were in complete harmony with the eternal laws of life (Atenism); of a man who had fulfilled mans divine purpose as naturally as others drift away from it. Akhenaten felt therefore no need of ascertaining Atenism by a fastidious pomp, any more than by strange renunciations. There was no excess in Akhenaten; nothing that the vulgar eye could look upon as "striking," nothing that popular enthusiasm could catch hold of and magnify. Akhenaten wrought no extraordinary deeds, as other teachers are said to have done. The only wonder of which Akhenaten spoke was the everlasting miracle of order and of fertility--the rhythm of day and night, the growth of a bird or of a baby.
And Akhenaten brought with him, apparently, no new ideas about death, and put no stress upon the ones that were common in Egypt in Akhenaten's time. From the beautiful prayer inlaid upon Akhenaten's coffin, and probably composed by Akhenaten Himself, one infers that Akhenaten believed in the eternal life of the soul. But that is all. No allusion to the nature of that life beyond death, and especially not a single reference to sin, reward and punishment can be found in at least what has survived of the young king Akhenaten's hymns, or in the inscriptions in the tombs of the nobles who boast of having "hearkened to Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism." Not that the religion of Atenism was in any way devoid of a moral character, as some of its modern judges have supposed--a gratuitous assumption, contradicted by the very motto of Akhenaten's life: "Living in Truth." But Atenism's morality concerned what one was rather than what one did. Atenism was the inherent character of a harmonious life rather than the outcome of any catalogue of "dos" and "donts." As all natural things are, Atenism was foreign to the idea of promises and threats. And that was a reason for Atenism not to appeal to a number of followers. Most men do not want true morality any more than true religion. They want mythologies and miracles to wonder at, and police regulations to abide by; illusions in this world, and punishments and rewards in eternity. In one word, they want eternity made small and exciting to suit the measure of average life. They do not want life simply stripped of its shallowness and made divine--"life in truth." And as Akhenaten had nothing else but that to offer them, Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism left them indifferent. Atenism did not spread beyond the narrow circle of courtiers.
The one means by which Akhenaten could have secured Atenism's success as an international creed was violence.
The religion of Atenism was, indeed, far in advance of its time and of many future ages. And Atenism lacked the elements that generally make a creed popular. Men would, no doubt, have misinterpreted Atenism, misused Atenism, and degraded Atenism within a few years. But Atenism would have spread. Force of money and force of arms can make any people accept any faith, even one that does not suit them. And Akhenaten was both the most powerful and the richest king of his days. We are convinced that, had Akhenaten chosen to use his strength to impose his new cult of Atenism upon the world, Akhenaten would probably have largely succeeded.
But Akhenaten felt too deeply and he knew too much to sacrifice the spirit of his doctrine of Atenism to an illusory triumph. Far from using violence to propagate his religion of Atenism, Akhenaten did not even persecute those who tried to destroy it. As a result, it is they who enjoyed the thrill of triumph--for the time being. It is they who imposed their will upon the world. They wanted Akhenaten to be cursed, and so Akhenaten was; they wanted Akhenaten to be forgotten, and so Akhenaten was; it was their will that never, never again the world should hear the name of Akhenaten, and for over three millenniums the world did not.
But Akhenaten's beautiful, rational teaching of Atenism, however incompletely known, remains unstained by superstition, unmarred by compromise, unconnected with any of the crimes committed, in course of time, in the name of many a successful religion; pure, whole, as its Founder Akhenaten conceived it--a thing of beauty for all ages to come.
But if there are psychological reasons for which Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism had little chances of becoming one of the widespread creeds of the world, Atenism could have remained, at least, the religion of an elite. Atenism could have; and Atenism most probably would have, in different surroundings. One of Atenism's main features is the diversity of Atenism's appeal. Atenism satisfies reason; Atenism fulfils our highest aspirations towards the beautiful; Atenism implies love, not of man alone, but of all creatures. In the midst of general superstition and strife, the better men could have sought in Atenism an ideal to live up to. A pious tradition could have kept the name of Akhenaten sacred to the few who are worthy to know of him.
But such a tradition was never started, or at least never permitted to develop. Egypt, in the fourteenth century B.C., was already too deeply engrossed in formalism to respond to the forgotten message of living life (Atenism). And the countries around her were either too barbaric or too decadent to understand Atenism. Strangled at home by priestly fanaticism and by popular indifference, the new religion of Atenism was submerged, abroad, amidst a crowd of conflicting practical faiths that promised men tangible advantages in this world as well as in the next. Persecuted as an organised cult, Atenism soon ceased to exist even as a secret worship. To keep Atenism alive, Atenism would have needed an atmosphere of earnestness and of toleration, a truly religious atmosphere as it was difficult to find anywhere on earth for many centuries, except perhaps among a minority of Hindus.
We believe that no teaching would meet, better than Akhenaten's, the exigencies of the critical modern mind. Yet, it is not our intention to try to revive Atenism on a broad scale, as the basis of a public cult. We do not think it desirable to attempt what its Founder Akhenaten himself does not seem to have aimed at--he who, though fully conscious of Atenism's universal value, did not try to explain Atenism to the many. With all their pride in progress, our times are no less foolish and no less barbaric than Akhenaten's. We now use electric fans, while in Thebes they did not; that is about all the difference. The resuscitated religion of Cosmic Energy (Atenism), would soon offer, in the hands of any crowd, as ludicrous a sight as that of the great "living" faiths of to-day. We do not wish to rob the other world-teachers of a few millions of insignificant admirers in order to give a noisy following to the great man (Akhenaten) who is dear to us. We know too well, through daily experience, what the quality of that following would be.
We also wish to make the name and teaching of Akhenaten popular among the best of our contemporaries--among those who really represent the higher tendencies of our sceptical and at the same time mystical age; among those to whom dogmas no longer appeal, whom wonders no longer impress, whom religion without a background of positive knowledge, and science without the feeling of the seriousness of life, leave equally unsatisfied. It is among such people that we earnestly wish to revive the spirit of Akhenaten who, a thousand years before Socrates and nearly nine hundred years before the Buddha, united the boldest rationalistic views to the deep intuitive certitude of the oneness of God, the oneness of Life, and the brotherhood of all creatures.
Modern scholars have already recognised Akhenaten's undeniable greatness. The earliest and most eminent of all those specialists who have laboured to revive Akhenaten's memory among the learned, Sir W. Flinders Petrie, has paid Akhenaten a magnificent tribute. But what we want also is that Akhenaten's name be held sacred by all those who, without being scholars, can think in terms of truth and feel in terms of beauty and who are capable of modelling their lives on Akhenaten's immortal example of living perfection.
More so, if few be likely to live up to the spirit of Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism, let all at least know that there has been such a man as Akhenaten, once, long long ago. Let them remain superstitious, vulgar and violent, if they will; but let them know that there has been a man (Akhenaten) in whose life religion and reason walked hand in hand; a man (Akhenaten) whose very being was harmony, balance, supreme elegance, and who lost an empire for the sake of Atenism. Few meditate upon the beauty of the Sun; yet all behold it. Above mans unchanging mediocrity Akhenaten shines in glory. In a similar manner, worshipped by a few, but familiar to all after thirty-three hundred years of silence, we want the name of Akhenaten, Son of the Sun, young for ever, to live once more in the consciousness of our modern world. Praise Akhenaten!
(Reproduced from: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Atenism/site/)
This article, titled ‘An Introduction to Atenism,’ is reproduced in its entirety from the website of the Akhetaten Fellowship.
(See: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Atenism/site/)
Roughly fourteen hundred years before Christ, at the time Egypt was at the height of her power, King Akhenaten ruled over that great country for a few years.
Akhenaten was a thinker; Akhenaten was an artist; Akhenaten was a saint--the worlds first rationalist, and the oldest Prince of Peace. Through the visible disk of the Sun--Aten--Akhenaten worshipped "the Energy within the Disk"--the ultimate Reality which men of all creeds still seek, knowingly or unknowingly, under a thousand names and through a thousand paths. And Akhenaten styled himself as the Son of that unseen, everlasting Source of all life. "Thou art in my heart," Akhenaten said in one of his hymns, "and no one knoweth Thee save I, Thy Son." And Akhenaten's words, long forgotten, have come down to us, recorded upon the walls of a noblemans tomb--these amazing words in what is perhaps the earliest poem which can be ascribed with certainty to any particular author: "I, Thy Son. . . ."
Akhenaten is one of the very few men who ever put forth such a bold claim. The aim of this website (i.e. the Akhetaten Fellowship site) is to show that, in doing so, Akhenaten was no less justified than any other teacher of the truth, however impressive may appear the success of the latter contrasted with his defeat; however widespread may be his fame, contrasted with the total oblivion in which has lain the Egyptian king, Akhenaten, for the last thirty-three hundred years.
The aim of the website is to show that Akhenaten was one of those few men, and the earliest known, perhaps, among those whose life can be dated.
The failure of Atenism to survive Akhenaten as an established religion can be regarded as one of the tragedies of history. We can explain it; we can even try to redeem it. But the bitter fact remains, for nothing can undo the past.
Other great souls have had disciples to preach their message, martyrs to bear testimony to their greatness in torture and death, missionaries to carry their name and domination to the limits of the earth; they have had commentators, admirers, detractors- -philosophers, poets, artists--to keep their memory alive century after century. But Akhenaten's fate was different. Akhenaten had no sooner died than the fervour of his followers seems to have been spent out. Within a few years, Akhenaten's name was anathematised, Akhenaten's new city, Akhetaten, pulled down stone by stone, Akhenaten's remains profaned and Akhenaten's memory systematically destroyed, without, apparently, a single cry of protest on the part of any of those eighty thousand or more who had, in their zeal, left Thebes with Akhenaten, thirteen years before. Ever since then, until a part of Akhenaten's foreign correspondence and fragments of Akhenaten's hymns were brought to light, some 100 years ago, there was not a man on earth who knew of Akhenaten's existence. And to this very day, notwithstanding the genuine admiration of a learned few for Akhenaten's rational religion of Atenism, there are hardly any people in the world whose daily life Akhenaten fills with his presence.
Why?
Men who are in the habit of judging in haste will at once infer that Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism cannot have been as perfect as those that have become the nucleus of living faiths.
A religion should be judged in itself, independently of its real or apparent influence upon any society, apart from its success or failure among men. And its founder--when it has a founder--is the only man whose life and personality one should consider when speaking of it. Judged in that manner, from the sole standpoint of its inner beauty, Akhenaten's simple and rational religion of Atenism, of which hardly anybody knows, can be compared advantageously with recognised faiths professed by millions of men. And its promoter, Akhenaten, with perhaps not more than one or two living disciples, can nevertheless be ranked among the divine souls that honoured this earth--among those whom we call "incarnations" or "Sons of God."
We can now try to explain why Atenism failed to endure as an organised collective cult. From the little that can be gathered of Atenism through the existing fragments of Akhenaten's hymns and through the history of Akhenaten's life, one can assert, to say the least, that Atenism was far in advance of the time in which Atenism appeared.
The towering superiority of Akhenaten over his fellow-men has no parallel in the mechanical sphere. "Were Atenism invented to satisfy our modern scientific conceptions, Akhenaten's religion of Atenism could not be logically improved upon at the present day," writes Sir Flinders Petrie. Could we imagine a man of the fourteenth century B.C. in possession of the secret of our modern aeroplanes, we would then realise what would have been the mechanical equivalent of Akhenaten's religious revolution. The very idea of it shatters us by its enormity. But, while our imaginary inventor could have safely conquered the world with the help of a single aircraft, Akhenaten failed to convince a minimum number of disciples capable of carrying on his work. Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism "suitable for our own times," met little response in his. Those who could easily have gathered Atenism from Akhenaten's lips and transmitted Atenism to posterity in all its details, were not moved to do so. And we, who would have done so, were not yet born. That is the main reason why nothing was left of Atenism after the thirteen glorious years during which Atenism flourished.
There are other reasons for Atenism's extinction.
One of them is that the religion of Atenism was too rational to appeal to the average people of any time. Another is that Akhenaten himself was too good--and perhaps too farsighted, also--to establish Atenism by means of violence.
Three elements seem to have contributed to the propagation of every widespread religion: a mythology; miracles; and a more or less definite doctrine concerning the hereafter.
But the religion of Atenism seems to have been devoid of all three from the start. That is perhaps why some modern authors have called Atenism a philosophy rather than a religion. But Atenism did possess that stamp of devotion that distinguishes a religion from a philosophy. Atenism was not purely a philosophy, whatever one may say. Atenism even comprised a daily ritual, with hymns and music, incense and flowers. Atenism was a religion, but one which offered its followers, at the same time, rational thought, the warmth of devotion, and a stately display of sensuous beauty.
But there were no marvellous tales connected with Atenism. The one theme that could have become the centre of a whole literature, had the religion of Atenism lasted a little longer, was the life of its Founder, Akhenaten. And that was too simple, too human, too obviously natural to impress the coarse imagination of the commoners.
Akhenaten, in his love of truth, seems to have deliberately stripped himself of all the mystery that had helped his fathers to appear as gods in the eyes of their prostrate people. Akhenaten was of unconventional manners and of kindly approach. Akhenaten's divinity was not the showy privilege of a Sun-born king, or of a prophet, asserted by external signs, but rather the innermost perfection of a man whose heart, will and understanding were in complete harmony with the eternal laws of life (Atenism); of a man who had fulfilled mans divine purpose as naturally as others drift away from it. Akhenaten felt therefore no need of ascertaining Atenism by a fastidious pomp, any more than by strange renunciations. There was no excess in Akhenaten; nothing that the vulgar eye could look upon as "striking," nothing that popular enthusiasm could catch hold of and magnify. Akhenaten wrought no extraordinary deeds, as other teachers are said to have done. The only wonder of which Akhenaten spoke was the everlasting miracle of order and of fertility--the rhythm of day and night, the growth of a bird or of a baby.
And Akhenaten brought with him, apparently, no new ideas about death, and put no stress upon the ones that were common in Egypt in Akhenaten's time. From the beautiful prayer inlaid upon Akhenaten's coffin, and probably composed by Akhenaten Himself, one infers that Akhenaten believed in the eternal life of the soul. But that is all. No allusion to the nature of that life beyond death, and especially not a single reference to sin, reward and punishment can be found in at least what has survived of the young king Akhenaten's hymns, or in the inscriptions in the tombs of the nobles who boast of having "hearkened to Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism." Not that the religion of Atenism was in any way devoid of a moral character, as some of its modern judges have supposed--a gratuitous assumption, contradicted by the very motto of Akhenaten's life: "Living in Truth." But Atenism's morality concerned what one was rather than what one did. Atenism was the inherent character of a harmonious life rather than the outcome of any catalogue of "dos" and "donts." As all natural things are, Atenism was foreign to the idea of promises and threats. And that was a reason for Atenism not to appeal to a number of followers. Most men do not want true morality any more than true religion. They want mythologies and miracles to wonder at, and police regulations to abide by; illusions in this world, and punishments and rewards in eternity. In one word, they want eternity made small and exciting to suit the measure of average life. They do not want life simply stripped of its shallowness and made divine--"life in truth." And as Akhenaten had nothing else but that to offer them, Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism left them indifferent. Atenism did not spread beyond the narrow circle of courtiers.
The one means by which Akhenaten could have secured Atenism's success as an international creed was violence.
The religion of Atenism was, indeed, far in advance of its time and of many future ages. And Atenism lacked the elements that generally make a creed popular. Men would, no doubt, have misinterpreted Atenism, misused Atenism, and degraded Atenism within a few years. But Atenism would have spread. Force of money and force of arms can make any people accept any faith, even one that does not suit them. And Akhenaten was both the most powerful and the richest king of his days. We are convinced that, had Akhenaten chosen to use his strength to impose his new cult of Atenism upon the world, Akhenaten would probably have largely succeeded.
But Akhenaten felt too deeply and he knew too much to sacrifice the spirit of his doctrine of Atenism to an illusory triumph. Far from using violence to propagate his religion of Atenism, Akhenaten did not even persecute those who tried to destroy it. As a result, it is they who enjoyed the thrill of triumph--for the time being. It is they who imposed their will upon the world. They wanted Akhenaten to be cursed, and so Akhenaten was; they wanted Akhenaten to be forgotten, and so Akhenaten was; it was their will that never, never again the world should hear the name of Akhenaten, and for over three millenniums the world did not.
But Akhenaten's beautiful, rational teaching of Atenism, however incompletely known, remains unstained by superstition, unmarred by compromise, unconnected with any of the crimes committed, in course of time, in the name of many a successful religion; pure, whole, as its Founder Akhenaten conceived it--a thing of beauty for all ages to come.
But if there are psychological reasons for which Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism had little chances of becoming one of the widespread creeds of the world, Atenism could have remained, at least, the religion of an elite. Atenism could have; and Atenism most probably would have, in different surroundings. One of Atenism's main features is the diversity of Atenism's appeal. Atenism satisfies reason; Atenism fulfils our highest aspirations towards the beautiful; Atenism implies love, not of man alone, but of all creatures. In the midst of general superstition and strife, the better men could have sought in Atenism an ideal to live up to. A pious tradition could have kept the name of Akhenaten sacred to the few who are worthy to know of him.
But such a tradition was never started, or at least never permitted to develop. Egypt, in the fourteenth century B.C., was already too deeply engrossed in formalism to respond to the forgotten message of living life (Atenism). And the countries around her were either too barbaric or too decadent to understand Atenism. Strangled at home by priestly fanaticism and by popular indifference, the new religion of Atenism was submerged, abroad, amidst a crowd of conflicting practical faiths that promised men tangible advantages in this world as well as in the next. Persecuted as an organised cult, Atenism soon ceased to exist even as a secret worship. To keep Atenism alive, Atenism would have needed an atmosphere of earnestness and of toleration, a truly religious atmosphere as it was difficult to find anywhere on earth for many centuries, except perhaps among a minority of Hindus.
We believe that no teaching would meet, better than Akhenaten's, the exigencies of the critical modern mind. Yet, it is not our intention to try to revive Atenism on a broad scale, as the basis of a public cult. We do not think it desirable to attempt what its Founder Akhenaten himself does not seem to have aimed at--he who, though fully conscious of Atenism's universal value, did not try to explain Atenism to the many. With all their pride in progress, our times are no less foolish and no less barbaric than Akhenaten's. We now use electric fans, while in Thebes they did not; that is about all the difference. The resuscitated religion of Cosmic Energy (Atenism), would soon offer, in the hands of any crowd, as ludicrous a sight as that of the great "living" faiths of to-day. We do not wish to rob the other world-teachers of a few millions of insignificant admirers in order to give a noisy following to the great man (Akhenaten) who is dear to us. We know too well, through daily experience, what the quality of that following would be.
We also wish to make the name and teaching of Akhenaten popular among the best of our contemporaries--among those who really represent the higher tendencies of our sceptical and at the same time mystical age; among those to whom dogmas no longer appeal, whom wonders no longer impress, whom religion without a background of positive knowledge, and science without the feeling of the seriousness of life, leave equally unsatisfied. It is among such people that we earnestly wish to revive the spirit of Akhenaten who, a thousand years before Socrates and nearly nine hundred years before the Buddha, united the boldest rationalistic views to the deep intuitive certitude of the oneness of God, the oneness of Life, and the brotherhood of all creatures.
Modern scholars have already recognised Akhenaten's undeniable greatness. The earliest and most eminent of all those specialists who have laboured to revive Akhenaten's memory among the learned, Sir W. Flinders Petrie, has paid Akhenaten a magnificent tribute. But what we want also is that Akhenaten's name be held sacred by all those who, without being scholars, can think in terms of truth and feel in terms of beauty and who are capable of modelling their lives on Akhenaten's immortal example of living perfection.
More so, if few be likely to live up to the spirit of Akhenaten's teaching of Atenism, let all at least know that there has been such a man as Akhenaten, once, long long ago. Let them remain superstitious, vulgar and violent, if they will; but let them know that there has been a man (Akhenaten) in whose life religion and reason walked hand in hand; a man (Akhenaten) whose very being was harmony, balance, supreme elegance, and who lost an empire for the sake of Atenism. Few meditate upon the beauty of the Sun; yet all behold it. Above mans unchanging mediocrity Akhenaten shines in glory. In a similar manner, worshipped by a few, but familiar to all after thirty-three hundred years of silence, we want the name of Akhenaten, Son of the Sun, young for ever, to live once more in the consciousness of our modern world. Praise Akhenaten!
(Reproduced from: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Atenism/site/)
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