Two well-known historical leaders are remembered for introducing Monotheism to their people: Akhenaten - to the Egyptians, and Moses – to the Hebrews. Both lived at around the same time, in the 14th century BC. Akhenaten believed that the Sun-disc was the material representation of God. He was born with the name Amenhotep and changed his name to what was a translation of the words, “Beneficial to the Aten.” He named his son Tutankhaten, but the boy-king was forced by powerful priests to change it to Tutankhamun – in homage to Amun – after his father’s death.

Moses taught of an anthropomorphic God. The name Moses is not unlike Thutmose. The similarity between Egyptian and biblical texts was noted by Sigmund Freud, in his 1939 work Moses and Monotheism. Freud believed that Moses, which translates to “child” in Egyptian, may have been an Egyptian who followed the cult of Aten. In fact, he may have actually been Thutmose, disappearing from the historical records only to reappear as the biblical Moses. This would make him a close relative of Akhenaten.

A surviving Egyptian text, called the Aten Hymn, described the Aten as an omnipresent creator of all nature, taking on millions of forms, not merely the familiar Sun. This Hymn, which was inscribed in several versions in the tombs of Akhenaten, 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. Here is an extract:

Men had slept like the dead; now they lift their arms in praise, birds fly, fish leap, plants bloom, and work begins. Aten 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. Aten 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.

As a result of the teachings of these famous figures, a new religion based on one true God would replace polytheism and change the world. Does this mean that all those other deities – including those of the Greek and Roman pantheons, were simply not real? I believe they did in fact exist and were superhuman divinities, even though none of them was actually God. They will be the subject of a new series of articles I intend to publish over the coming months.