Akhenaten is considered one of the most mysterious pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. His religious practices, taken during his lifetime, led Egyptologists to call him the “alien pharaoh.
Akhenaten was a pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty (1379–1362 BC) and ruled Egypt for almost 18 years. He was married to Nefertiti, or so he thinks, and his life was a mystery until the 19th century, when the city of Akhenaten, built in honor of the god Aten, was discovered.
Akhenaten was a different pharaoh because he tried eradicating polytheism and introducing monotheism in ancient Egypt.
MONOTHEISM IN ANCIENT EGYPT
His era was one of the most controversial. Relatively little is known about his childhood. It is assumed that he grew up in Thebes (now Luxor). He ascended the throne between the ages of 16 and 24. It is possible that he was then already married to Nefertiti, the woman who had great influence in his era. At the coronation, he adopted the traditional Egyptian titles.
In the first years, he took special care of Heliopolis and its clergy, to curb the ambition of the Thebans. He ordered temples to be built in Karnak (Luxor) to worship the sun god, proclaiming himself “High Priest”.
The Pharaoh declared that the Aten would be not only the supreme god, but only God, a universal deity, and forbade the worship of all others, including idol worship. Atenism thus laid the foundations of monotheism, the belief in one God. Akhenaten addressed the Aten in prayers, such as the Great Hymn to the Aten: “O God of the Sun, besides Thee there is none.”
He embarked on a campaign of widespread erasure of the names of traditional gods, especially those of Amun. Some deities in his court had their names changed to remove them from the patronage of other gods and place them under the Aten (or Ra, with which Akhenaten assimilated the Aten).
However, even at Amarna, some courtiers retained the names of Ahmose, and the well-known artist who carved the famous bust of Nefertiti was called Thutmose (“child of Thoth”).
ALIEN PHARAOH?
Immediately after his death, polytheism regained its rights, the Pantheon becoming the sacred place for several gods. The strangeness appears at the moment when archaeologists discovered engravings from the period of his reign.
Akhenaten is presented differently, he has an elongated head, a protruding stomach, and skinny legs. Researchers have tried to find scientific explanations for its appearance, attributing it to various genetic diseases, but without any success. And then why does he look different from the other Egyptians?
The pharaoh is presented in the old writings in an androgynous way, which is why it is easy to confuse him with Nefertiti. Some archaeologists believe that it is the same person. A discovered text supports this idea because the pharaoh was also “mother and father”.
Ufologists are more forthright when it comes to Akhenaten claiming that he was a god from another planet. Because of this, it also looks different, having a different vision of religion, invoking the Son of the Sun, the only God.
The elongated face and the egg-shaped skull give him an intellectual capacity different from that of ordinary people, and the fingers are like spider legs, and these are just some of the major differences in appearance between the pharaoh and an ordinary man.
Another strange fact is that the cause of the strange pharaoh’s death has not been discovered, nor has his mummy been found to this day. Did he return home after completing his mission in Egypt or did he just magically disappear?