Aten, a manifestation of the sun, was represented as a single disk releasing rays of light that produce the entirety of the universe and god itself. Adherents believed that Aten remade the world every ...

The sun god One other god was very important, if only briefly. Fed up with the power of the priests honoring Amen-Re, Pharaoh Amenhotep III switched attention to the minor sun god, Aten.

Not long after Amenhotep III died, in 1353 B.C., masons entered his mortuary temple and methodically chiseled out every mention of Amun, the god said to have fathered the great pharaoh.

Sun city Dedicated to the solar god Aten, the ruins of Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s capital city, known today as Amarna, sit on the eastern bank of the Nile.

And in this city, one god should be worshipped, forsaking all others: the sun god Aten. Akhenaten’s heresy didn’t last long, ending with his death less than 20 years later.

Though his father had angered devout subjects by declaring fidelity to the sun god Aten and relocating the center of worship from Thebes to Amarna, his son walked those changes back.

During his 17-year reign, he upended Egyptian culture, abandoning all of the traditional Egyptian pantheon but one, the sun god Aten. He even changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten, which ...