About this episode

This episode explores Akhenaten's unique offerings to the sun god Aten and their implications for ritual and power during his reign.

Akhenaten physically manifested his cult to the sun, building a capital city at a break in the cliffs that created the perfect sunrise hieroglyph on the east bank, a city filled with open air temples into which the sun’s rays could reach directly. He created no statues to represent divine solar power, no intercessor between god and king; the sun’s warmth and light could not be contained in a cult statue. To honor the sun god, Akhenaten created a simple and literal system of giving back what the sun god had given to his people: his Aten temples contained thousands of altars filled to overflowing with the bounty of his people’s produce—joints of beef, oxen heads, ducks and geese, bread loaves in all shapes and sizes, onions, garlic, beer and wine. In this episode, Kara Cooney and Amber Myers Wells dive into the overwhelming scale of the offering tables from Akhenaten’s reign and what they reveal about ritual, power, and ideology in the Amarna period. Why did Akhenaten commission thousands of offering tables for the Aten, who filled them, where did the food come from, and what does this short-lived practice tell us about the king’s vision of divine connection versus the economic and…

People in this episode

Host: Kara Cooney

Guest: Amber Myers Wells

Topics covered

• Akhenaten
• Aten
• offering tables
• ritual
• power
• Amarna period
• divine connection

Keywords

• Akhenaten
• Aten
• offering tables
• ritual
• Amarna period
• divine connection
• economic realities
• capital city

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Amarna Project

Places: Akhetaten, Egypt

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