Lecture IV. The Sun-God And The Ennead. 91
ThothmesIII., speaks of being“beloved by the beams of the
solar disc”(Aten-Ra); and though no determinative of divinity is
attached to the words, it was but a step forward to make the disc [098]
the equivalent of the sun-god.
Nevertheless, between the“doctrine”of Khu-n-Aten and the
older Egyptian ideas of the sun-god there was a vast, if not
impassable, distance. The“doctrine”was no result of a normal
religious evolution. That is proved not only by the opposition
with which it met and the violent measures that were taken to
enforce it, but still more by its rapid and utter disappearance or
extermination after the death of its royal patron. It came from
Asia, and, like the Asiatic officials, was banished from Egypt in
the national reaction which ended in the rise of the Nineteenth
Dynasty.
The god of Khu-n-Aten, in fact, has much in common with the
Semitic Baal. Like Baal, he is the“lord of lords,”whose visible
symbol is the solar orb. Like Baal, too, he is a jealous god,
and the father of mankind. It is true that Baal was accompanied
by the shadowy Baalat; but Baalat, after all, was but his pale
reflection, necessitated by the genders of Semitic grammar; and
in some parts of the Semitic world even this pale reflection was
wanting. Chemosh of Moab, for instance, and Asshur of Assyria
were alike wifeless.
On the other hand, between Aten and the Semitic Baal there
was a wide and essential difference. The monotheism of Khu-n-
Aten was pantheistic, and as a result of this the god he worshipped
was the god of the whole universe. The character and attributes
of the Semitic Baal were clearly and sharply defined. He stood
outside the creatures he had made or the children of whom he
was the father. His kingdom was strictly limited, his power itself
was circumscribed. He was the“lord of heaven,”separate from
the world and from the matter of which it was composed.
But Aten was in the things which he had created; he was the [099]
living one in whom all life is contained, and at whose command