heistic idea was at most periods, so to speak, in the
air. Sometimes the qualities common to all the gods were abstracted, and
the resultant notion spoken of as "the god." At other times, and
especially in the hymns addressed to some divinity, all other gods were
momentarily forgotten, and he was eulogized as "the only one," "the
supreme," and so forth. Or else several of the chief deities were
consciously combined and regarded as different emanations or aspects of
a Sole Being; thus a Ramesside hymn begins with the words "Three are all
the gods, Ammon, Re and Ptah," and then it is shown how these three
gods, each in his own particular way, gave expression and effect to a
single divine purpose.

Akhenaton.

For a brief period at the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty a real monotheism,
as exclusive as that of Judaism or of Islam, was adopted as the state
religion of Egypt. The young Pharaoh Amenophis IV. seems to have been
fired by genuine fanatical enthusiasm, though political motives, as well
as doctrinal considerations, may have prompted him in the planning of
his religious revolution (see also S History). The Theban god Ammon-Re
was then supreme, and the ever-growing power of his priesthood may well
have inflamed the jealousy of their Heliopolitan rivals. Amenophis began
his reign in Thebes as an adherent of the traditional faith, but after a
few years he abandoned that town and built a new capital for his god
Aton 200 m. farther north, at a place now called El Amarna. The new
deity was a personification of the sun's disk. The name Re was
suppressed, as too intimately associated with that of Ammon; and Ammon,
together with all the other gods, was put to the ban. Amenophis even
changed his own name, of which the name of Ammon formed an element, to
Akhenaton, "the brilliancy of the Aton," and the capital was called
Khitaton, "The Horizon of the Aton." The new dogmas were known as "the
Teaching," and their tenets, as revealed in the poems composed in honour
of the Aton, breathe the purest and most exalted monotheistic spirit.
The movement had, no doubt, met with serious opposition from the very
start, and the reaction soon set in. The immediate successors of
Akhenaton strove to follow in his footsteps, but the conservative nature
of Egypt quickly asserted itself. Not sixty years after the accession of
Akhenaton, his city was abandoned, its rulers branded as heretics, and
the old religion restored in Thebes as completely a