Akhenaten and the Monotheistic Experiment at Amarna

Amenhotep IV came to the Egyptian throne around 1353 BCE as the tenth king of the Eighteenth Dynasty and, within the first several years of his reign, initiated one of the most radical religious transformations in recorded ancient history, elevating the Aten, the visible physical disk of the sun, from a minor solar aspect already present in earlier Egyptian religion into the sole legitimate object of worship. He changed his own name from Amenhotep ('Amun is satisfied') to Akhenaten ('effective for the Aten' or 'living spirit of the Aten'), a deliberate repudiation of the god Amun whose priesthood at Karnak in Thebes had accumulated enormous landed wealth and political influence over previous reigns. Around his regnal year five, Akhenaten founded an entirely new capital city, Akhetaten ('Horizon of the Aten'), on a previously unoccupied site on the Nile's east bank now known as Amarna, laying it out with boundary stelae that record his own justification for the move and his dedication of the site exclusively to the Aten's cult.