Ackenwhat?

It's pronounced "Ack" "En" "Azir".

It's a little known fact that the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten's name means "Friend/Spirit of the Aten". The Aten being the solar disk, which he selected as best representing the concept of a single, all-powerful God.

It's a littler-known fact that the ancient Egyptians weren't polytheistic at all. Well before Akhenaten happened on the scene, the recognition of 'Amun' (the hidden, single, God) underpinned the Memphite and the Heliopolitan theologies right back to the dawn of their civilisation.

With fact knowledge now vanishingly small, I sense that you'd like to know who all the rest are then - Isis, Horus, Ptah, Osiris, Anubis, Geb, Nut, Shu, Tefnut, Hathor, Sobek, Hapy, Set, Mwt, Thoth, Nepthys... and so on.

They are all recognisable *aspects* of the single hidden God-concept. Osiris is originally the fertility and stability aspect, Mwt the mother aspect, Thoth the knowledge/truth concept, Ptah the father concept, Nwt the sky concept, Set the chaotic concept etc etc. Think of it as the anthropomorphisation of facets of God (deiomorphism?) if you like.

The God-concept in hieroglyphs is represented by a "flag on a standard", a symbol that is best rendered vocally as 'netjer'.

So the actual Egyptian monotheism is the worship of all powerful nature/netjer and the polytheism confusion only comes in when specific aspects have been deiomorphised for convenience. What Akhenaten did that was heretical was to give the hidden God (Amun) a tangible, visible aspect. Well, it wasn't as if he wasn't warned there'd be trouble. Some pharaohs, tsk!

All you need to discover is what 'Azir' means :-) There's an inscription in the tomb of Nefertari about the symmetrical relationship between it and Ra, if you know where to look.

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akhen3sir

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