Ok, fisrt thing...Zosima's suggestion that the Big Bang was God orgasming.
There is an Egyptian creation story the Heliopolitan Creation Myth.
In this myth a form of the sun god Atum "the hidden one" (The sun when its night and is not seen) was alone. He masturbated and his sperm generated two gods Shu(air) and Tefnut(moisture), these two gods then used sexual reproduction to create other gods, and sexual reprosuction became the nrom thereafter.
Next...Akhenaten.
Did Akhenaten convert anyone, yeh, probably some people, however there is no archaeological evidence that the Aten cult continued after the reign of Tutankhamun, either as a public or private cult.
What about the Aten believers from Before Akhenaten?
There were none! Aten was not a god per se. The Aten is the name of the sun disc, it was a symbol of Re, like the cross is a symbol of the Christian religion. Its like asking what about all the people who worshipped the cross before Jesus...there weren't any (besides which christians don't worship the cross). Akhenaten, it is thought, wanted to pray to the sun, but not by any of its traditional polytheistic names, so he used the name of the sun disc itself.
Was the theology eradicated, unknown. No evidence of its continuance.
Where did Akhenaten get his idea? Two good theories I've ever heard:
Akhenaten's father was Amenhotep III. He lived a long time and had many foreign wives. Some of these we know came from Mesopotamia, a region where the Sun god was the cheif deity. This would also allow for Hebraic influences. However we know of no Hebrew princesses in the Royal harem at that time.
Its also been noted that Akhenaten never appears with his father as a child on monuments, instead a (presumably elder) brother Tutmosis is shown. It was tradition at the time to name the crown prince after his grandfather, who was Tutmosis IV (so the kings for awhile went Tutmosis-Amenhotep-Tutmosis-Amenhotep etc). Tutmosis disappears from monuments (which usually idicates his death) and Akhenaten(Amenhotep IV) appears as co-regent. This theory also takes into account the weird art of Akhenatens reign. It suggests Alkenaten was in some way deformed and so was kept out of the public eye as a child (normally all sons would appear on monuments) its uggests perhaps he was sent away, possibly to Mesopotamia where he learned about the supremacy of the Sun god. It is thought when he became king, because he felt rejected he banned the other cults and initiated the Aten cult, because its was HIS god. It the Aten religion the King, Akhenaten was the one to whom you addressed prayers, you could not pray TO Aten, only to the King, who was Aten's earthly representative, and based on the location of his tomb, Akhenaten thought after death he would be reborn as Aten.
Akhenaten is in egyptian, made up of three words Akh-en-aten
It litereally means Soul-of-Aten, where Akh is one of the Egyptian conceptions of the soul of a person, their spiritual manifestation.
The idea of Horus/Shu/Re as aspects I don't think is right. I think he refers to them because he lacked adaquete language to express his ideas. I mean the word 'shu' could refer to the function of the god Shu, or it could be trying to draw an analogy, using words that people familiar with the traditional pantheon would understand.
Har-akhti could mean he is describing Aten as the king of the horizon.
The idea of the Trinity is an early Christian concept, not Hebrew, so no connection there. Also the Trinity does not make each member an aspect, but a person. This may seem like simply playing with words, but its not, but it takes a bit of explaining, if you want I can tell you, but not right now
Kinda tired.
Where did I get these interpretations? A lot of reading, both of secondary sources (books written by historians) and primary sources(reading the heiroglyphic inscriptions, excavation reports etc)
Also keep in mind, its very easy to look at Akhenatens religion and see what is familiar to you, we are used to monotheistic religions, so some of it is reading what we want to see into the history. This is our bias, I'm simply trying to stay as obhective as possible and allow for the fact that someone living at that time might not see monotheism in Atenism, espcially since the only other documented case at the time were the Hebrews, and the only evidence of their monotheism is the Torah, which was not composed until the 6th Century BC. Akhenaten lived in the 14th Century BC, thats 800 years apart!
