Anhkenaten: monotheist or alien?

[Antilles]

I was taught he was portrayed that way because he loved the female form, and he was portraying himself as hapy, the god of the nile or something, I can't remember.

was his appearance the result of a genetic abnormality and his belief in the Aten a revolt against the overwhelming interference of the priests of Amun-Ra?

The end part of my original post. There is nothing to suggest that his appearance was not the result of genetic abnormality. If you believe that Tutankhamun was his son then the same elongated skull is apparent on both of them.

Ankhenaten was not a total monotheist. He allowed for belief in other deities but the Aten was the Supreme Being and Ankhenaten was his manifestation on Earth as Pharoah had always been for Amun-Ra.

Ankhenaten uprooted the capital of Egypt, embraced a new God and introduced an entirely new way of depicting royalty in art. There's a lot more to this than snide remarks about Ancient Aliens.

I've stood many times in front of his statues in the Cairo Museum and tried to work out why this king would depict himself in this manner.

[Orcseeker]

Some good investigating, DieChecker. It's always been known that Tutankhamun was the son of a king, but to date no surviving monument states which king. Through the years speculation usually has named as Tut's father Amunhotep III, Smenkhkare, or Akhenaten, with Akhenaten as the most commonly argued. I myself always believed Akhenaten was Tut's father, which would at least help to explain why no surviving monument mentions as much: Akhenaten's name was being hacked from history very soon after Tut took the throne.

And now it appears we who favored Akhenaten have always been wrong. So be it. Live and learn. Thanks to the extensive genetic testing from 2007-2009, and as you wrote, we know for certain now that Tut's father was the mummy found in KV55 and his mother was the mummy found in the KV35 side chamber and known as KV35YL. The genetic testing also revealed that KV55 and KV35YL, Tut's mom and dad, were full brother and sister. That's one thing that rules out Akhenaten: his principal wives, first Nefertiti and then Kiya, were not his sisters nor of any known familial relation to him.

The KV55 mummy is very badly preserved and is in fact nothing but a skeleton now, but its bones have been professionally examined a number of times through the years. All who have examined the bones prior to 2007 have agreed the KV55 mummy was a young man who could not have been more than 25 years of age at death, and was probably younger than that. Many have argued for years that KV55 is actually the body of the ephemeral Smenkhkhare, an argument I personally have always favored.

So now it would seem Tut's father, in all likelihood, was Smenkhkhare. This is not something at all shocking, but still, it caught many of us Egyptomaniacs by surprise. That's one of the cool things about science. You never know what will pop up next.

I heard Tutankhamun was once known as Tutankhaten, named after his supposed father Akhenaten but changed his name due to his disbelief in Aten.

[Taun]

I heard Tutankhamun was once known as Tutankhaten, named after his supposed father Akhenaten but changed his name due to his disbelief in Aten.

First I would like to second those who have expressed appreciation of kmt's 'long winded discourses'...

To respond to Orcseeker...

If he was was once known as Tutankhaten, it is possible it was as an honor to his grandfather Akhenaten - not his father - which it now looks more like was Smenkhkhare... At least that's what I got out of the several pages of discussion so far...

As for his changing it... Perhaps he was bowing to the pressures of the Priests of Amun-Ra -who could not have been happy over the changes Akhenaten put in to effect... And let's face it - the Priests were a major political and economic power in ancient Egypt...

[1Ophelia]

Akhenaten Alien? ha, I just have to laugh, and laugh I shall.

What a far fetched conclusion!

[nephilim12]

There have been such characters all through the history of man, demigods with exceptional abilities who would perform certain tasks with great ease and with minimum effort, while obviously having not made too great an effort or practise to have reached this level.

In legends and myths, some have been named as the offspring between the union of Gods and man / women. Hercules, Gilgamesh, Achilles, Krishna, Arjuna, the list is long. All such legendary names are associated with warlike capabilities, great strength, reflexes, endurance stamina and off course a temperament that stems from a self-conciousness of their own standing amongst men, commanding acknowledgement and respect.

But so much for legends and myths.

Coming to 'Ancient Aliens,' Some reviewers have characterized the show as "far-fetched," "hugely speculative," and "...expound[ing] wildly on theories suggesting that astronauts wandered the Earth freely in ancient time."Many of the ideas presented in the show are not accepted by the scientific community, and have been criticized as pseudoscience and pseudohistory.

History professor Ronald H. Fritze observed that pseudoscience as offered by von Däniken and the Ancient Aliens program has a periodic popularity in America: "In a pop culture with a short memory and a voracious appetite, aliens and pyramids and lost civilizations are recycled like fashions."

While we remain mute spectators in this tug of war between the propounders of new theories, the doubters, on the one hand, and the historian and archeological community, who themselves are theoriticians with a difference, their theories are similarly and feebly backed up by circumstantial evidence from which are derived a majority of accepted notions ultimately culminating into a field of study which they expect adherence to.

There are many questions that have arisen in the new world wave of intellectual independence which come to my mind often. These I share with you with a free mind with a request to not place me in either camp, simply on the grounds that plausible presentations can come up from either, and it's my personal interest with no intention to impress upon others.

There have been stone age cave paintings found in many parts of the world, well spread out, for example those found in Utah, USA and Kimberley, Australia, depicting what appear to be humanoids wearing a helmet like head gear and body apparell. And to top it all, the paintings ALSO depict what obviously look like saucer shaped flying craft, numerous in number.

Now what is even more thought provoking is that these examples collected from all over the world bear a striking similarity. The question that would first come to mind is 'did they see the same thing, that too through a course of maybe thousands of years ?'

However, if the primitive men did actually paint something they merely saw, then all throughout history, from many parts of the world, many artists have depicted what very clearly are UFO's and these paintings, some as recent as the 9th and 10th century exist till today.

In light of the irrefutable questions all these paintings from almost every culture present, I am inclined to think that yes, there may have been a time when certain humanoids with flight capabilities roamed freely on the world knowing there was little man could do against them. I don't know if they are aliens and don't presume as such, since it doesn't make a difference to me, the truth could go either way.

Friends, do a little study on old paintings from Europe, India, Korea, Japan, ancient Sanskrit texts from India on flying machines.

While the scientific community has dismissed all such speculations, the art forms raise questions that none could answer convincingly.

I have been a part of many discussions and forums and have presented these findings before the qualified Professors and Lecturers, who till this knowledge came to their mind, were great skeptics, who never knew as this was not a part of their course study, but who now have developed a keen interest in doing a study of their own for mankind to KNOW the truth, not to deny it when it surfaces.

After all, who would want to be embarrased by that 'i did not know that' situation.

And we have two camps, the skeptics without a reason and the alien theorists wild with speculation

Well, science would not be what it is today if the revolutionary discoverers had 'conformed' to traditional teaching.

As i always fondly say, there was a time when puncturing a hole in a man suffering from fever was thought of as the coolest remedy, pun intended. And any idea to the contrary would have resulted from expulsion from the medical stream.

Let the search continue for those who have the time and are properly funded.

[Abramelin]

Friends, do a little study on old paintings from Europe, India, Korea, Japan, ancient Sanskrit texts from India on flying machines

I think you should do exactly that, Nephilim12.

[kmt_sesh]

I heard Tutankhamun was once known as Tutankhaten, named after his supposed father Akhenaten but changed his name due to his disbelief in Aten.

First I would like to second those who have expressed appreciation of kmt's 'long winded discourses'...

To respond to Orcseeker...

If he was was once known as Tutankhaten, it is possible it was as an honor to his grandfather Akhenaten - not his father - which it now looks more like was Smenkhkhare... At least that's what I got out of the several pages of discussion so far...

As for his changing it... Perhaps he was bowing to the pressures of the Priests of Amun-Ra -who could not have been happy over the changes Akhenaten put in to effect... And let's face it - the Priests were a major political and economic power in ancient Egypt...

First, Taun, thank you for your kind words.

Tut's parentage is not clear. The genetic testing of 2007-2009 clarified the father is the mummy known as KV55 and the mother the mummy known as KV35YL, but the actual identities of these mummies remains unknown. Hawass spearheaded the identification of KV55 as Akhenaten, but the evidence for this is weak and not convincing. It has not been well accepted in the scientific and historical community. I'd wager most still favor an identification of Smenkhkare for KV55, myself included. No one can state this definitively, but the evidence such that it is seems to corroborate Smenkhkare. The identity of KV35YL is still only guesswork.

Akhenaten was some sort of relative, almost certainly. It depends who Smenkhkare was. If Smenkhkare was a son of Akhenaten, Tut was then the grandson of Akhenaten—but I have not seen this scenario much favored in the academic community. There's no evidence for Smenkhkare as a son of Akhenaten. More than likely he was a poorly attested son of the much greater king Amunhotep III, which would make Akhenaten an uncle of Tut. In any case it's certain that Tut was born during the reign of Akhenaten, so he was given the name Tutankhaten, "Living image of the Aten." This was not to honor Akhenaten so much as it was the Aten itself. Akhenaten did indeed regard himself as divine, but there's no indication that Akhenaten actually considered himself to be the mortal incarnation of the Aten.

Remember that Tut was only around eight when he was crowned king. He was the legitimate king—the last in the line of the great Tuthmoside pharaohs—but an eight year old neither possessed nor exercised real power. His name change to Tutankhamun, "Living image of Amun," was more than likely thrust upon him, whether he liked it or not. The subsequent dismantling of the Aten temple and religious administration, as well as the restoration of the orthodox religion and traditions, would've been carried out by the powers behind the throne, men like Ay and Horemheb. In other words, as a young boy wearing the crown, Tut was a very convenient tool for the real powers that be. And Tut died right at the time when he would've been assuming the mantle of power for himself.

In the end it obviously worked for the state. The powerful temple administration of Amun was back in play, and the temple of Amun would remain one of the most powerful religious estates of Egypt for the rest of their history. The god known as the Aten went back to its original persona as a very minor aspect of Re, and Akhenaten was henceforth remembered as a heretic—his name never to be mentioned, and always to be referred to as "the criminal." Although, truth be told, few people probably remembered much about Akhenaten by the tumultuous end of the New Kingdom, and Tut would've been forgotten altogether by then.

And yet again I've typed out a long-winded discourse.

[Antilles]

Smenkhare was the son of Amenhotep III. Tut was the son of Ankhenaten by a minor wife, not Nefertiti.

Akhenaten Alien? ha, I just have to laugh, and laugh I shall.

What a far fetched conclusion!

Laugh away. You're only 4 pages late.

[kmt_sesh]

Smenkhare was the son of Amenhotep III. Tut was the son of Ankhenaten by a minor wife, not Nefertiti.

...

This is not evidenced: it's far from clear who exactly Smenkhkare was. I happen to agree with you that he was a son of Amunhotep III, but in stating this I stress it's based more on speculation than on evidence.

And no longer does it seem likely that Tut was the son of Akhenaten, as has been the subject of several of my posts. It depends on whom the KV55 mummy was. We know KV55 was genetically Tut's father, but this individual appears to have died too young to have been Akhenaten. Most likely, as has been argued by most scholars for a long time now, KV55 was Smenkhkare—meaning Smenkhkare was Tut's father. Tut's mother is less certain. She was definitely the mummy designated KV35YL, but who KV35YL was in life is not known. There's almost no chance she was Nefertiti and equally slim that she was Kiya, given that KV55 and KV35YL were full-blood brother and sister. More than likely KV35 is a daughter of Amunhotep III, for whom several are known, but which one is not certain.

We're delving deeper and deeper into academic debates, which is what I like but is not exactly the premise for this particular thread. It's called "Anhkenaten: monotheist or alien?" after all. Was Akhenaten a monotheist? Toward the end, probably, yes.

Was Akhenaten an alien? That's a question for the show Ancient Aliens, and I should hope no thinking and reasoning adult takes Ancient Aliens seriously.