The Aten & Akhenaten's Solar Religion

Egyptians normally worshipped many gods, but for the span of roughly a single reign in the fourteenth century BCE King Akhenaten promoted the Aten — the disc of the sun itself — as effectively the only god to be worshipped, suppressing the cult of Amun and building a new capital at Amarna. The exclusive phase was brief, perhaps only a decade and a half within his roughly seventeen-year reign. The 'Great Hymn to the Aten' praises the disc as sole creator of all life. After his death the old gods were restored and his reform reversed.