PAPER 95: Section 5.
The Remarkable Ikhnaton
P1047:1, 95:5.1
The teachings of Amenemope were slowly losing their hold on the Egyptian mind
when, through the influence of an Egyptian Salemite physician, a woman of
the royal family espoused the Melchizedek teachings. This woman prevailed
upon her son, Ikhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt, to accept these doctrines of One
God.
P1047:2, 95:5.2
Since the disappearance of Melchizedek in the flesh, no human being up to
that time had possessed such an amazingly clear concept of the revealed religion
of Salem as Ikhnaton. In some respects this young Egyptian king is one of
the most remarkable persons in human history. During this time of increasing
spiritual depression in Mesopotamia, he kept alive the doctrine of El Elyon,
the One God, in Egypt, thus maintaining the philosophic monotheistic channel
which was vital to the religious background of the then future bestowal of
Michael. And it was in recognition of this exploit, among other reasons, that
the child Jesus was taken to Egypt, where some of the spiritual successors
of Ikhnaton saw him and to some extent understood certain phases of his divine
mission to Urantia.
P1047:3, 95:5.3
Moses, the greatest character between Melchizedek and Jesus, was the joint
gift to the world of the Hebrew race and the Egyptian royal family; and had
Ikhnaton possessed the versatility and ability of Moses, had he manifested
a political genius to match his surprising religious leadership, then would
Egypt have become the great monotheistic nation of that age; and if this had
happened, it is barely possible that Jesus might have lived the greater portion
of his mortal life in Egypt.
P1047:4, 95:5.4
Never in all history did any king so methodically proceed to swing a whole
nation from polytheism to monotheism as did this extraordinary Ikhnaton. With
the most amazing determination this young ruler broke with the past, changed
his name, abandoned his capital, built an entirely new city, and created a
new art and literature for a whole people. But he went too fast; he built
too much, more than could stand when he had gone. Again, he failed to provide
for the material stability and prosperity of his people, all of which reacted
unfavorably against his religious teachings when the subsequent floods of
adversity and oppression swept over the Egyptians.
P1047:5, 95:5.5
Had this man of amazingly clear vision and extraordinary singleness of purpose
had the political sagacity of Moses, he would have changed the whole history
of the evolution of religion and the revelation of truth in the Occidental
world. During his lifetime he was able to curb the activities of the priests,
whom he generally discredited, but they maintained their cults in secret and
sprang into action as soon as the young king passed from power; and they were
not slow to connect all of Egypt's subsequent troubles with the establishment
of monotheism during his reign.
P1047:6, 95:5.6
Very wisely Ikhnaton sought to establish monotheism under the guise of the
sun-god. This decision to approach the worship of the Universal Father by
absorbing all gods into the worship of the sun was due to the counsel of the
Salemite physician. Ikhnaton took the generalized doctrines of the then existent
Aton faith regarding the fatherhood and motherhood of Deity and created a
religion which recognized an intimate worshipful relation between man and
God.
P1048:1, 95:5.7
Ikhnaton was wise enough to maintain the outward worship of Aton, the sun-god,
while he led his associates in the disguised worship of the One God, creator
of Aton and supreme Father of all. This young
teacher-king was a prolific
writer, being author of the
exposition entitled "The One God," a
book of thirty-one chapters, which the priests, when returned to power, utterly
destroyed. Ikhnaton also wrote one hundred and thirty-seven hymns, twelve
of which are now preserved in the Old Testament Book of Psalms, credited to
Hebrew authorship.
P1048:2, 95:5.8
The supreme word of Ikhnaton's religion in daily life was "righteousness,"
and he rapidly expanded the concept of right doing to embrace international
as well as national ethics. This was a generation of amazing personal piety
and was characterized by a genuine aspiration among the more intelligent men
and women to find God and to know him. In those days social position or wealth
gave no Egyptian any advantage in the eyes of the law. The family life of
Egypt did much to preserve and augment moral culture and was the inspiration
of the later superb family life of the Jews in Palestine.
P1048:3, 95:5.9
The fatal weakness of Ikhnaton's gospel was its greatest truth, the teaching
that Aton was not only the creator of Egypt but also of the "whole world,
man and beasts, and all the foreign lands, even Syria and Kush, besides this
land of Egypt. He sets all in their place and provides all with their needs."
These concepts of Deity were high and exalted, but they were not nationalistic.
Such sentiments of internationality in religion failed to augment the morale
of the Egyptian army on the battlefield, while they provided effective weapons
for the priests to use against the young king and his new religion. He had
a Deity concept far above that of the later Hebrews, but it was too advanced
to serve the purposes of a nation builder.
P1048:4, 95:5.10
Though the monotheistic ideal suffered with the passing of Ikhnaton, the idea
of one God persisted in the minds of many groups. The son-in-law of Ikhnaton
went along with the priests, back to the worship of the old gods, changing
his name to
Tutankhamen. The capital returned to
Thebes, and the priests waxed
fat upon the land, eventually gaining possession of one seventh of all Egypt;
and presently one of this same order of priests made bold to seize the crown.
P1048:5, 95:5.11 
But the priests could not fully overcome the monotheistic wave. Increasingly
they were compelled to combine and
hyphenate their gods; more and more the
family of gods contracted. Ikhnaton had associated the flaming disk of the
heavens with the creator God, and this idea continued to flame up in the hearts
of men, even of the priests, long after the young reformer had passed on.
Never did the concept of monotheism die out of the hearts of men in Egypt
and in the world. It persisted even to the arrival of the Creator Son of that
same divine Father, the one God whom Ikhnaton had so zealously proclaimed
for the worship of all Egypt.
P1048:6, 95:5.12
The weakness of Ikhnaton's doctrine lay in the fact that he proposed such
an advanced religion that only the educated Egyptians could fully comprehend
his teachings. The rank and file of the agricultural laborers never really
grasped his gospel and were, therefore, ready to return with the priests to
the old-time worship of Isis and her consort Osiris, who was supposed to have
been miraculously resurrected from a cruel death at the hands of Set, the
god of darkness and evil.
P1049:1, 95:5.13
The teaching of immortality for all men was too advanced for the Egyptians.
Only kings and the rich were promised a resurrection; therefore did they so
carefully embalm and preserve their bodies in tombs against the day of judgment.
But the democracy of salvation and resurrection as taught by Ikhnaton eventually
prevailed, even to the extent that the Egyptians later believed in the survival
of dumb animals.
P1049:2, 95:5.14
Although the effort of this Egyptian ruler to impose the worship of one God
upon his people appeared to fail, it should be recorded that the repercussions
of his work persisted for centuries both in Palestine and Greece, and that
Egypt thus became the agent for transmitting the combined evolutionary culture
of the Nile and the revelatory religion of the Euphrates to all of the subsequent
peoples of the Occident.
P1049:3, 95:5.15
The glory of this great era of moral development and spiritual growth in the
Nile valley was rapidly passing at about the time the national life of the
Hebrews was beginning, and consequent upon their sojourn in Egypt these Bedouins
carried away much of these teachings and perpetuated many of Ikhnaton's doctrines
in their racial religion.