ping
“And Akhenaten’s head was misshapen because of a condition in which skull bones fuse at an early age.”
You mean, that’s not a HAT?
Hasn’t anyone seen Earth Final Conflict? This whole thing is explained in that show several times. They were all aliens.
That's Nefertiti's story and she's sticking to it!
Notice all his stewards around him have similar physiques. I think it is just the artistic style of the stonemason.
They always refer to him as a Monotheist. In reality, he probably practised monolatrism or henotheism, i.e. the worship of one god alone while still acknowledging the exitance of others.
I was an art history student. I thought images of people all looked that way because artists’ representations became so stylized that that they followed a strict formula in representing humans. I read somewhere that the style was forced on Egyptian artists by the priestly class who dictated positively EVERYTHING in the culture. Can someone clarify that. My memory is vague.
He probably heard, as a child, how special he was, and in adulthood he believed it to the point where he encouraged caricatures that exaggerated his distinctive features, and even made them the standard. (Thank goodness the sculptors were occasionally permitted to do more realistic depictions.)
What always intrigued me about the art of his time, was the absence of depictions of the male heir. You don’t see a boy among his daughters by the great royal wife; you don’t see a boy heir by any other wife; you don’t see early depictions of Akhenaton with his father Amenhotep III, or any other sons with A3, to my knowledge.
As for the misshapen skull, somebody must have started it, some powerful figure that the others emulated. Probably the same with the Mayans and their crossed eyes that they thought so becoming.
Well, that’s what happens when 1000 years of monarch generations marry their sisters...
This condition is a mystery to me. Testicular feminization syndrome (aka: androgen insensitivity syndrome) works for all aspects of this, except it results in sterility for the adult. Early (perinatal) excess estrogen results in permanent masculinization, not feminization. Alcoholism could lead to adult onset of feminizaion and gynecomastia via excess, adult, estrogen.
In short, those endocrine conditions that are due to estrogen and which feminize are limited to only adult onset, and I'm going to have to do more literature search to find out what this extremely rare condition might be.
According to Will Durant’s “The History of Civilization,” Volume I; Amenhotep III came to power in the year 1380 B.C. (pg 206) and his son Amenhotep IV was the pharoah that changed his name to Ikhnaton (pg 205) shortly after taking power. Upon changing his name, Ikhnaton went into revolt against the religion of Amon and practices of Amon’s priests (pg 206) and introduced monotheism to Egypt. Iknhaton also married Nofretete and had seven daughters (pg 211). And Tutenkhamon was a son-in-law of Amenhotep IV (pg 213).
On page 206, Durant writes: “In the great temple at Karnak there was now a large harem, supposedly the concubines of Amon, but in reality serving to amuse the clergy. The young emperor, whose private life was a model of fidelity, did not approve of this sacred harlotry, the blood of the ram slaughtered in sacrifice to Amon stank in his nostrils; and the traffic of priests in magic and charms, and their corruption disgusted him to the point of violent protest ... With a poet’s audacity he threw compromise to the winds, and announced bravely that all these gods and ceremonies were a vulgar idolatry, that there was but one god — Aton.”
Durant’s work is worth reading ...
I actually think I saw something on Discovery Channel or NG Channel or Science, or someplace that suggested that Neferititi was actually Akhenaten, and that’s why his features look so feminine. Probably feminist claptrap, but it was interesting (the way reading about alien abductions is interesting).
susie
Immanuel Velikovsky’s “Oedipus and Akhnaton” is an interesting read even if heretical.
I have feeling Queen Christina of Sweden was something like that she had manly charactisics
Or his BIG Brother.
Well, That settles it then!