Psalm 104, The Great Hymn to the Aten
Today’s topic comes from Douglas A. Knight and Amy Jill Levine’s excellent book, The Meaning of the Bible.
On the wall of a 14th century BCE tomb in Egypt archaeologists found a beautiful hymn to the god Aten. The Aten’s claim to fame is that he is sole God of a monotheistic belief espoused by Pharaoh Akhenaten (1352-1336) in an era when most Egyptians believed in many gods.
What’s curious about the Great Hymn to the Aten is that it closely mirrors Psalm 104 in our Bible as a song of praise to the creator, though written hundreds of years before any of the Bible. Psalm 104, of course, is addressed not to the Aten but to YHWH, the god of the Hebrews. Here are some parallels highlighted by Knight and Levine’s book:
O Sole God beside whom there is none! – to Aten
O YHWH my God you are very great. – to YHWH
How many are your deeds … You made the earth as you wished, you alone, All peoples, herds, and flocks. – to Aten
O YHWH, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. to YHWH
When you set in western lightland, Earth is in darkness as if in death – to Aten
You make darkness, and it is night, when all the animals of the forest come creeping out. – to YHWH
Every lion comes from its den – to Aten
The young lions roar for their prey .. when the sun rises, they withdraw, and lie down in their dens. – to YHWH
When you have dawned they live, When you set they die; – to Aten
When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die – to YHWH
You set every man in his place, You supply their needs; Everyone has his food. – to Aten
These all look to you to give them their food in due season. – to YHWH
The entire land sets out to work – to Aten People go out to their work and to their labor until the evening – to YHWH
The fish in the river dart before you, Your rays are in the midst of the sea. – to Aten
Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there – to YHWH
Birds fly from their nests, Their wings greeting your ka – to Aten
By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches – to YHWH
He makes waves on the mountain like the sea, To drench their fields and their towns. – to Aten
You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills … The trees of YHWH are watered abundantly – to YHWH
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The One and Only True God has made Himself KNOWN to mankind since HE first create them!
Could it be possible that Akhenaten had an encounter with the one true God? Even the pagan king Nebuchadnezzar is recorded acknowledging the one true God in the book of Daniel.It is certainly within the realm of possibility.
Yes I think this is it.
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Peshittafrancois
Guys, you miss the point. It says in Knight and Levine’s book that the hymn to Aten was written some 600 years before the Psalm. What’s wrong with admitting that it was a direct copy, instead of blubbering about an encounter with God? Have you ever heard of the word ‘plagiarism’?
Rebone, this quotes 11 verses that have similarity. The psalm has 35 verses. It doesn’t make sense to call it a copy. What is more likely and it makes more sense, is to say the these two people lived next to each other and many of the same ideas and expressions were common in that part of the world.
You could not have wrapped it up any better. Bless Am-un
Amen
Quite frankly, the revised timeline now shows that David, let alone Moses, was BEFORE this. Not after. Not only that, this Pharaoh WASNT MONOTHEISTIC. He allowed for other God’s to be worshipped, such as Osiris. It was just Amun whom he had a problem with.
While there are similarities, there is no actual evidence of copying – not from either one.
So bitter and eager are people to deny and denounce Yahweh – the one, and only, God. The same God that loved the world enough to send his Only Son to live the perfect life that we can’t, and to to die on a cross.
I think it’s none of these things. It is evidence of a common literary tradition that was present in that region and at that time. I am intrigued by the possibility that Akenhaten bears some relation to the story of Moses and The Exodus but there is too much time difference. Don’t totally discount the idea of God making an early appearance though. Something very powerful must have happened to the Pharoah to move him to change his name and introduce an entirely new and monotheistic religion to a civilization that had been polytheistic for tens of centuries!
Akenhaten was not the first “monotheist” in Egypt.
Ancient Egyptian records themselves speaks of the surrounding nations and some of the inhabitants of the Valley of the Nile embracing monotheism.
In fact….during the time of Akenhaten…Egyptians were declaring different “gods” as one..
You would have Akenhaten proclaiming Aten as God in Aten and others claiming Amen as God alone in Thebes…same would go for other Egyptian “monotheists” who worshiped Ra or Tem. This was commonplace throughout the country.
Akenhaten was only “revolutionary” in the area of attempting to combine monotheistic beliefs with political for Egypt.
Akhenaten’s reform was an attempt at “power seize” away from the priests, whose wealth and status challenged those of the pharaohs. Akhenaten along with his chief wife; Nefertiti,assumed the priestly role.
Akenhaten attempted to use monotheistic ideology in order to seize power away from the priests(who’s status and wealth rivals those of pharaohs)…declaring himself as High priest and also extending authority to his chief wife; Nefertiti, which was unheard of in those days of Egypt..
A few other things I forgot to address..First the claim of plagiarism…arguably this claim is debatable. It would be more accurate to assert literature inspiration(not by any stretch of the imagination)…as the ideology running through the hymn of Aten is completely different from Psalms 104
(I digress for the moment).
The hymn to Aten attributed to Akhenaten..is not unique in its essence…. It also shows markings of influences. There are older solar hymns written before the Amarna period.
Besides; Akhenaten left no canonical text. His tutelage were orally past on…and aided by imagery. Although he is traditionally credited with authorship of the “Great Hymn” (which does not have a byline or an inscriber’s mark); we cannot be sure about its true writer..
Akhenaten was also no real monotheist…because records show he condoned the worship of Osiris (among other gods….much of his animosity was targeted at the god Amun). Excavators unearthed many clay cobras idols at Amarna as well.
The pharaoh’s push for monotheistic dogma was more about seizing power away from the priests..
As touching on the principle of the hymn of Aten and Psalms 104….Sun worship is strictly forbidden in the Bible. The author of the psalms regards the sun as the creation..whereas the writer of the hymn; proclaims the sun itself as the god/creator. There are two obviously different trains of thoughts being asserted.
The principle of isostasy(chapter104L5-9) was not discovered until approximately 1900 AD…yet it was precisely documented in Psalm 104…which is believed to have been written in about 1015 BC…
Psalm 104 also contains an accurate chronicle of creation occurrence..only recently known to modern science.
Your statement is filled with invalid information.
Akhenaten did not need a canonical text, nearly all of the letters formulated to form the Bible we were written on Papyrus in the Greek language. Those letters were never intended to be placed into one book to later be considered canonical: “accepted as scripture”.
When you deal with Ancient Egypt, you’re dealing with the foundation of early concepts of Heaven among many other things that were plagiarized and placed into the Bible. Each culture attributed to writing the Bible [Greeks-Hebrew] spent many years in Egypt. They entered without a solid religion and left with belief systems based upon what they observed there.
You obviously know nothing about Ancient Egypt or Akhenaten. Your claimed that Akhenatens tutelage was passed on verbally, but his actual Hymn to Aten can still be found in the Southern Tombs of Egypt written in stone, along with wonderful artwork all throughout Museums. Where can we find any original copy of the Psalms or any “original” book of the Hebrew Bible? The Original Hebrew Bible is none existent.
The Book of Job is supposedly no older than 1500 BC according to religious myth, yet during that timeframe there was no written Hebrew Language yet. Jobs age dating has no archeological
proof to back the claim, as there are no fragments to test. By 1500 B.C. Egypt was already in their 18th Dynasty and all the major religious texts were written and can still be seen.
Egyptians were always monotheist. The chief God was Ptah but the Egyptians used different representations of God. The forbiddance of Sun worship in the Bible is irrelevant. The schizophrenic God of the Bible (of whom had different names and a wife – Asherah) forbid everything from flat noses to long hair. Akhenaten was wise enough to realize, the Sun gives life to earth and he represented that through beautiful work and expression of God.
Lastly, Psalms 104 does NOT contain an accurate chronicle of creation. Only ignorant creationist make that claim. In reality, the Sun actually gives life and it the reason Earth exists in the first place. It would seem as if Akhenaten understood that.
When you find the original manuscript of Psalms or any other book in the Bible, written by first hand sources, your argument might be respected.
We can agree that Monotheism was not new to Egypt…..
..which was clearly stated in my prior postings:
Akhenaten was not the first “monotheist” in Egypt.
Ancient Egyptian records themselves speaks of the
surrounding nations and some of the inhabitants of the
Valley of the Nile embracing monotheism.
In fact….during the time of Akhenaten…Egyptians were
declaring different “gods” as one..
You would have Akhenaten proclaiming Aten as God in Aten
and others claiming Amen as God alone in Thebes…same would
go for other Egyptian “monotheists” who worshiped Ra or
Tem. This was commonplace throughout the country.
There are older solar hymns written before the Amarna period…
in which deities were declared as “the one and only god”
(although Egyptians of the time were known for proclaiming many
different gods as the “one and only”).
Evidences for monotheistic practice preceding Akhenaten found in ancient Egypt records…
(Too many to list), But two are:
“Precepts of Kaqemna” and the “Precepts of Ptah-hetep,”
Monotheism presences in Egypt may have been common, but
Ancient Egyptians were mostly polytheist throughout much of their antiquity.
The concept of heaven, God, and spirituality predates Egypt
by hundreds..even thousands of years….this is testified
in their own records that document the historical beliefs and religious
practices of its neighbors…
Then there is other evidences such as (CBM 13532 or CBS 13532 )
which speaks of Noah’s flood..The information..includes Mizraim..
I think many/most of us would agree that Egyptians are
direct descendants of Mizraim (founder of Egypt)?
Mizraim (and various other forms in other cultures), in both Hebrew and
Aramaic is the name for Egypt..
Mizraim (son of Ham….grandson of Noah)
existences (birth) is said to be AFTER the flood..
(Genesis 10:1 and 6)….
So there were whole concepts (including biblical) of heaven,God, spirituality, and
religion before Egypt was conceived.
I do believe I stated that the hymn to aten
has no byline or an inscriber mark;and thus
we cannot be sure about its true writer..no
matter how much tradition accredited it to Akhenaten..
.. Akhenaten, himself left no known canonical text with
a byline or inscribed mark..That is just a fact (no where did
I say he needed too..He just didn’t).
But the forbiddance of Sun worship in the Bible cannot be irrelevant
if one is attempting to make a claim of f plagiarism…it simply
cannot work that way..if you have two different concepts being
asserted in the sources being compared..
Psalms 104, indeed contain accurate chronicle of creation…and
this can be readily searched out by anyone..
Psalm 104 states scientific facts:
“Who coverest thyself with light as with a
garment . Who stretchest out the heavens like a
curtain”.
Modern science teaches that in the beginning.
light appeared before anything else of
significance and covered everything.
(Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment)
After this emergence of light …the universe
began to immediately expand.
(Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain)…Just for starters.
Akhenaten’s sun god (aten) grows “tired and weary”
(and will cease at some point)… It is burning
out from the lost of nuclear fuel and its core
is shrinking…collapsing inward…whereas the biblical writers’
God is everlasting… (Just another good point for proving
they aren’t one in same or do they advocate the save ideology)
(Isaiah 40:28)
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is
the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of
the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and
His understanding no one can fathom.
Original manuscripts aren’t always needed to gain one’s’
respect for another’s side of an argument..Just a reasonable amount of
critical thinking skills, open-mindedness (as much as possible to not
be completely tuned out by one’s own personal bias), and the ability
to understand what is actually being stated.
CBM 13532 or CBS 13532 dating of 2,000-2,200 B.C.
counteracts that there were no written Hebrew language by 1,500 BC.
How can you claim Psalms 104 doesn’t contain accuracy..
when anyone can read Psalms 104: 5-9 (written around 1015 BC) and see the principle of isostasy (not discovered until approximately 1900 AD) in the exact same locality in the origin chronology where it was a prevalent facet in the continents’ inception?
Thats tellin them truth. The ancient egyptians knew a high order of math, the binary, metric, pie, and science. They knew about the order of the solar system thousands of years before europeans. Most likely they knew that stars manufacture or create elements and planets beside heat and light. However they winged on what knowledge they had and assigned a judge and creator. What God or Most high could ask for more unless they were divinly visit and highly instructed. Just think if they never existed. Think!
As for the actual subject at hand…Psalm 104 had no need to depend on the Aten Hymn…as much of the data therein can be found in Mosaic writings and older texts such as Job..which all predates Aten Hymn…
Mosaic writings and the book of Job does NOT predate the Hymn to Aten. Show the archeological proof. There are no Physical copies of anything in the Bible that come anywhere near the date of The Hymn to Aten. Stop with the lies.
..There is no Archeological record of there ever being a Moses in Egypt.
Then you admit that none of the Mosaic writings or biblical writings could be based on Egypt?
You’re sadly misinformed. A Fragmentary tablet labelled CBM 13532 or CBS 13532 found in Nippur…
which is almost verbatim to the biblical detail account
of Noah’s flood…including the documented account of Noah’s monotheistic worship)…
the dating is roughly 2,000-2,200 B.C..
The 2,000 BC dating places the cuneiform work to the time
of Abraham (which is prior to Moses, Akhenaten, and
The “standard”Akkadian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh).
The flood part of the Epic of Gilgamesh dates much later, to around 650 B.C.
(Keyword is the “Flood part” which was a late addition….
produced from the Atrahasis account written, according to its own
scribe, around 1800 BC.).. it has been reconstructed.
The 2,200 BC dating place it before the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh.
The library in which it was found was destroyed around 2100 BC by the Elamites….which tells us the tablet can not be much later than that.
The language founded in those fragments testifies to the fact that the STORY
(not the actual flood which goes back even further) originated
almost thousands of years from when it was written:
(meaning this 2,000-2,200 BC record is possibly a late copy of the original documentation)
The language of this tablet is unlike those discovered alongside it..
It is quite different from that of most of the other tablets
It’s a resemblance of biblical Hebrew. GET all available facts and information before you’re lead into rejecting the biblical account of human history and spirituality..Just saying!
We find that 70 souls left Canaan and traveled into Egypt. Genesis 46:13; “Among them there was one man called Job – son of Issachar:
You are all close, but are missing the point.
One had to come before Moses and lay the foundation for the giver of the laws from God the Almighty.
Research the word “Habiru” (or “Apiru”) and their relationship to Hebrew. That is a good first start.
Then, research Queen Tiye the mother of Akhenaten and her influence over her son.
Then, research the relationship between Queen Tiye and her Husband, Amenhotep III. There you will find her helping her husband who is struggling with the priest cults who are getting richer and fatter from his victories.
Therefore, you need to strip the priest cults of their power over the land, the people and even pharaoh! But how?
In comes Queen Tiye who teaches her son the ways of the Habiru. He learns from them the teachings of Yahweh the one true and only God and Creator.
Now, Akhenaten has laid the foundation for the coming of the law giver, Moses who was an Egyptian.
The one who came before Moses in the single worship of Yahweh, the one true and only God and Creator was Abraham. From him came a whole group of monotheistic worshippers(The Hebrews). And as you stated…Queen Tiye and her Husband, Amenhotep III were struggling with the priest cults over power; teaching their son Akhenaten to use monotheism in order to gain control. But Akhenaten did not lay the foundation for the coming of the law giver, Moses who was actually a Hebrew.
I have not read all replies. However, it is wise to note that recent evidence points to Amenhotep III grandfather of Tutankhamen and father to Ankhenaten noted that he encountered ” Shasu of Yahu ( YHW ) ” whereas the Shasu may well be Midianite Bedouins with “Yahu” being a toponym for a mountain. Hence, when Ankhenaten began his conversion to “monotheism” in the form of Aten worship runaway slaves may have taken this concept and merged it with the Midian mountain deity.
Biblical archeology recognizes now that the Exodus as stated in the Bible did not occur. Rather, Israelites were Canaanite serfs who rebelled against their overlords. They then established new cities in the Judean highland. The runaway slaves of Egypt carried this modified Yahweh monotheistic worship to them. A good special on this is The Bible’s Buried Secrets a Nova presentation on PBS.
People are ignoring the fact that the Hebrews were an establish people with a set of customs and monotheistic beliefs (as taught by Abraham) before being slaves in Egypt. And Canaanites were a seperate group with their own set of beliefs..polytheistic mostly..
And not to mention that it is a known fact that the Canaanites were already well established in that area before any references to Israelites in the Judean highland or slaves of Egypt.
We find that 70 souls left Canaan and traveled into Egypt (Genesis 46:13) with their monotheistic worship.. that they inherited from Abraham, while the Canaanites held polytheistic beliefs.. Canaanites have a long history to the land before Hebrews were established as a people….there is also records of the two seperate groups co-existing at the same time (so it’s impossible for them to be one and the same).
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The mystery has actually been resolved by Dr. David Rohl. Akhenaten and King David were contemporaries; they were not hundreds of years apart. The pharaoh of the Exodus was actually Dedumose II of the 13th dynasty, not the traditional Rameses II. The truth of David Rohl’s discoveries will surely be accepted across Egyptology in time. Look him up.
Can’t believe no one has mentioned Joseph. Wouldn’t this have correlated to the time Joseph was reported to have been in Egypt?