# Solarism and the Great Hymn to the Aten

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/afterlives-of-ancient-egypt-with-kara-cooney-4507789/solarism-and-the-great-hymn-to-the-aten
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/afterlives-of-ancient-egypt-with-kara-cooney-4507789/solarism-and-the-great-hymn-to-the-aten.md
Podcast: [Afterlives of Ancient Egypt with Kara Cooney](https://stenobird.com/podcast/afterlives-of-ancient-egypt-with-kara-cooney-4507789)
Published: 2025-03-18T17:23:00+00:00
Episode link: https://ancientnow.substack.com/p/solarism-and-the-great-hymn-to-the
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/158807525/7d30f823e5d1fc6410cf9bfdc321cf7f.mp3
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Duration seconds: 5197

## Resource

What does sun worship mean? The sun is the giant ball of fire in the sky. It warms us, embraces us. It lights up the air all around us, and its absence creates coldness, an implicit threat of non-return, something we must placate with entreaties, offerings, brave deeds. The sun is the most powerful element in our sky, heroically returning to us every morning, helping us start our daily labors of farming or carpentry or war, and as such, the sun usually takes on the guise of a masculine ruler. Indeed, solar worship is permeated with elements of kingship—thrones, crowns, scepters, sovereignty. This is masculinity incarnate. Ancient cultures did not feminize the sun; its fiery abilities are associated with masculinized omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence. The ruler, he is always watching; he knows all. He is wealth unparalleled, like pure yellow gold that seems to give off its own light from the depths of the mine. In ancient Egypt, people created solarism in tandem with the formation of their state, perfecting it as they marched through the millennia. They built straight sided pyramids, their angles personifying solar rays hitting the earth, essentially creating mountains of miraculous sunlight. The obelisk was a monolith of red granite, meant to be a shaft of light hitting the earth in perfect symmetry and purpose, its placement in temples like Heliopolis charging it with the sun god’s intimate presence. Amenhotep III of the 18th Dynasty transformed himself into Egypt’s “Dazzling Sun,” the epitome of transformative kingship. His son, also named Amenhotep, would change his name to Akhenaten—The One Who Is Effective for the Aten—showing his intimate, and unique, connection to that physical ball of fire in the sky. His new solar theology was one focused on the physicali…

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