The Hymn to the Aten

I have just borrowed a wonderful book from the library 'The Literature of Ancient Egypt' -as I was interested to read translations of the ancient papyrus .

In particular I was reading 'The Hymn to the Aten' composed during the reign of Akhenaten, who is called the heratic king as he forsook all other deities to follow just Re and worshiped Re in the form of the aten disc. 

I like the following passage:

But when day breaks you are risen upon the horizon

and you shine in the Aten in the daytime.

When you dispel darkness and you give forth your rays

the two lands are in a festival of light,

alert and standing on their feet,

now that you have raised them up.

Their bodies are clean, / and their clothes put on

their arms are [lifted] in praise at your raising.

The entire land performs its work:

all the flocks are content with their fodder,

trees and plants grow,

birds fly up to their nests,

their wings [extended) in praise for your Ka.

all the kine prance on their feet;

everything which flies up and alights,

they live when you rise for them.

The barges sail upstream and downstream too,

for every way is open at your rising.

The fishes in the river leap before your face

when your rays are inside the sea.

From the Tomb of Aye.  translation by William Kelly Simpson from the book 'The Literature of Ancient Egypt' Yale University Press

As wonderful piece of poetry - so descriptive of the dawning of a new day.  An allegory of all living things coming to life as the sun rises. It acknowledges the sun as the reason for life (although  I'm not suggesting the god Re is responsible for that! :-)

Something which suprised me to learn from this book of translations was that there are similarities between this hymn and Psalm 104 of the Bible. "There are close parallels in wording, thought and sequence of ideas...."

The following article discusses this in more detail:

https://www.paypervids.com/comparison-hymn-aten-psalm-104/

Whilst the Hymn to the Aten is worship of an object:- the sun, Psalm 104 is worship of the god of the Jews/Christians

And this further article gives eight points of comparison.

http://www.seanet.com/~realistic/psalm104.html

The other part of this hymn that fascinates me is

The lands of Khor and Kush

and the land of Egypt:

you set every man in his place,

you allot their needs,

every one of them according to his diet,

and his lifetime is counted out.

Toungues are separate in speech,

and their characters/ as well;

their skins are different,

for you differentiate the foreigners*

*in other words the Aten has created people of different races.

I would like to explore this a bit more - how were foreigners fitted into Egyptian society..... (a later blog perhaps)