Ikhnaton, Psalm 104, and the One God
The Urantia Book · 95:5.9
The Melchizedek Teachings in the Levant
Ikhnaton wrote: "Thou art in my heart, there is no other that knoweth thee save thy son Ikhnaton; thou hast made him wise in thy designs and in thy power." This Egyptian gospel of love continued throughout Palestine and largely influenced the religious teachings of the prophet Amos, who in turn influenced the religion of Israel.Read the full UB paper →
Ancient Source · Egyptian (Amarna period)
The Great Hymn to the Aten (~1350 BCE)
How manifold are thy works! They are hidden from the face of man, O sole God, like whom there is no other. Thou didst create the earth according to thy desire, being alone: men, all cattle large and small, all that are upon the earth. Thou settest every man in his place, thou suppliest his necessities. The world came into being by thy hand, according as thou hast made them.
The Great Hymn to the Aten, lines 73 to 95, inscribed in the tomb of Ay at Amarna, trans. Miriam Lichtheim (Ancient Egyptian Literature vol. 2, 1976)
The Great Hymn was inscribed in the tomb of the priest Ay around 1340 BCE, more than 500 years before Psalm 104 was composed.
The Parallel
Psalm 104 reads, "O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy creatures. Thou givest them their meat in due season." Ikhnaton wrote the same idea in the same structure five centuries earlier. James Henry Breasted demonstrated in The Dawn of Conscience that Psalm 104 is the Hebrew adaptation of Ikhnaton's hymn, transmitted through the broader Egyptian wisdom tradition.
Why It Matters
The UB credits Ikhnaton as one of the great human channels of Salem teaching and connects his monotheism directly to the later Hebrew prophetic tradition. The Aten religion failed politically in Egypt but its theological content survived in Hebrew worship. Psalm 104 is the surviving fingerprint.
Scholarship
- Breasted, James Henry. The Dawn of Conscience (Scribner, 1933), ch. 12.
- Lichtheim, Miriam. Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 2: The New Kingdom (California, 1976).
- Hoffmeier, James K. Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism (Oxford, 2015).
- Assmann, Jan. From Akhenaten to Moses (American University Cairo, 2014).