The Aten began as the visible disk of Ra, the golden face of the sun crossing the sky, before Akhenaten elevated it above all other gods and declared the disk itself the sole divine power in Egypt.
Akhenaten proclaimed the Aten the sole god of Egypt, closed Amun's great temples at Karnak, and ordered his name chiseled from every monument — a divine usurpation reversed only after Akhenaten's death, when Amun's priests restored the hidden god and condemned the Aten's worship as heresy.
Akhenaten proclaimed himself the sole prophet and earthly son of the Aten, rewriting Egypt's theology around the sun disk alone — only through the pharaoh could any person know the Aten, and only through the Aten could the pharaoh sustain the world.
Akhenaten founded Akhetaten on virgin ground in Middle Egypt as the Aten's sole earthly dwelling, a city of open-roofed temples where the sun disk's rays could fall unobstructed upon its altars.
The Aten's rays terminate in hands holding ankhs, pressing the symbol of life to the nostrils of Akhenaten and his family — the sun disk as the sole source of the vital breath that sustains all living things.
The Great Hymn to the Aten declares the sun disk sole creator of all life and lands, the only god who made the world and sustains it — the fullest theological statement of Atenism, praising the Aten as the one deity who needs no other beside him.
Nefertiti stands beside Akhenaten beneath the Aten's outstretched rays, both receiving ankhs pressed to their faces — the only queen depicted as equal co-recipient of the sun disk's life-giving power.
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