Great Hymn to the Aten

Composed during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten — who promoted Aten, the solar disc, as the sole god worthy of worship in a form of ancient monotheism — the Great Hymn to the Aten is one of the finest surviving examples of Egyptian religious poetry. The hymn is inscribed on the walls of the tomb of Ay at Amarna and was likely composed by or for Akhenaten himself. The text opens with the rising of the sun at dawn, which fills all the earth with beauty and light, and the life that stirs when darkness is banished. The hymn celebrates the Aten as the creator of all things: the god who made the seasons, the Nile's flooding, and all living creatures. Plants grow at the Aten's command; birds take flight when it rises; fish leap in the river at its sight. The hymn dwells on the creative intimacy of the divine: Aten knows the embryo in the womb and gives every creature the breath it needs. The countries are separated — Egypt, Syria, and Nubia — each given its own Nile and its own complexion by the creator. But of all people, Akhenaten alone truly knows the Aten; the god reveals himself through the pharaoh alone.