AMENOPHIS III and IV (Amen-hotep or Amen-hothe, rendered by the Greeks as Amenothès and Amenophis: “peace of Amun”). — Pharaohs (the 7th and 8th) of the 18th Egyptian dynasty (1410–1358 B.C.).
A. III. — Adoptive son of Thutmosis IV, he ascended the throne at a very young age and had a glorious and peaceful reign of 36 years (c. 1410–1375).
Apart from a military expedition against the land of Kuš, which brought him considerable profits and war booty, including a great deal of gold, his foreign policy was peaceful. He pursued a far-sighted diplomatic policy, continuing that of his predecessor. To counter Hittite expansionism, he allied himself with the Mitanni. He also sought other alliances, with Babylonia and Assyria and with Amurru. The requests for help addressed to the pharaoh by the vassal princes of Syria in times of danger received only evasive replies or occasional reproaches directed at the state disturbing the peace. Syria was increasingly slipping out of Egyptian influence. When A. III died, the new Hittite power was becoming a danger to Egypt, made still more serious by the political indifference of his successor.
Giustino Boson
A. IV. — Son and successor of A. III; according to some, his mother Teje or Ti, associated in the documents with A. III, was Semitic. He married Nefret-tij, daughter of the Babylonian king Burnaburiaš III (ca. 1385–1361), and Taduhepa, widow of A. III and daughter of the king Tušratta of Mitanni. In poor health, he died before the age of 35. He devoted his entire reign (1375–1358) to the religious reform for which he was called the “heretical” pharaoh: the propagation of the unitary worship of the solar disk, Aton.
“Among the pharaohs he was undoubtedly the most remarkable man” (R. Kittel, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, I, 7th ed., Stuttgart 1932, p. 353). Turning toward a form of universalist monotheism and a more spiritual religiosity, A. IV wished to break the tyrannical supremacy of Amon (v.) and his priests, although his father had built the majestic towers of the temple of Amon at Thebes, and prescribed the worship of Aton alone, or the Sun god, beneath the image of the radiant solar disk, the source of all life.
To this god of all, the giver of life and benefactor of mankind, A. IV addressed a beautiful hymn of monotheistic character (“O unique God, without equal...”), preserved for us in many copies carved in the temples of the god, and engraved wholly or in part on all the tombs of Tell el-‘Amārnah, in which the words “light, truth, love, life” continually resound: it is the most interesting religious document of ancient Egypt. This hymn, which many compare with Ps. 103 (104), presents analogies with the Babylonians’ hymn to Samáš (P. Dhorme).
A. IV assumed the name Ech-en-aton (“he who pleases Aton”) and, abandoning Thebes after four years of his reign, built himself the new capital Achet-aton (“horizon of Aton”), halfway between Memphis and Thebes, approximately 10 km north of Hermopolis.
This center of the new cult, whose well-preserved remains were unearthed by the excavations at Tell el-‘Amārnah, was built hastily of mud bricks and did not survive A. IV. The reforming pharaoh gave art a new and original impetus: painting and sculpture modeled themselves on reality; fine examples are the portraits of A. IV with his mother, his wife Nefret-tij, and his six daughters. In art as in thought, A. IV appears to us “modern.”
The reform of A. IV, remarkable for its philosophical-religious significance, foundered upon the death of the young and audacious monarch. By combating the cult of Aton-Rā, whose images he had destroyed and whose name he had chiseled away, abolishing the priests of Amon and confiscating their immense possessions,
A. IV offended too many interests. Although his god was in reality the ancient solar divinity of Heliopolis, Hor-achet (Horus of the horizon), and coincided with Rā, by making him the sole god A. offended fundamental Egyptian beliefs. His second successor and son-in-law Tutanchaton hastened, shortly after his accession, to change his name to Tutanchamūn, return to Thebes, and restore the cult of Amon. The energetic pharaoh Har-em-heb (ca. 1340–1320) subsequently remedied the disorder and political decline caused by the “period of Tell el-‘Amārnah.”
For knowledge of the period, ideas, and methods of A. IV, the monuments and archival letters of Tell el-‘Amārnah are invaluable (