William Durand-Poole

Although I think it is important to expand your idea of what this world was like under Amenhotep III and his kind of divine status.

The other person who was fundamentally important in our Akhenaten's life is his mother, Queen Ti.

And she was also going through a process of divinization too.

In fact, under Queen Ti, Amenhotep III, her husband, creates her as a living goddess too.

And we get from Amenhotep III a very developed theogony, which stated that Amenhotep III himself was the offspring of Amun-Ra, who had slept with his mother, Mutemwia, and progenerated Amenhotep III.

So there is a kind of theogony that's going on here.

All of this is building up the divine status of Pharaoh and the royal women as well.

And of course, the royal women become very important in the Amarna period.

The name Aten starts emerging in the last decade of Amenhotep III's reign.

Now, we can't pin that on Akhenaten at all yet because, as I say, he doesn't appear in the imagery or anything.

A sun disk, a shining disk.

And so we see, for instance, Amenhotep has a beautiful palace built at Malkata on the West Bank.

And there he has a lake built.

And it's called the Lake of the Aten.

And a bark that floats on the lake is called the Bark of the Aten.

And so this name is getting used more and more.

And it's kind of interesting as well.

As this name becomes used, so Amenhotep III's iconography begins to change.

And one thing Egyptologists have noticed is in the 10 years before his death,

his iconography, his portraits become more and more youthful all the time.