FEATURES
Past Beliefs In the here and now, in a world dominated by a few major religions, it is difficult to get a handle on how earlier belief systems operated and developed within their respective societies. GWIL OWEN ARPS
Small Aten temple. Temples in the city were aligned to the rising sun
W
e often forget that our western Christian church has behaved in different ways over the centuries: as a small sect - initially, as a major political body - Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV at Canossa for example, and with the rise of protestantism as a collection of groups with social agendas. Its history, most history indeed, is written by the elite and the powerful. The general population is mostly silent. Here are two examples from the past of how belief systems might be interpreted in different ways.
1 - Egypt’s new kingdom; the reign of Akhenaten: c.1350 BC. Akhenaten - aka the heretic pharaoh - changed the state worship system from a broad range of gods to that of one god - The sun god, the “Aten”. To further emphasise this he founded a new capital 12
in middle Egypt, roughly half way between Cairo and Luxor. This city and its associated farmland occupied an area some 17 by10 kilometres between the eastern and western desert escarpments. His new city was on the eastern bank of the river. Along with two major temples, an administrative centre and housing for citizens, there were outlying settlements for the labour forces. The city was still a work in progress when Akhenaten died some three and a half decades later. These bald facts do not tell us how his beliefs operated in practice. Was his monotheism as expressed in the textual evidence rigidly enforced? - there have been excavated shrines to other gods within the new development. He continued the pharaohonic practice of interceding with the god to ensure that disasters did not happen - was this politically expedient?
