The Life and Times of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt

The most radical pharaoh in three thousand years of Egyptian history, Akhnaton dismantled the powerful priestly hierarchy of Amun, erased the names of forgotten gods from temple walls, and moved his capital into the desert to worship a single deity: the Aten, the disc of the sun. For five years, Egypt practiced something the world had never seen. Then, upon his death, his successors burned his monuments and scattered his memory to dust. Arthur Weigall wrote this biography in 1910, drawing on excavations that were still actively uncovering the ruins of Akhnaton's lost capital at Amarna. He reconstructs both the public revolution and the private man, presenting a pharaoh who was either the world's first monotheist or its greatest heretic, or perhaps both.