New Tumblr: Truth and Light (Danael Is Real) Preston Daniel Blythe

October 24, 2012

prophecyofdanael:

Amazing song! Hold On Til The Night by Greyson Chance

(Source: dannyblythe)

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The Creation; The Following; The Flood; The New Year

prophecyofdanael:

I was born on 7-10-85 (July 10, 1985)

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1

(The 1st through the 6th day, God created. The following day…)

“Then God blessed the 7th Day.” Genesis 2:3

“The Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created…” Genesis 6:7

“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” Genesis 6:8

“Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God.” Genesis 6:9

“And it came to pass after 7 days that the waters of the flood were on the earth.” Genesis 7:10

“Then the ark rested in the 7th month (July) and the 17th day of the month.” Genesis 8:4

“And the waters decreased until the 10th month (October), on the 1st day of the month (Oct. 1st).” Genesis 8:5

“At the end of 40 days (Nov. 9), Noah opened the window…” Genesis 8:6

“He waited another 7 days…(Nov. 15th)…” Genesis 8:10

“He waited another 7 days…(Nov. 21st)…did not return…anymore.” Genesis 8:12

“It came to pass, on January 1st, the waters dried up from the earth.” Genesis 8:13

“On February 27th, the earth was dried.” Genesis 8:14

“God said, ‘Go out of the ark…and be fruitful and multiply on earth.” Genesis 8:16, 17

“So Noah came out.” Genesis 8:18

“So he went to his father and said, ‘My father.’ And he said, ‘Here I am. Who are you, my son?” Genesis 27:18

“And his father said to him, ‘Come near now and kiss me, my son.’” Genesis 27:26

“And he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his clothing, and blessed him and said:

Surely the smell of my son
Is like the smell of a field
Which the Lord has blessed
Therefore may God give you
of the dew of heaven,
of the fatness of the earth,
And plenty of grain and wine.
Let peoples serve you,
And nations bow down to you.
Be master over your brethren,
And let your mother’s sons bow down to you.
Cursed be everyone who curses you!
And blessed be those who bless you!” Genesis 27:27-29

(Source: dannyblythe)

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Via Preston Daniel Blythe

October 21, 2012

Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, and Justin Bieber :) <3

Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, and Justin Bieber :) <3

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‘A Job For You’ (by Justin Bieber, to God)

prophecyofdanael:

*****************************************
I try to talk to You, but You don’t answer;
I stand up and you pay attention.
But You have become cruel to me;
With all Your might, You oppose me.
You spoil my success.
I know that You will bring me to death. And to the House of Heaven.
I have made a covenant (a lasting promise) with my eyes; Why then should I be interested in any girl?
For what will You give me if I choose a girl?
Is it the conquering of my haters?
And the disaster for those that sin?
Does He know what I do, how I live, and where I go?
If I have lied, then
judge me, so that You will see if I can admit my wrongs; if I have integrity.
If I have not lived for You, or my heart was not with You through that covenant I made with my eyes;
then let me work for You, so others may come to know You; Yes, let my work be removed if I choose to not work for You.
If I have wanted to give my heart to a girl,
or if I have been interested in another other than You;
then let my future wife be a whore, and let all worship her instead of You.
That would be evil;
It would be judged by You.
And You would punish All with the Fires of Hell, and I would lose everything.
If I have not listened to the needs of those that work for me;
when they have complained about me;
What will you say?
If you scold me, how will I respond?
Because they are equal to me, according to You. For You made them just as You made me. Weren’t we all birthed by You?
If I have not helped the poor, or if I have caused my mother to fail,
If I haven’t shared what You have provided for me,
so that my brothers and sisters would not get to know You;
(Because I have known You since I was a child, and have considered You my Father and my God, as I was also a shining light to my mother from her womb until today.);
If I have seen anyone go without clothing,
Or anyone without shelter;
If I have physically hurt any of my brothers or sisters-any of Your Children,
When I knew You more and understood You better than any of my brothers and sisters-Your Children-have known You,
Then let all who believe in me stop believing;
Let my arm be ripped from my body (the arm that I have tattooed the name of my believers onto.).
For Your wrath is a terror to me, and because of Your Majesty, I cannot go on.
If I have made money or gold my goal or my hope, or said to money, “I rely on you.”
If I had ever boasted or been proud of being wealthy,
because I had gained so much-even when I knew I had Your hand;
If I have watched the sun shine,
or the moon move as the sun shined on it,
and I have fantasized about You in secret, or in private, and I have spoken things of lust, concerning You;
Then I deserve to be judged,
For I did it without You.
Everytime, I denied You by not being with you in person. And that was a sin.
If I have been happy when seeing a hater fail,
or felt lifted up when evil brought them down
(even though I didn’t want their soul to be damaged);
If my peers have been satisfied with the fine foods that they eat;
While their brothers and sisters are homeless and hungry;
If I have thought that my sins were approved by You simply because I am Your first son;
Because I feared the World would defeat me, and did not want to upset those that support me,
So I stayed closeted with my knowledge and belief in You and my relationship with You.
Even though You were there to protect me!
Here is my mark.
I turned from you
I was Anti-God.
If only You would answer me,
And tell everyone that You wrote The Holy Bible!
I would carry the sins in Your book and make it a crown of thorns.
I will declare You my Lord and Guider,
Like a prince, I will come to You.
“If I am hated for it, even if many are upset
If I have taken Your Knowledge and gained what I have gained with no help from You, even financially; or caused deaths because I did not listen to You when I should have;
Then bring thorns instead of bread.

And Highness instead of Drunkenness.”

The words of Job are ended.

***************************************

(From the Bible: Job 30:20-23, 31:1-40)

(Source: dannyblythe)

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Via Preston Daniel Blythe

October 19, 2012

Justin and I (He has fallen from Grace)

prophecyofdanael:

Mehtab Dhillon

  • ohhhh

  • wt hpnd

  • Danæl Dæz Blythe
    2 minutes ago
    Danæl Dæz Blythe

    • I wanted to apologize and tell you I love you

    • because that is true

    • but I have to move on without you

    • and I’m sorry you didn’t take me seriously

    • you can’t hurt me anymore

    • it’s my turn to be me

    • goodbye

  • Mehtab Dhillon
    about a minute ago
    Mehtab Dhillon

    • ohhh sry dear

    • lu u too

  • Danæl Dæz Blythe
    about a minute ago
    Danæl Dæz Blythe

    • you should have never let the world tell you what to do

  • Mehtab Dhillon
    about a minute ago
    Mehtab Dhillon

    • i thought u were kiddding

  • Danæl Dæz Blythe
    about a minute ago
    Danæl Dæz Blythe

    • you are an adult and fully capable of making your decisions

  • Mehtab Dhillon
    about a minute ago
    Mehtab Dhillon

    • :’(cry

  • Danæl Dæz Blythe
    about a minute ago
    Danæl Dæz Blythe

    • if you dont get here today

    • I’m not going to be in a relationship with you

    • if you are too busy for me

    • then choose the world

    • if you would rather choose Me; then choose Me

  • Mehtab Dhillon
    about a minute ago
    Mehtab Dhillon

    • m not an adult yet

  • Danæl Dæz Blythe
    about a minute ago
    Danæl Dæz Blythe

    • goodbye

  • Mehtab Dhillon
    a few seconds ago
    Mehtab Dhillon

    • sry :’(cry

  • Danæl Dæz Blythe
    a few seconds ago
    Danæl Dæz Blythe

    • may I forgive you, Justin

(Source: dannyblythe)

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Via Preston Daniel Blythe

October 18, 2012

New Age, Eternal It Will Be

  1.    On this eighteenth day of October, two thousand and twelve A.D.; As the sun sets and the stars shine; The End has come; And a New Day begins. There is Eternity in this Day. The ‘7 Days of Punishment’ has come to an End, and the final Judgement shall be rendered.
  2.    In the making of This Day, it has been decided that Life will continue as before. A New Start to a Growing Existence.
  3.    Man has failed to achieve Heaven in the Old Age. May the New Age be a Time for Learning; A Time for God. And Eternal it shall Be.

October 18, 2012

-written by prestondanielblythe on October 17, 2012 (21:11pm)

(100 words)

  • 20. End
  • 33. Day
  • 67. New
  • 85. New
  • 94. for
  • 97. Eternal
  • 100. Be

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Click the picture to go to my NEW Tumblr! (this one is no longer in use.) -danael

Click the picture to go to my NEW Tumblr!

(this one is no longer in use.)

-danael

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October 10, 2012

The Message

prophecyofpreston:

   God is love. God loves. God chooses love. And I have a choice in love.

   In my life, I have fallen in love three times, and have felt love for another many more than that. But I wasn’t happy with any of those relationships the way that they were. My first love, I was young. They were all younger than I. I love to feel youthful and I find that physically attractive as well. I’ve never been in a relationship or had someone love me and be with me. I’ve always just had myself.

   I have realized that my newest love has caused me to have a tainted view on love and on myself. In relying on this person, Justin Drew Bieber, I have fallen hard. I lost my mind, my caring for others; for my family and old friends. I have lost jobs, money. I went homeless a few times-especially this time, this year-from March 2012 up to now. I have no money and no job. I rely on people and places that I don’t fully respect or appreciate because they do not treat me with the respect that I deserve. And I’ve come to realize that the Spirit is moving me away from Justin. I do not find any coincidence in the fact that I had liked and probably fell in love with three different people named Justin within the last few years. I was led by the Spirit to Justin to learn. And for my children to learn from me, through my experiences. I do hope to have children one day. To have a family and live a happy, successful life. I have realized that-yes, I love Justin, but I haven’t met him in person. And to put off my life any longer is foolish. I do what I have done for love. I didn’t want anything if I couldn’t be with Justin. But as he tours the world and increases his fame and influence all to announce his love for me-ever since he was a child, I hope he will change his course and realize that we are not going to be together.

   If you read this, Justin, take this message seriously. I am done trying for you. I now do it for myself and my future love. I have left my family and friends behind, and now I’m leaving what I thought was “my everything,” behind. I will show the world that it doesn’t have to be with you. Like you said in your songPick Me, “You should pick me.” Well, it is a choice.

   And I am going to continue to keep searching for the right love for me and for my world. I will climb up and out of my situation.

   Here this message: Justin, you are not my other half. You never have been. God works in mysterious ways through the Spirit. I needed your help and your example of what love should not be to show the world that love is stronger than the world. You, unfortunately, have chose the world. It was meant to be for me to go through this struggle.

   Please, take this seriously and move on with your life and find someone else to love and devote yourself to. For this life is precious. And no time should be wasted. It is possible for you to move on. Please don’t be upset. Believe me when I say that it is possible for you to move on. And, no, it won’t be the end of the world if we move on without each other. It will just feel like it until we find our true loves. Stay strong. And help us do what we have to do: My other half and I.

Love always,

Preston Daniel Blythe

written 10/10/12 15:15pm

(Source: dannyblythe)

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Via The Living Word

No Justin, I’m not an “Eenie Meanie Miney Mo Lover” Ok? And you knew that. So shutup your face.

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prestondanielblythe:

Justin Bieber - So Sick - Stripped Performances

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prophecyofpreston:

Oops…I did it again.

(Source: dannyblythe)

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dannyjbieber:

Oops, I did it again…I played with your heart. Got lost in the Game. Oops, you think I’m in love?…and I’m sent from above? Oops, I did it again. :/

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Oops, I did it again…I played with your heart. Got lost in the Game. Oops, you think I’m in love?…and I’m sent from above? Oops, I did it again. :/

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This gave rise to the idea that Akhenaten might have been bisexual:

prophecyofpreston:

This gave rise to the idea that Akhenaten might have been bisexual:

There has also been interest in the identity of the Pharaoh Smenkhkare, who was the immediate successor to Akhenaten. In particular, descriptions on a small box seemed to refer to “Smenkhkare beloved of Akhenaten”.[59]

This theory seems to originate from objects found in the tomb of Tutankhamen in the 1920s. The Egyptologist Percy Newberry[59] then linked this to one of the stele exhibited in the Berlin Museum which pictured two rulers, naked and seated together – the older caressing the younger and the shoulder offering support. He identified these as the rulers Akhenaten and Smenkhkare.

In the 1970s, John Harris identified the figure pictured alongside Akhenaten as Nefertiti, arguing that she may have actually been elevated to co-regent and perhaps even succeeded temporarily as an independent ruler, changing her name to Smenkhkare.[59]

Nicholas Reeves and other Egyptologists contend that Smenkhkare was the same person as Neferneferuaten, who ruled together with Akhenaten as co-regent for the final one or two years of Akhenaten’s reign. On several monuments, the two are shown seated side by side.[87] However, recent academic research has established that this is not possible since Neferneferuaten was a female ruler—she used the words “Effective for her husband” on several items[88] whereas Smenkhkare was a male king.

(Source: dannyblythe)

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Akhenaten (Father to King Tut(ankhaten-(men)))

prophecyofpreston:

The last dated appearance of Akhenaten and the Amarna family is in the tomb of Meryra II, and dates from second month, year 12 of his reign.[37] After this the historical record is unclear, and only with the succession of Tutankhamun is somewhat clarified.

Akhenaten planned to relocate Egyptian burials on the East side of the Nile (sunrise) rather than on the West side (sunset), in the Royal Wadi in Akhetaten.[citation needed] His body was removed after the court returned to Thebes, and recent genetic tests have confirmed that the body found buried in tomb KV55 was the father of Tutankhamun, and is therefore “most probably” Akhenaten,[38] although this is disputed.[39] The tomb contained numerous Amarna era objects including a royal funerary mask which had been deliberately destroyed. His sarcophagus was destroyed but has since been reconstructed and now sits outside in the Cairo Museum.

There is much controversy around whether Amenhotep IV succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, Amenhotep III, or whether there was a coregency (lasting as long as 12 years according to some Egyptologists). Current literature by Eric Cline, Nicholas Reeves, Peter Dorman and other scholars comes out strongly against the establishment of a long coregency between the two rulers and in favour of either no coregency or a brief one lasting one to two years, at the most.[40] Other literature by Donald Redford, William Murnane, Alan Gardiner and more recently by Lawrence Berman in 1998 contests the view of any coregency whatsoever between Akhenaten and his father.[41]

Fragmentary ushabtis of Akhenaten from his original tomb in Amarna, now in the Brooklyn Museum.

Similarly, although it is accepted that Akhenaten himself died in Year 17 of his reign, the question of whether Smenkhkare became co-regent perhaps two or three years earlier or enjoyed a brief independent reign is unclear.[42] If Smenkhkare outlived Akhenaten, and became sole Pharaoh, he likely ruled Egypt for less than a year. The next successor was Neferneferuaten, a female Pharaoh who reigned in Egypt for two years and one month.[43] She was, in turn, probably succeeded by Tutankhaten (later, Tutankhamun), with the country being administered by the chief vizier, and future Pharaoh, Ay. Tutankhamun was believed to be a younger brother of Smenkhkare and a son of Akhenaten, and possibly Kiya although one scholar has suggested that Tutankhamun may have been a son of Smenkhkare instead. DNA tests in 2010 indicated Tutankhamun was indeed the son of Akhenaten.[12] It has been suggested that after the death of Akhenaten, Nefertiti reigned with the name of Neferneferuaten[44] but other scholars believe this female ruler was rather Meritaten. The so-called Coregency Stela, found in a tomb in Amarna possibly shows his queen Nefertiti as his coregent, ruling alongside him, but this is not certain as the names have been removed and recarved to show Ankhesenpaaten and Neferneferuaten.[45]

With Akhenaten’s death, the Aten cult he had founded gradually fell out of favor. Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamun in Year 2 of his reign (1332 BC) and abandoned the city of Akhetaten, which eventually fell into ruin. His successors Ay and Horemheb disassembled temples Akhenaten had built, including the temple at Thebes, using them as a source of easily available building materials and decorations for their own temples.

Finally, Akhenaten, Neferneferuaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, and Ay were excised from the official lists of Pharaohs, which instead reported that Amenhotep III was immediately succeeded by Horemheb. This is thought to be part of an attempt by Horemheb to delete all trace of Atenism and the pharaohs associated with it from the historical record.[citation needed] Akhenaten’s name never appeared on any of the king lists compiled by later Pharaohs and it was not until the late 19th century that his identity was re-discovered and the surviving traces of his reign were unearthed by archaeologists.

Plague and pandemic

This Amarna Period is also associated with a serious outbreak of a pandemic, possibly the plague, or polio, or perhaps the world’s first recorded outbreak of influenza,[46] which came from Egypt and spread throughout the Middle East, killing Suppiluliuma I, the Hittite King. Influenza is a disease associated with the close proximity of water fowl, pigs and humans, and its origin as a pandemic disease may be due to the development of agricultural systems that allow the mixing of these animals and their wastes.[47] Some of the first archaeological evidence for this agricultural system is during the Amarna period of Ancient Egypt, and the pandemic that followed this period throughout the Ancient Near East may have been the earliest recorded outbreak of influenza.[48] However, the precise nature of this Egyptian plague remains unknown and Asia has also been suggested as a possible site of origin of pandemic influenza in humans.[49][50][51] The prevalence of disease may help explain the rapidity with which the site of Akhetaten was subsequently abandoned. It may also explain why later generations considered the gods to have turned against the Amarna monarchs. Arielle Kozloff discusses the evidence, arguing that the epidemic was caused by Bubonic plague over polio. However, her argument that “polio is only fractionally as virulent as some other diseases” ignores the evidence that diseases become less virulent the longer they are present in the human population, as demonstrated with syphilis and tuberculosis.[52]

Implementation of Atenism

Main article: Atenism

In the early years of his reign, Amenhotep IV lived at Thebes with Nefertiti and his 6 daughters. Initially, he permitted worship of Egypt’s traditional deities to continue but near the Temple of Karnak (Amun-Ra’s great cult center), he erected several massive buildings including temples to the Aten. Aten was usually depicted as a sun disc. These buildings at Thebes were later dismantled by his successors and used as infill for new constructions in the Temple of Karnak; when they were later dismantled by archaeologists, some 36,000 decorated blocks from the original Aton building here were revealed which preserve many elements of the original relief scenes and inscriptions.[53]

Akhenaten depicted as a sphinx at Amarna.

The relationship between Amenhotep IV and the priests of Amun-Re gradually deteriorated. In Year 5 of his reign, Amenhotep IV took decisive steps to establish the Aten as the exclusive, monotheistic god of Egypt: the pharaoh “disbanded the priesthoods of all the other gods…and diverted the income from these [other] cults to support the Aten”. To emphasize his complete allegiance to the Aten, the king officially changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten or ‘Living Spirit of Aten.’[53] Akhenaten’s fifth year also marked the beginning of construction on his new capital, Akhetaten or ‘Horizon of Aten’, at the site known today as Amarna. Very soon afterwards, he centralized Egyptian religious practices in Akhetaten, though construction of the city seems to have continued for several more years. In honor of Aten, Akhenaten also oversaw the construction of some of the most massive temple complexes in ancient Egypt. In these new temples, Aten was worshipped in the open sunlight, rather than in dark temple enclosures, as had been the previous custom. Akhenaten is also believed to have composed the Great Hymn to the Aten.

Initially, Akhenaten presented Aten as a variant of the familiar supreme deity Amun-Re (itself the result of an earlier rise to prominence of the cult of Amun, resulting in Amun becoming merged with the sun god Ra), in an attempt to put his ideas in a familiar Egyptian religious context. However, by Year 9 of his reign, Akhenaten declared that Aten was not merely the supreme god, but the only god, and that he, Akhenaten, was the only intermediary between Aten and his people. He ordered the defacing of Amun’s temples throughout Egypt and, in a number of instances, inscriptions of the plural ‘gods’ were also removed.

Aten’s name is also written differently after Year 9, to emphasize the radicalism of the new regime, which included a ban on images, with the exception of a rayed solar disc, in which the rays (commonly depicted ending in hands) appear to represent the unseen spirit of Aten, who by then was evidently considered not merely a sun god, but rather a universal deity. Representations of the Aten were always accompanied with a sort of “hieroglyphic footnote”, stating that the representation of the sun as All-encompassing Creator was to be taken as just that: a representation of something that, by its very nature as something transcending creation, cannot be fully or adequately represented by any one part of that creation.[citation needed]

Speculative theories

Sculptor’s trial piece of Akhenaten.

Akhenaten’s status as a religious revolutionary has led to much speculation, ranging from bona fide scholarly hypotheses to the non-academic fringe theories. Although many believe that he introduced monotheism, others see Akhenaten as a practitioner of an Aten monolatry,[54] as he did not actively deny the existence of other gods; he simply refrained from worshipping any but the Aten while expecting the people to worship not Aten but him.

Akhenaten and Judeo-Christian monotheism

The idea of Akhenaten as the pioneer of a monotheistic religion that later became Judaism has been considered by various scholars.[55][56][57][58][59][60] One of the first to mention this was Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in his book Moses and Monotheism.[61] Freud argued that Moses had been an Atenist priest forced to leave Egypt with his followers after Akhenaten’s death. Freud argued that Akhenaten was striving to promote monotheism, something that the biblical Moses was able to achieve.[55] Following his book, the concept entered popular consciousness and serious research.

Other scholars and mainstream Egyptologists point out that there are direct connections between early Judaism and other Semitic religious traditions.[62] They also state that two of the three principal Judaic terms for God, Yahweh, Elohim (morphologically plural, lit. “gods”), and Adonai (morphologically plural, lit. “my lords” ) have a connection to Aten. Freud commented on the connection between Adonai, the Egyptian Aten and the Syrian divine name of Adonis as a primeval unity of language between the factions;[55] in this he was following the argument of Egyptologist Arthur Weigall. Jan Assmann’s opinion is that ‘Aten’ and ‘Adonai’ are not linguistically related.[63]

Akhenaten appears in history almost two centuries prior to the first archaeological and written evidence for Judaism and Israelite culture is found in the Levant.[citation needed] While such imagery is not a feature of early Israelite culture, abundant visual imagery of the Aten disk (which celebrated the natural world) was central to Atenism.[64]

Ahmed Osman has claimed that Akhenaten’s maternal grandfather Yuya was the same person as the Biblical Joseph. Yuya held the title “Overseer of the Cattle of Min at Akhmin” during his life.[65]

He likely belonged to the local nobility of Akhmim. Egyptologists hold this view because Yuya had strong connections to the city of Akhmim in Upper Egypt. This makes it unlikely that he was a foreigner since most Asiatic settlers tended to cloister around the Nile Delta region of Lower Egypt.[66][67] Some Egyptologists,[68] however, give him a Mitannian origin. It is widely accepted that there are strong similarities between Akhenaten’s Great Hymn to the Aten and the Biblical Psalm 104, though this form is found widespread in ancient Near Eastern hymnology both before and after the period[citation needed] and whether this implies a direct influence or a common literary convention remains in dispute.

Others have likened some aspects of Akhenaten’s relationship with the Aten to the relationship, in Christian tradition, of Jesus Christ with God - particularly in interpretations that emphasise a more monotheistic interpretation of Atenism than henotheistic. Donald B. Redford has noted that some have viewed Akhenaten as a harbinger of Jesus. “After all, Akhenaten did call himself the son of the sole god: ‘Thine only son that came forth from thy body’.”[69]James Henry Breasted likened him to Jesus,[70]Arthur Weigall saw him as a failed precursor of Christ and Thomas Mann saw him “as right on the way and yet not the right one for the way”.[71]

Redford argued that while Akhenaten called himself the son of the Sun-Disc and acted as the chief mediator between god and creation, kings for thousands of years before Akhenaten’s time had claimed the same relationship and priestly role. However Akhenaton’s case may be different through the emphasis placed on the heavenly father and son relationship. Akhenaten described himself as “thy son who came forth from thy limbs”, “thy child”, “the eternal son that came forth from the Sun-Disc”, and “thine only son that came forth from thy body”. The close relationship between father and son is such that only the king truly knows the heart of “his father”, and in return his father listens to his son’s prayers. He is his father’s image on earth and as Akhenaten is king on earth his father is king in heaven. As high priest, prophet, king and divine he claimed the central position in the new religious system. Since only he knew his father’s mind and will, Akhenaten alone could interpret that will for all mankind with true teaching coming only from him.[69]

Redford concluded:

Before much of the archaeological evidence from Thebes and from Tell el-Amarna became available, wishful thinking sometimes turned Akhenaten into a humane teacher of the true God, a mentor of Moses, a Christlike figure, a philosopher before his time. But these imaginary creatures are now fading away one by one as the historical reality gradually emerges. There is little or no evidence to support the notion that Akhenaten was a progenitor of the full-blown monotheism that we find in the Bible. The monotheism of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament had its own separate development—one that began more than half a millenium after the pharaoh’s death.[72]

However, Greenberg argues that Judaism shows signs that in its early forms it had Henotheistic characteristics and that it later was refined into a monotheism around the time of King Josiah, relegating that which previously were considered gods, into gods that ought not be worshipped, i.e. angels.[73]

Possible illness

The rather strange and eccentric portrayals of Akhenaten, with a sagging stomach, thick thighs, larger breasts, and long, thin face — so different from the athletic norm in the portrayal of Pharaohs — has led certain Egyptologists to suppose that Akhenaten suffered some kind of genetic abnormality. Various illnesses have been put forward. On the basis of his longer jaw and his feminine appearance, Cyril Aldred[74] suggested he may have suffered from Froelich’s Syndrome. However, this is unlikely because this disorder results in sterility and Akhenaten is believed to have fathered numerous children — at least six daughters by Nefertiti, and his successor Tutankhamen by a minor wife.

Another suggestion by Burridge[75] is that Akhenaten may have suffered from Marfan’s Syndrome. Marfan’s syndrome, unlike Froelich’s, does not result in any lack of intelligence or sterility. It is associated with a sunken chest, long curved spider-like fingers (arachnodactyly), occasional congenital heart difficulties, a high curved or slightly cleft palate, and a highly curved cornea or dislocated lens of the eye, with the requirement for bright light to see well. Marfan’s sufferers tend towards being taller than average, with a long, thin face, and elongated skull, overgrown ribs, a funnel or pigeon chest, and larger pelvis, with enlarged thighs and spindly calves.[76] Marfan’s syndrome is a dominant characteristic, and sufferers have a 50% chance of passing it on to their children.[77] All of these symptoms appear in depictions of Akhenaten and of his children. Recent CT scans of Tutankhamun report a cleft palate and a fairly long head, as well as an abnormal curvature of the spine and fusion of the upper vertebrae, a condition associated with scoliosis, all conditions associated with Marfan’s syndrome.[78] More recently, Homocystinuria was suggested as a possible diagnosis.[79] Patients suffering from homocystinuria have Marfan habitus, however, as an autosomal recessive disease it seems to fit better into Akhenaten’s family tree - Akhenaten’s parents, Amenhotep III and Tiye, were most probably healthy. Marfan Syndrome was ruled out following DNA tests on Tutankhamun in 2010.[80]

However, Dominic Montserrat in Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt argues that “there is now a broad consensus among Egyptologists that the exaggerated forms of Akhenaten’s physical portrayal… are not to be read literally”.[59] Montserrat and others[81] argue that the body-shape relates to some form of religious symbolism. Because the god Aten was referred to as “the mother and father of all humankind” it has been suggested that Akhenaten was made to look androgynous in artwork as a symbol of the androgyny of the god. This required “a symbolic gathering of all the attributes of the creator god into the physical body of the king himself”, which will “display on earth the Aten’s multiple life-giving functions”.[59] Akhenaten did refer to himself as “The Unique One of Re”, and he may have used his control of artistic expression to distance himself from the common people, though such a radical departure from the idealised traditional representation of the image of the Pharaoh would be truly extraordinary.

Representations of other persons than Akhenaten in the ‘Amarna style’ are equally unflattering — for example, a carving of his father Amenhotep III as an overweight figure;[82] Nefertiti is shown in some statues as well past her prime, with a severe face and a stomach swollen by repeated pregnancies.

Another claim was made by Immanuel Velikovsky, who hypothesized an incestuous relationship with his mother, Tiye. Velikovsky also posited that Akhenaten had elephantiasis, producing enlarged legs. Based on this, he identified Akhenaten as the history behind the Oedipus myth, Oedipus being Greek for “swollen feet”, and moved the setting from the Greek Thebes to the Egyptian Thebes. As part of his argument, Velikovsky uses the fact that Akhenaten viciously carried out a campaign to erase the name of his father, which he argues could have developed into Oedipus killing his father. This point seems to be disproved, however, in that Akhenaten in fact mummified and buried his father in the honorable traditional Egyptian fashion prior to beginning his monotheistic revolution.[83]

In the same 1960 work, Oedipus and Akhnaton, Velikovsky not only saw Akhenaten as the origin of Oedipus, but also identified him with a Pharaoh mentioned only in Herodotus, “Anysis of the city of the same name” — Akhenaten of Akhetaten. Like Oedipus, Anysis was blinded, deposed and exiled. Some scholars have argued that Akhenaten went blind at the end of his life and was supported by his wife Nefertiti.

(Source: dannyblythe)

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