He is especially noted for abandoning traditional Egyptian polytheism and introducing worship centered on the Aten, which is sometimes described as monotheistic or henotheistic. An early inscription likens the Aten to the sun as compared to stars, and later official language avoids calling the Aten a god, giving the solar deity a status above mere gods.
Akhenaten tried to bring about a departure from traditional religion, yet in the end it would not be accepted. After his death, traditional religious practice was gradually restored, and when some dozen years later rulers without clear rights of succession from the Eighteenth Dynasty founded a new dynasty, they discredited Akhenaten and his immediate successors, referring to Akhenaten himself as "the enemy" in archival records.
An opera in three acts. Possessing a theatrical almost romantic quality,
Philip Glass takes the ancient myth setting it into the contemporary music
landscape with consummate ease while retaining the
primordial substance of the original story.
Akhnaten, the third of Philip Glass's "portrait" operas (composed in 1983), is based on the life of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaten, who ruled Egypt from 1375 BC to 1358 BC. Like Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha, it is not a "story" opera but an episodic-symbolic portrait of a historical personality whose visionary ideas dramatically changed the perceptions of the world around him. Here, Glass, in his own libretto, tells the story of the man who supposedly introduced monotheism into classic Egyptian culture (and thereby the Western world), thus complimenting the realms of science and politics as portrayed in his previous two operas.
