The First Monotheistic Pharaoh | The Story of God

Amid the remains of dozens of pharaohs, Egyptologist Salma Ikram is going to help me find one whose name is Akhenaten.

There he is! Yep, he thought that there were too many gods and not enough focus on him. There will need to be an important god whom only I can channel. So, he changed things radically. He basically closed down most of the temples, saying that there is a special god, the sun god, the Aten, and that you can worship the Aten through me. And that didn't go over too well with a few people.

No, no, that was not a very popular move because, of course, all the priests of the other important gods were shut down. Around the year 1350 BC, Akhenaten declared the sun would be Egypt's only god. In doing so, he would found the first faith in recorded history with a single deity, but it would not last. As soon as he died, the old priesthood struck back.

This piece has been hacked away, as you can tell. You can see how the name of the king is hacked out. The name of the Aten is also attacked. Everything there is chip, chip, chip, chip, chip, chip, chip, chip, and it's gone away because they just destroyed his memory best they could. Akhenaten hoped his son would continue this legacy, but his son was only 9 years old when he took the throne. His name was Tutankhamun.