The Aten & Akhenaten's Solar Religion
For one generation, Egypt worshipped a single god — the disc of the sun.
Also: Aten · Aton · Iten · Akhenaten · Akhenaton · Amarna religion · Amenhotep IV · sun disc
Egyptians normally worshipped many gods, but for the span of roughly a single reign in the fourteenth century BCE King Akhenaten promoted the Aten — the disc of the sun itself — as effectively the only god to be worshipped, suppressing the cult of Amun and building a new capital at Amarna. The exclusive phase was brief, perhaps only a decade and a half within his roughly seventeen-year reign. The 'Great Hymn to the Aten' praises the disc as sole creator of all life. After his death the old gods were restored and his reform reversed.
In short
The Aten — the visible sun-disc — promoted by King Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, Dyn. 18) to the status of sole worshipped god in a short-lived religious revolution centered on his new capital Akhetaten (Amarna).
Where it’s found
The Great Hymn to the Aten (tomb of Ay, Amarna); Amarna boundary stelae and tomb inscriptions
Read it in the Egyptian texts
The passages in our corpus where this idea is discussed — each opens in our reader with the Egyptian transliteration and the English translation side by side.
How the idea developed across Egypt
A New Kingdom episode confined to the reign of Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, who reigned ~17 years) and its immediate aftermath (Dyn. 18, 14th c. BCE); the exclusive Atenist phase was shorter still — roughly a decade and a half, within that single reign. Reversed under Tutankhamun and successors, with Akhenaten later struck from the king lists. Whether the Atenist programme is true 'monotheism' is debated.
Akhenaten the king belongs to the sage roster (hedged); this entry is the religious concept. The exclusive Atenist phase was short (~a decade and a half within Akhenaten's ~17-year reign), not 'about two decades.' The 'Aten religion = monotheism' label is debated. The Akhenaten→Mosaic-monotheism thesis (Freud) is FRINGE and rejected by scholarship — named here only to be set aside.