N AND THE DISK-WORSHIPPERS.

On the death of Amenhotep III., his son, Amenhotep IV., mounted the
throne. Left by Amenhotep III to the guardianship of his mother, Tii,
who was of some entirely foreign race, he embraced a new form of
religion, which she appears to have introduced, and shocked the
Egyptians by substituting, so far as he found to be possible, this new
creed for the old polytheism of the country. The heresy of Amenhotep IV
has been called "Disk-worship;" and he, and the next two or three kings,
are known in Egyptian history as "the Disk-worshippers." It is difficult
to discover what exactly was the belief professed. Externally, it
consisted, primarily, in a marked preference of a single one of the
Egyptian gods over all the others, and a certain hatred or contempt for
the great bulk of the deities composing the old Pantheon. Thus far it
resembled the religion which Apepi, the last "Shepherd King," had
endeavoured to introduce; but the new differed from the old reformation
in the matter of the god selected for special honour. Apepi had sought
to turn the Egyptians away from all other worships except the worship of
Set; Amenhotep desired their universal adhesion to the worship of Aten.
Aten, in Egyptian theology, had hitherto represented a particular aspect
or character of Ra, "the sun"--that aspect which is expressed by the
phrase, "the solar disk." How it was possible to keep Aten distinct from
the other sun-gods, Ra, Khepra, Turn, Shu, Mentu, Osiris, and Horus or
Harmachis, is a puzzle to moderns; but it seems to have been a
difficulty practically overcome by the Egyptians, to whom it did not
perhaps even present itself as a difficulty at all. Disk-worship
consisted then, primarily, in an undue exaltation of this god, who was
made to take the place of Ammon-Ra in the Pantheon, and was ordinarily
represented by a circle with rays proceeding from it, the rays mostly
terminating in hands, which frequently presented the symbols of life and
health and strength to the worshipper.

What was the inward essence of the religion? Was it simple
sun-worship--the adoration of the visible material sun--considered as
the ruling and vivifying power in the universe, whence heat and light,
and so life, proceeded? Of all the forms of nature worship this was the
most natural, and in the old world it was widely spread. Men adored the
orb of day as the grandest object which nature presented to them, as the
great quickener of a