The first two stanzas of “The Great Hymn to the Aten” set the tone of the hymn because the greatness of the sun is known not only by its presence, but by its absence as well. The fear that arises when darkness abounds is a primeval fear, one that civilizations, even as early as this Egyptian era, had encountered. It is interesting to think about the opposites that the hymn puts forth, like light and darkness, good and bad, hot and cold, living and dead. Seeing them laid out in this hymn reminds me of how primordial we are as human beings. It brings up the question of our morality, our ethical nature, because we can see that there is something within us, outside of our society, that leads us towards the judgments we make. Nature, in this case the sun, is the root of all goodness, and therefore its behavior will dictate what it is to be good.
I assume that in 1350 BCE people did not know that the sun was a ball of fire that would scorch us if it got too close to the earth, and we would go extinct if it disappeared all together. That being said, there is something intuitive in the fact that Akhenaten is worshipping the sun, Aten, as the “Sole God beside whom there is none” (line 65). To go from darkness to light every morning is still somewhat of a miracle today. When we have a power outage and are forced to live in darkness, we are given the opportunity to know what early civilizations must have experienced. Is the return of light after complete darkness not a miracle? If I lived without light for half of the time, I could imagine worshipping the sun too. And there is much truth to the acknowledgment that the sun makes everything grow, and brings everything to life. It is no wonder that they believed Aten had created the earth as well, “You made the earth as you wished, you alone, / [made] All peoples, herds, and flocks” (lines 66-7).
