Sun-disk meaning

or Akhenaton, one of the sovereigns to whose govern ment the celebrated Tell el-Amarna letters from Palestine were addressed, was a zealous champion of the exclusive claims of the sun-disk God, Ra; but his policy died with him.

Peet, resulted in interesting discoveries, some of which tend to show that the cult of the Aten or Solardisk was not so rigidly enforced by the heretic king Akhenaton as has been supposed, and that ordinary people were allowed to worship other gods than the sun-disk, at any rate in connexion with funerary ceremonies.

Thrusting aside all the multitudinous deities of Egypt and all the mythology even of Heliopolis, he devoted himself to the cult of the visible sun-disk, applying to it as its chief name the hitherto rare word Aton, meaning sun; the traditional divine name Harakht (Horus of the horizon), given to the hawk-headed sun-god of Heliopolis, was however allowed to subsist and a temple was built at Karnak to this god.