God Aten

The rays of Aten

God Aten was an ancient Egyptian solar deity that some Egyptologists trust was a form of Re-Horakhty, otherwise solar god. However, Aten was real specifically affiliated with the suns rays rather than with its other properties and was therefore oftentimes  depicted  as  a  shining  solar  disk with rays as limbs. The ends of these shafts were the deities hands, which typically took the ankh, symbolic of life.

Aten was first idolized during the Old Kingdom, but at that time he was a comparatively minor deity. During the New Kingdom, yet, Aten began to rise to bulge, and by the 18th Dynasty reign of Amenhotep III he was worshipped by an Aten cult stood by the kings wife Tiy. When King Amenhotep III's son Amenhotep IV took the throne, he exchanged his name to Akhenaten, or He who Serves Aten, to honor the deity and then determined that only Aten should be worshiped passim Egypt. By Akhenatens dominate, temples devoted to other gods were involved and sometimes damaged or even lost. However, the  priests  of  these  temples  were  not asked to process the new religion, because Akhenaten express himself the sole go-between between Aten and humans.