Changes

After the move to Tell el-Amarna Akhenaten’s focus on religion intensified and his attention to other matters waned. His father, Amenhotep III, was a skilled diplomat who maintained peaceful borders and upheld good correspondence with foreign empires.<ref> Hall, H. R.. “Egypt and the External World in the Time of Akhenaten” <i>The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 7.½</i> (1921): 42-44. Web. 05 November 2015</ref> Akhenaten, on the other hand, was apathetic toward correspondence and seems to have been generally uninterested in foreign diplomatic relations. The Amarna Letters, a collection of cuneiform tablets discovered at Tell el-Amarna, attest to this. Akhenaten repeatedly ignored pleas for help from foreign vassals, many of whom switched allegiances during his reign. <ref>Williamson, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology: 9</ref> One such vassal, the prince Rib-adda of Byblos, repeatedly wrote to Akhenaten for assistance against the Hittite king. Akhenaten ignored his pleas and the Hittites gained much ground in Syria and Palestine. <ref>Hall, <i>The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 7.½</i>: 44-45)</ref> Content to remain in Egypt and impose his new religion on his subjects, Akhenaten lost territory in the Middle East and Nubia and allowed foreign relations to measurably deteriorate.

For these reforms Akhenaten has been called “the world’s first idealist and the world’s first individual” <ref>Breasted, A History of Egypt, 392</ref> but he has also been called a heretic. <ref>Redford, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 269: 1</ref> Whatever his intentions were it can be said that Akhenaten’s reforms were severe and extreme, but ultimately brief. The religion of Akhenaten was forgotten almost immediately after his death, his city abandoned, his name chiseled from temple walls and the Aten virtually erased from living memory <ref>Hornung, 44.</ref> It would be three thousand years before Akhenaten’s story would spark public interest once again.

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