Erased, And Back

Akhenaten moves the capital, promotes the worship of the Aten, and has Amun's name chiselled out of monuments across Egypt — including, reportedly, from his own father's cartouche, because it contained the syllable. It is one of the most systematic attempts at erasure in the ancient record. It does not hold. Within a generation of his death the court abandons Amarna, the Theban temples reopen, and the boy king who presides over the restoration changes his own name from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun, writing the restored god back into himself. Then Akhenaten's monuments are dismantled in turn, and it is his name that goes missing from the king lists.