Amenhotep IV – A Strange Looking King – An Alien?
I think I heard it on one of those adventure, myth , historical speculation cable channels. The subjects you hear on late night Coast-to-Coast radio. There’s a genre in this media area one might call Alien Habitation of Ancient Earth. The commonality of the genre is that earth was inhabited long ago by ancient aliens who directed history our and perhaps even intermixed with humans. On this particular show late at night on the cable channel.
The segment discussed a particular King of ancient Egypt called Amenhotep IV who eventually was called Akhenaten. It was interesting to me because I was writing a novel on Akhenaten. He is the creator of a monotheistic religion based around an image (like above) of the solar god Aten around 1350 BC. This one image of the Aten or solar god was the only image in the religion of the Aten. It stood against the hundreds of images the polytheistic gods that Egypt had developed through history. The leading God for Egypt at this time was Amun Ra. Under the large “brand” umbrella of Amun Ra were the powerful Karnak Priests who challenged the royal power in these years when a popular King grew old and fell into dementia while his young, cold, son comes to rule the country as Amenhotep IV or, Akhenaten.
Egypt had come to have gods for everything, almost like today and how we have pills and medications for everything. In ancient Egypt, before the New Kingdom and dynasties starting around the 16th Dynasty reaching a peak in the 18th Dynasty under Akhenaten in the city he had built called Amarna. The change Akhenaten brought was to face the historic polytheism of Egypt with something never seen before. Not another god of polytheism. Rather, the god of monotheism itself.
The Hardy Boys
The story comes from an original concept from Egyptologist Lynn Holding with input from my long-time friend in Canada, Eric McLuhan.
It attempts to adhere to screenwriting structure initially. Always thinking of applying this structure to writing a fictional narratives.
But also an attempt to write something that young boys might enjoy reading. Or, playing in a game perhaps. An attempt in some ways to combine my love for the old Hardy Boys series with Robert Luis Stevenson and Raymond Chandler. One might say, a story about a Super-Hero of long ago. Yet, the Hero still needs to have some detective skills to solve the mystery of whether others are using him as much as he’s using them.
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A Super-Hero who does more than save a damsel or even a city. Rather, a Hero who might have saved the history of the world from going just one way. A story about a King who changed the world more than any other Egyptian King. Perhaps more than any other King in history. The character Moshe is not a God in the story but rather the mentor to the young Hapy who seeks to escape the fate of his powerful father Hapu who is always wavering between two loyalties: the loyalties to the royal family, to Akhenaten and especially his father, the Old King dying a slow death with dementia. Hapy’s father watches the Old King (the person he loves and has served for 30 years) slowly lose his grip on the world as his selfish and ruthless son rises to co-regent. Ultimately, he becomes King of Egypt as his father continues to decline: and the loyalties to the Karnak Priests and their God Amun Ra. It stood in direct opposition to the Aten of the new King. Hapy’s father suddenly finds himself caught between the two most powerful groups in Egypt: the Priests and the King.
A radical new Egypt challenges the traditional Egypt. Generations in conflict. Sound familiar? An old priest named Moshe or Moses. Yet, the real hero of the story, a twenty-year-old boy named Hapy. Not only is he engaged in battle with the great monsters of his time. He is also engaged in battle with the greatest monster of all. His father. The battle is to break away from his father’s influence on Hapy, a world of mixed loyalties his father Hapu seems to leave his son. Part of the story is how the two connect with each other. It is about two young boys named Hapy and Nihi. Much like the Hardy brothers.
Battle between father and son. The greatest battle in history? In life?
And, oh yes, that story about Akhenaten on that cable channel that night. It suggested, in a very convincing way, that Akhenaten, because of his weird, different look, was in fact an alien. Perhaps this is something that needs more investigation as we revise our own story of Akhenaten? An even larger market for the story perhaps? Perhaps a new AI or video game? A hit tune? A big hitter on YouTube and FaceBook and Twitter.