Amenhotep IV
began his reign with a major building programme at Karnak , the very centre of the cult of Amun . The temples that he started to build there at Karnak , perhaps situated to the east of the Amun precinct and orientated towards the East , were not dedicated to Amun but to a new form of the Sun-god whose name was 'the Living One , Re-Horus of the Horizon who Rejoices in the Horizon on his Identity of Light which is in the Sun-disc' , a long formula that was soon enclosed in two cartouches just like the names of a king , and that was often preceded in royal inscriptions by the words 'My Father Lives' . The name of the god could be shortened to 'the Living Sun-disc' or simply 'the Sun-disc' (in Egyptian the 'Aten') . The word itself was not new; it had previously been used to refer to the visible celestial body of the Sun .
During the reign of Amenhotep III , this aspect of the Sun-god had become increasingly important , especially in the later years of his reign . During the King's Sed-festivals , his deified self had been identified with the Sun-disc and in several inscriptions , most clearly in one of them on the back pillar of a recently discovered statue , the King calls
himself 'the Dazzling Aten' . Originally this new form of the Sun-god was depicted in the traditional manner: as a man with a falcon's head surmounted by a sun-disc , but early in the reign of Amenhotep IV this form was abandoned in favor of a radically new way of depicting a god - as a disc with rays ending in hands that touch the king and his family , extending symbols of life and power towards them and receiving their offerings .
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