In 1352 BCE, in Egypt, a king named Amenhotep (IV) succeeded his deified father, Amenhotep (III) to the throne. Almost immediately traditional Egyptian art was changed by decree of the new king to display grotesquely shaped human figures, grand compositions of daily life and ceremonies, and, most importantly, the elevation of a “new” god called Aten, the sun-disc, seemingly to the exclusion of all other gods. Large temples dedicated to this god were erected in the state cult site, Thebes (Luxor), in and around the Karnak temple precinct. Later, Amenhotep changed his name to Akhenaten, “He who is effective for the Sun-Disc”, and startlingly moved his capital to a virgin site in central Egypt, and called it Akhetaten, “Horizon of the Sun Disc”, modern Tell el-Amarna. Here, he and his family worshipped his personal god according to newly established practices that are pictorially described in wall reliefs in private tombs, as well as on the uniquely sized blocks (talatat) that formed the Amarna temples and palaces themselves. The practice and definition of Akhenaten's new religion and god continue to be hotly debated today, as scholars struggle to label Akhenaten as a monotheist, henotheist, atheist, or others. Most scholarship on the Amarna Period focuses exclusively on the Aten temples constructed at Amarna and Thebes, examining only the evidence at these sites to attempt to explain Akhenaten's religion. However, as I shall argue, this limits our understanding of who or what Aten was, how he was worshipped by the royal family, and whether he was worshipped by the common people. In order to expand our knowledge and inform interpretations of this religion, it is imperative to explore the evidence of the worship of Aten at the various sites outside Tell el-Amarna and Thebes where architectural evidence is found.

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Standing temples, fragmentary remains of temple architecture, stelae, and other objects related to worship of Aten appear at many sites throughout Egypt and Sudan. My overall study examines the widespread dissemination of Aten worship in all of these cities, but this current paper focuses on the evidence of Aten cult buildings in the cities of Abydos and Akhmim. In this paper I shall present the evidence that suggests the construction of Aten cult buildings at these sites and offer possible interpretations that may help to increase our understanding of how Aten worship spread across space and across the social strata. One possible interpretation of the evidence I shall present is that the erection of Aten cult buildings may have functioned as a network that incorporated the worship of traditional deities (Osiris and Min) formerly worshiped at Abydos and Akhmim, and that these buildings were linked to specific cult buildings and architectural elements at Tell el-Amarna, the possible “hub” of Aten worship.