jh in the Amarna Period*
Florence Friedman
The term Sh is given special prominence under
Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten, most notably appear-
ing in the nomen of the king, in a variant of the
name of the Aten, and in numerous inscriptions.
In Amarna tombs, the king states: ink sS.k Sh
n.k tuts rn.k, "I am your son [meaning the
Aten's] who is Sh -effective for you and who
exalts your name";1 he is Sh n it.f, "Sh for his
father";2 and sS nhh pr m itn Sh n Sh n.f, "son
of eternity who came forth from the Aten, Sh for
him who is Sh for him."3 This last text points up
the relationship of reciprocity between Akhena-
ten and his divine father. This theme is stressed
in several boundary stelae. Akhenaten is ir Shwt
n ms sw, "one who does what is Sh for him who
made him";4 and is Sh ib mSc n ir sw, "Sh of
heart truly for him who made him."5
The king in these passages is established in a
relationship of reciprocity with his divine father
through the notion of Sh.6 He is Sh -effective
and does Sh w ^-effective things for his father, who
in turn is Sh for his son. Traditionally this
means, for example, that the royal son builds
monuments for his divine father and that the god
# This article represents a revised form of a paper delivered
at the Fourth International Congress of Egyptology, held in
Munich in August, 1985.
1 M. Sandman, Texts from the Time of Akhenaten
(Brussels, 1938), 14, 11. 13, 16.
2 Ibid., 66, 1. 8, fragmentary inscription.
3 Ibid., 91, 11. 9-10.
4 Ibid., 104, 1. 5; and 121, 11. 1-10, with variants of same
idea.
5 Ibid., 121, 11. 1-3, variants; N. de G. Davies, The Rock
Tombs of El Amarna (London, 1908), Pt. V, 32: "Truly pious
of heart to his maker." The Davies is hereafter cited as El
Amarna.
6 For Ramesside epithets expressing this relationship, see
Yoyotte in Kemi 10 (1949); and Von Beckerath, Handbuch der
aegyptische Konigsnamen (Munich/Berlin, 1984), 235, G3;
239, 4, H13; 242, 7, T3-5; 249, 7, Tl-5.
99
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in turn extends life, dominion, and millions of
heb-seds to his son. This quid pro quo rela-
tionship is at the heart of the meaning of Sh in
secular texts7 and functions in Amarna texts not
only on the level of king and god, but on all
levels of society. For example, as Akhenaten is
Sh for his father the Aten, so the official May is
ckS n nb tSwy Sh n nb.f, "upright for the lord of
the two lands, Sh for his lord";8 and Aye is Sh n
nsw, "Sh for the king."9
I argue elsewhere that the primary and most
fundamental meaning of Sh is effectiveness.10
My thesis in brief is that Sh denotes in the mor-
tuary sphere the deceased who is effective by vir-
tue of having the proper offerings and knowing
the efficacious spells; and denotes in the earthly
sphere kings, officials, or townsmen who are Sh
for their gods, kings, lords, or one another. Sh
also regularly denotes forms of effective cosmic
and celestial power. In this context Sh assumes
secondary associations with notions of effective
solar luminosity and is often translated with the
meaning of splendor or glory. This paper is
concerned with an understanding of the meaning
of Sh in the nomen of King Akhenaten, and
how this meaning might further elucidate the
relationship between Akhenaten and his divine
father.
The king and Aten are intentionally repre-
sented as equations of one another. Akhenaten
and the early depiction of Reharakhty both
exhibit the same exaggerated belly, as noted by
7 See the discussion of this subject in my review of Gertie
Englund's Akh-une notion religieuse dans I'Egypte pharao-
nique (Uppsala, 1978) in JARCE 19 (1982), 145-46.
8 Sandman, op. cit., 60, 1. 2; and see also for Aye, ibid., 91,
1. 16; 99, 1. 12.
9 Ibid., 98, 1. 15.
10 See JARCE 19 (1982), 145-48; and Serapis 8 (1985),
39-46.
 100 JARCE XXIII
Redford;11 and the A ten like the king assumes
royal cartouches and celebrates heb-seds. It is not
unreasonable that their names as well should
reflect their equivalence.
Much attention has been given to the names of
the Aten, which read:
I. cnh Rc Hr-Bhty hcy m Bht
m rn.f m sw nty m itn.
"Live Re-Horakhty who rejoices in the
horizon, in his name of sunlight which is
in the Aten."
II. cnh Rc hkBBhty hcy m Bht
m rn.f m rc it [or: swty]12 ii m itn.
"Live Re, ruler of the horizon, who re-
joices in the horizon, in his name of Re
the Father [or: the sunlight] which returns
in/from the Aten."
A variant reading appears, however, on an early
fragment of a royal (?) statue found at Karnak
and now in the Cairo Museum:13
III. Hr-Bhty hcy m Bht
m rn.f m Bh m Itn
"Horakhty who rejoices in the horizon, in
his name of Bh in/from the Aten."
Bh serves here as a variant for sw and rc it (or
swty), which in the first two names denote the
light in or from the Aten. Clearly Bh, in a paral-
lel position in the second cartouche, also denotes
sunlight. The question arises as to whether this
meaning of sunlight can be applied to a trans-
lation of Bh in the name of the king.
It is best first to look at some of the different
grammatical possibilities for Bh in the name
Akhenaten. They include: "He who is Bh -effec-
tive for the Aten," using Bh as a participial form
of the adjective verb with dative, the best choice
from a grammatical point of view; or "Bh [or:
the one who is Bh] belongs to the Aten," which
uses n as a dative, i.e., "Bh is to the Aten." Using
n as "because," as suggested by Gunn some years
11 JARCE 13(1976), 54.
12 See A. Bongioanni in GM 68 (1983), 46, for the reading
of swty instead of it.
13 Sandman, op. cit., 162, CLXXXII.
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(1986)
ago, the name could read, "He who is Bh because
of the Aten." From a conceptual point of view, it
is especially possible, however, that the king is
"The Bh of the Aten," using n as an indirect
genitive n(y). There is no reason to believe that
he was "the effective 'spirit' of the Aten," a
colorless mortuary term, which conceptually, I
believe, has no place in the understanding of
Akhenaten and his relationship with the Aten.
Based on the use of Bh in the variant name of the
Aten noted above, "Bh of the Aten" would mean
that the king through his new birth name is
describing himself as the sunlight of his father.14
This translation of Bh as sunlight is also in
accord with the king's statement that he was
made by the Aten (cited above) and that he was
most specifically born of the Aten's sunbeams.15
This is equally supported by Coffin Texts and
Book of the Dead spells which state that the Bh is
born from the solar eye (CT 312 and BD 78),
specifically that the Bh dwells in the iBhw -sun-
shine and is born of the root of the eye of Atum.16
The solar understanding of the king's name as
sunlight is also supported by the many references
which identify the king with light. For example,
he wears the double plumes of the god Shu at
Karnak at the Temple of Gm(t)-pB-itn17 and is
thereby identified with both the god and the
hypostasis of that god, which is sunlight. He is
called sw in numerous inscriptions:18 he is sw n
tB nb cnh.tw m ptr.f, "the light of every land, by
whose appearance one lives"; and (s)w hbs mrwt
mi pB itn, "light clothed with love like the Aten";
the king is the sw n irt nbt, "light of every eye";
and is pB sw n tBnb, "the light of every land." He
is also the wc-n-rc sw n hr nb, "the unique one of
Re, the light of all men."19 As Tawfik has
14 Bongioanni, op. cit., uses the Bh in the name of the
Aten in parallelism with that of the king, but does not note
that the king is not the spirit of the Aten, but its very light.
15 See A. Volten, Studien zum Weisheitsbuch des Ann
(Copenhagen, 1937), 111; noted by Redford, op. cit., n. 132.
16 CT 312, 74g-75c. While Redford, op. cit., 54 noted that
sunlight which is in the Disc in the Aten's name "is a most
fitting appellative of Akhenaten," he did not remark that this
is exactly what may be meant by the name Bh-n-itn.
17 See D. Redford, Akhenaten, the Heretic King (Princeton,
N. J., 1984), 102-3.
18 Collected from Sandman and translated by Fecht in ZAS
85(1960), 105-6.
19 Sandman, op. cit., 55, 1. 18.
 SH IN THE AMARNA PERIOD 101
demonstrated,20 Re is but a variant designation
for the Aten. Re is, it appears, equally a designa-
tion for the king who is called rc cnh n hr nb,
"the living Re for all men";21 and sri n pj itn rc
cnh, "son of the Aten, living Re."22 The king's
prenomen defines him as nfr-hprw-rc ivc-n-rc ,
"Beautiful are the forms of Re, Unique one of
Re."23 In short, dJj, sw, and rc are equated with
both the Aten and the names of his father.24
The notion of effectiveness, the primary mean-
ing of dH, is not lost, however, for sunlight is
effectiveness par excellence; it is light which
daily brings forth and maintains creation. In the
Coffin Texts Atum creates Shu and Tefnut with
his jhw.25 The deceased, the product of dJj-
creation,26 is an jh, lord of dHw, who himself
creates an dH at his will, and who most notably is
nb ssp, "lord of 55"p- light,"27 this same appel-
lation appearing in the Book of the Dead, where
Re is called nb ssp.28 Light, which produces
creation, is by definition effective; the jh/jhw
power of creation through light is, I suggest,
effectiveness itself,29 and it is manifest in the
individual created. In Amarna dogma that indi-
vidual manifestation of solar effectiveness is the
king, the daily creation of the sungod, the d/j-
light of the Aten.
Creator and creation merge in Egyptian reli-
gious thinking. As a Coffin Text states, "Re does
it [various things] for me and his jh is in me";30
20 S. Tawfik in MDAIK 32 (1976), 225. See also, Tawfik in
The Akhenaten Temple Project, Vol. I (Warminster, England,
1976), 58-59.
21 Sandman, op. cit., 55, 1. 14.
22 Sandman, op. cit., 84, 11. 4-5.
23 And compare J. Bennett's translation in JEA 51 (1965),
207: "Beautiful of being (like) Re and only one of Re."
24 Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten and Nejertiti (The Brooklyn
Museum, 1973), 24, in a similar way calls Akhenaten the
Incarnation of the Aten; see also Aldred, Akhenaten, Pharaoh
of Egypt (London, 1968), 185.
25 CT II 39c-d; and cf. Zandee in IAS 97 (1971), 161.
26 CT IV 18e.
27 CT VII 293a-294a; sim. VII 501a-c.
28 Edouard Naville, Das aegyptische Todtenbuch der
XVIII. bix XX. Dynastie aus verschiedener Urkunden, Erster
Band, Text und Vignetten (Berlin, 1886), 97.4-5; and trans-
lated in T. G. Allen, The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by
Day, SAOC 37 (Chicago, 1974), 85a S2.
29 On the root meaning of jh as effectiveness, see my
discussion in Serapis 8 (1985), 39-46.
30 CTVI315J.
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and "As for any Bh who knows the name of the rc
psdt [shining sun], he knows his (own) name."31
The Book of the Dead states that Re "looks on
this dJj as himself";32 especially pertinent is the
Book of the Dead spell in which the Bh is seen as
the "beams of Re."33 The Bh becomes both Re
and his emanation of light; the Bh is at once
creator and thing created.34 These ideas of creator
and creation uniting through the vehicle of Bh
provide the framework within which Akhenaten
and the Aten, creation and creator, son and
father, are united.
The transference of Bh in religious texts is also
found in the father-son relationship of Osiris
and Horus. The king as Horus in Pyramid Texts
becomes Bh through his father Osiris,35 in one
instance through an embrace;36 Osiris also be-
comes Bh through his son, Horus.37 As a Coffin
Text states, the son becomes Bh by the father and
the father by the son.38 They incorporate one
another. In the Book of the Dead each embraces
the other Bh.f im (prospective sdm.f), "that he
might be Bh thereby."39 Though Akhenaten dis-
carded the mythological trappings of the ancient
Horus-Osiris relationship, he retained its essence
which, I believe, is sometimes evidenced in the
association of the Bh with the Bht, "horizon,"
Horus becoming associated with the Bh and
Osiris with Bht. Examples follow which first
illustrate the association of Bh and Bht.
In the Pyramid Texts the Bht is the place where
the king and sungod become Bh: "O Re-Atum, it
is to you this king comes ..." wbn.tn m Bht m
31 CTVI390L
32 E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead, Facsimiles of
the Papyri of Hunefer, Anhai, Kerasher and Netchement with
Supplementary Text from the Papyrus of Nu (London, 1889),
Ch. 130.41, Pap. of Nu; Allen, op. cit., 130 T6.
33 E. Naville, Das aegyptische Todtenbuch, Zweiter Band
Varianten (Berlin, 1886), 344, end of Ta's rubric; Allen, op.
cit, 133b T5.
34 These texts are also cited in Serapis 8 (1985), 46 in
relation to the meaning of Bh -effectiveness and its corre-
lation with celestial light.
35 Pyr. 612a-b; 648c; 584b-585a; and cf. 636a-c.
36 Pyr. 584b-585c.
37 Pyr. 1712a; 2264a-b; JP II 1055 and 76; 633a, using Bh
in the sdm.n.f construction.
38 CT VII 109g-h.
39 Nav. 1 195-96, heading across top; Allen, op. cit, 173b PI.
Several of these texts are also cited in Serapis 8 (1985), 43.
 102 JARCE XXIII
bw Bh.n.tn im, "May you [i.e., Re-Atum and the
king] rise in the Bht, in the place wherein you
have become Bh."*° The iTU-horizon is where the
king does not die but becomes Bh: n mwt.n is T
mwtt Bh.n.f m Bht. "Not in dying did Teti die, he
has become Bh in the Bht.41 The Bh/Bht paral-
lelism (or wordplay, if one wishes to call it that)
underscores the fact that the Bht is the site from
which the sun and king emerge effectively re-
newed.42 Another much-discussed Pyramid Text
states: Bh.n Hr hr.k m rn.k n Bht prrt Rc im, "It
is through you (Osiris) that he (Horus) has
become Bh in your name of Bht from which Re
goes forth.43 The Bh/Bht parallelism is used to
describe how Horus emerges out of his father,
who is named to elucidate the relationship, "the
Bht from which Re goes forth." Bh/Bht wordplay
is not confined to the Old Kingdom, as I point
out elsewhere.44 The close association of Bh and
Bht continued in Dynasty XVIII, evidenced, as
Otto points out, in the Ritual for Amenophis I
and in the Opening of the Mouth Ritual.45
Akhenaten eliminated the names of Horus and
Osiris in connection with Bh and Bht, but retained
the Bh/Bht wordplay, which, I believe, can be
demonstrated in several relief representations.
On a faience knob in a private collection
published by J. R. Harris appear Akhenaten
in the white crown and Nefertiti in the flat-
topped cap, each with hands upraised in adora-
tion before the sun.46 They are represented equal
in size, each squatting at the end of a solar bark.
A cartouche on the top of the knob identi-
fies both figures. Interestingly, as Harris notes,
the king's prenomen is not used. Instead he is
called Akhenaten, which I feel is appropriate,
40 Pyr. 158a-d. For a grammatical analysis of this text, see
Serapis 8 (1985), 45.
41 Pyr 350b-c; translation of first line from M. Gilula in JEA
56, 210.
42 For Gertie Englund's reflections on the meaning of jht,
see her article "L'horizon et quoi encore," in Sundries in
honour of Sdve-Soderbergh (Uppsala, 1984), 47-53; and most
specifically on jht as the site of gestation, see p. 48.
43 Pyr. 585a; cf. 633a. And see my discussion and use of this
text in a different but related context in JEA 71 (1985), 91-92.
44 Ibid.
45 Discussed in ibid.
46 J. R. Harris in Burlington Magazine 119 (April-June,
1977), 340-43.
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(1986)
given that he is the Bh- light of the sun which he
adores. Harris believes that the "manner in which
they are paired suggests that they are assimilated
to Shu and Tefnut, the first creation of Atum . . .
and such an interpretation has been inferred in a
number of other instances."47 The squatting
posture, he notes, reflects the idea of the king as
hypostasis (hprw) of the sun,48 and this posture,
he observes, is that of the child depicted within
the disk, who is sometimes identified with Shu.49
Shu and Tefnut, son and daughter of the sun-
god, I would note, can denote Rwty in the texts,
Rwty being the two lions which form the hills of
the ^-horizon.50
I suggest that the opposing figures of Akhen-
aten and Nefertiti (an ordinarily commonplace
composition of two seated figures) set beneath the
Aten and the pt-sign on the Cairo and Berlin
stelae (figs. 1, 2) may function as Shu and Tefnut,
i.e., Rwty, so that the very figures of Akhenaten
and Nefertiti create the curving outline of the
Bh ^-horizon. It is important to remember that
in the Coffin Texts Atum created Shu and Tefnut
with his Bhw, here equated, I suggest, with
the Aten's creating Shu and Tefnut as king and
queen through his sunbeams; only the king and
queen ever receive the Aten's rays directly in
Amarna representations. With the sun disk above,
an i/*£- hieroglyph is formed in these scenes im-
plying that this is the Bht of the Aten, the name,
of course, of Akhenaten' s capital city.51
This suggested Bh ^-hieroglyph composition is
also found, I believe, in some Window of Appear-
ances scenes illustrated in the tombs of Ramose
47 Ibid., 342.
48 On the meaning of hprw, see especially J. Assmann,
Liturgische Lieder an den Sonnengott (Berlin, 1969), 43.
49 Harris, op. cit., 342.
50 See, for example, A. Piankoff, Mythological Papyri,
Vol. I, Texts, Bollingen Series XL.3 (New York, 1957), fig. 15,
from the sarcophagus of Khonsu; and fig. 41, from the
Papyrus of Henut-taui.
51 See Aldred's observation in JEA 62 (1976), 184, that the
topography of the site of Amarna resembles the glyph for jht;
and note also D. O'Connor's statement in Egypt's Golden
Age, ed. by E. Brovarski, Susan K. Doll, and Rita E. Freed
(Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1982), 20, that "the royal
family tomb was set deep in the desert valley at the approx-
imate center of the natural 'horizon'" [italics mine]. The
notion of the horizon was, I believe, of critical importance to
the king.
 BH IN THE AMARNA PERIOD 103

Fig. 1. Stele, Egyptian Museum,

Cairo JE 44865. Photo courtesy the
Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

Fig. 2. Stele, Aegyptisches Mu-

seum, Berlin (West) 14145. Photo
courtesy Aegyptisches Museum
Berlin SMPK; Photo: M. Buesing.

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 104 JARCE XXIII (1986)

Fig. 3. From N. de G. Davies, The Tomb of the Vizier Ramose. Mond Excavations at Thebes, 1 (London, 1941),
pl. XXXIII. Photo courtesy the Committee of the Egypt Exploration Society.

at Karnak (fig. 3), and of Aye52 and Meryre I53 at
Amarna. The broken lintel doorway with the
Aten extending its rays from above may function
as the hieroglyph for the 3ht- horizon. The pos-
sibility of the broken lintel doorway functioning
52 Davies, El Amarna, Pt. 6 (London, 1908), pl. XXIX.
53 Davies, El Amarna, Pt. 1 (London, 1903), pl. VI.
as jht is a point Diana Wolfe Larkin in her
doctoral dissertation at the New York University
Institute of Fine Arts has independently arrived
at, and for which she has systematically devel-
oped support in her thesis on the broken lintel
doorway. Illustrations from the Amarna tombs of
Tutu (fig. 4) and Pentu (fig. 5), among others
pointed out to me by Ms. Larkin, demonstrate

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 m IN THE AMARNA PERIOD 105

Fig. 4. From Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna, Part VI, The Tombs of Parennefer,
Tutu, and Ay (London, 1908), pl. XX. Photo courtesy the Committee of the Egypt
Exploration Society.

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106 JARCE XXIII (1986)

Fig. 5. Davies, op. cit., Part IV, the Tombs of Penthu, Mahu, and Others (London, 1906),
pl. VI. Photo courtesy the Committee of the Egypt Exploration Society.

the use of the broken lintel doorway or pylon as
the Bht. If these suggestions are correct, there is
an interesting correlation with the Pyramid Text
585a noted above (n. 43); for here at the Window
the king appears like the sun (Horus) arising
from the Sht (Osiris) from which Re (= the Aten)
goes forth. As a further visual pun or reinforce-
ment, the king (and possibly the Queen) could be
described here as one "who rejoices in the Eht-
horizon," hcy m Bht, just like the Aten who, in
all his didactic names is Re "who rejoices in the
jht."b* The king is also the Bh, as his name
affirms, graphically placed in the iT^-broken-
lintel doorway, thus illustrating the traditional
Bhl Bht association discussed above.
54 Note that while Redford suggested in JARCE 13 (1976),
54, that the hcy m Bht phrase in the didactic name referred
possibly to the king as rejoicer and to the palace as the
Bht, yet another level of meaning may still be operative.
In summary: Akhenaten in these scenes was
perhaps making visual reference to the fact that
he is part of the Bht from which his father goes
forth (as in the Cairo and Berlin stelae); that as Bh
n Itn he is the i/i -effective sunlight (and therefore
the traditional i$ -effective son) of his father; and
that as such he can rejoice in and go forth from
the Bht (designated by the broken lintel doorway
and perhaps alluding to his capital city, Bht-
Itn).55 If these suggestions are correct, the reci-
procity of father-son and the equivalence of king
and god notions central to Egyptian religious
thinking, would yet again be reinforced.
Museum of Art
Rhode Island School of Design
55 And referring also perhaps to the royal Amarna tomb
site: see n. 51.

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