Son of the Sun

"How manifest it is, what thou hast made!

They are hidden from the face (of man). 

O sole god, like whom there is no other!

Thou didst create the world according to thy desire,"

Thebes, Egypt.

The year is 1353 BCE, and Amenhotep IV has just been crowned the new Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt’s eighteenth dynasty. Like most of Egypt’s pharaohs, he was descendant from a distinguished line of Egyptian royalty.

But this pharaoh sought to be different from his predecessors. He founded a new capital for his empire, and christened it Akhenaten, a name which he henceforth adopted for himself. One of his most ambitious policies was the promotion of a new type of religion. Akhenaten decreed that his people now exclusively worship Aten, the disk of the sun. He constructed a new temple for this purpose, and even authored a poem in honor of Aten.

This move proved controversial, sidelining the traditional pagan religious elite in favor of an obscure member of the Egyptian pantheon. It earned Akhenaten the title of “heretic pharaoh” and drew the ire of those clerics who worshiped Egypt’s myriad other deities. It is not known to what extent the Akhenaten was successful in inculcating the worship of Aten in Egypt, though Aten did not remain at the head of the Egyptian pantheon for long.

Akhenaten hoped to harness the power and majesty of our nearest star, to make his rule as eternal as the sun itself. Clearly, the son of the sun was as mortal as any other human being.

But the rise and fall of Atenism does give us food for thought, for in a way, we are all devoted worshipers of the sun. For millennia humanity has recognized the fundamental role our nearest star plays in our lives, and have bowed down to its unimaginable power. As with other celestial objects, the sun has been our source of augural signs, through which we have tried to capture prescience in our precarious lives. 

The truth is, we are the sons and daughters of the sun. Without it, we could not live. Without this omnipotent force, our world could not survive.

Without knowing it, we all religiously adhere to the rituals it dictates to us. We rise with it, and so end our days with it as well. We eat and drink its offerings and take in its nourishing rays. This vast sphere of gas endows us with life and gives that life color.

And yet, the sun does not need us nor our praise. It is indifferent to our existence. After all, the sun was not made for us, and sometimes it can oppose us. Sometimes it brings disruption upon our lives. Sometimes it burns us or makes us sick. It doesn’t do this because it is vengeful or displeased with our life choices. It cares not with whom we sleep with, whether we drink alcohol or not, and it has no compulsion to enforce any moral dictate upon us. It feels no hatred, it has no anger, it does not judge. It simply is. It has no use for our emotions, our hopes, our fears. Its fire burnt for billions of years before our ancestors first walked on this planet, and its flame will continue to burn for billions of years after we are no longer extant. Our existence is purely circumstantial to the immense power of our nearest star.

To the sun, we are like the moss that thrives in the rays of a spotlight in a dark cave. Our light wasn’t put there for us, and our relationship with it is purely causal. By pure chance, it was put in the right place at the right time, and we happened to be at the right distance from it so that we could exist. And yet, the sun is not unique, for there are billions of stars throughout our vast universe that are just like it. There are literally billions of stars just like ours, each with their own set of orbiting gaseous and terrestrial spheres. We are but one of a billion tiny celestial cul-de-sacs in a gargantuan celestial community, most of which is composed of mere dust and empty space. When our light goes out, so does our world, lost to the infinite emptiness of this darkest cave.

This may sound gloomy, but it is really a liberating and powerful realization to have. It makes you appreciate the amazing miracle that is life on this planet. Life on earth is an indescribably beautiful and majestic gift, and we should always be cognizant of that. It is a beautiful little jewel of inestimable value and incalculable preciousness. 

Every day, the sun rises, and bathes us in its warmth. It awakens the birds, who serenade from the tops of luscious green trees, which tower over a tapestry of plant and animal life, all living and thriving in the sun’s glow.  

We should never take for granted how truly fragile and precious a gift this is.  

In our own way, we are the spawn of the sun. 

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