Joy of the Sun: The Beautiful Life of Akhanaton King of Egypt

the short life of Akhnaton, king of Egypt in the early fourteenth century B.C.

Some men are celebrated for their extraordinary intelligence; others are

famous as great artists; others have become immortal account of their

goodness. But few have been intellectual geniuses, artists and saints at the

same time, in the natural perfection of their being. Akhnaton was such a

man. He was one of those rare historic figures whose very existence is

sufficient to make one proud to be a man, in spite of all the atrocities that

have dishonoured our species from the beginning up to now. And yet, such

is the irony of fate that the public at large hardly knows his name.

 At the opening of this year 1942 A.D. — exactly three thousand three

hundred years after Akhnaton’s death, if we accept the chronology of some

historians — I present this simple book to the young people of all the world

in the hope that it may teach them to love that most lovable of men. My own

life would have been richer and more beautiful, had I had the privilege to

know of him when I was twelve years old. To try to give that privilege to

others seems to me the best way of amending for long years of neglect, and

of keeping up King Akhnaton’s thirty-third centenary in the midst of our

troubled times.