Akhenaten was known as Egypt’s Rebel Pharaoh. He lived during the 14th century BCE in a huge desert city he built from scratch named “Horizon of the Aten sun god” (today called Amarna). His mummy has never been found, and he disappeared from history at age 37. During his reign, he was obsessed with sunrises and worshipping the sun. He shut down the temples of all other gods, and destroyed their idols. He was called the “rebel” and the “heretic” in later Egyptian texts, and his reign was referred to as the “rebellion”. His own statues were in turn destroyed under the orders of later vengeful Pharaohs.
Meanwhile, an ocean away in Mexico, the Maya Sacred 260-day calendar is the world’s most enigmatic. Called the Tzolk’in or Cholq’ij (“counting of the days”), it is unique and unparalleled in the ancient world, and its origins are still contested. It is composed of one cycle of thirteen numbers and one of twenty day names. Could the complex religious ideas of Egypt’s first religious revolutionary have inspired a strange 260-day sacred calendar developed somewhere in the jungles of Mexico over three thousand years ago?
Jonathon Perrin is the author of five books. His newest is Moses in Mexico (2025), available now from Amazon.
Statue of Akhenaten from the Aten temple at Karnak. (Jon Bodsworth/CC0)
Mexican Mysteries
It has long been acknowledged that ancient architecture across Mexico was generally aligned to sunrises on certain days of the year. It is also becoming clear that these sunrise dates may have helped create the Maya 260-day calendar. Archaeologist Ivan Šprajc notes:
“The orientations of important civic and ceremonial Mesoamerican buildings exhibit a clearly non-uniform distribution, indicating that they refer predominantly to astronomical phenomena observable on the horizon. No other possible orientation motive, such as climate, local topography, magnetism, or defense, can account for the widespread and long-lasting alignment groups. The only conceivable rationale is that the orientations refer to sunrises and sunsets on agriculturally important dates.”
How the two parts of the 260-day Calendar worked together, one wheel of 13 days turning opposite a wheel of twenty months, and only realigning every 260 day. This mechanism for timekeeping, associated with divination and agriculture is suggested to pre-date 1100 BCE back to the very time of Akhenaten. LEFT: The 13-day “trecena” or “week” wheel that worked in conjunction with the 20-day wheel.. (CC BY-SA 3.0) RIGHT: The 20 days of the 260-day Maya Calendar) (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Šprajc and fellow researchers Takeshi Inomata and Anthony F. Aveni have recently studied five hundred ancient structures and orientations across Mexico using LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). They discovered that every single one was oriented to the Sun’s positions on the horizon on certain dates separated by multiples of 13 and 20 days. Since these were elementary periods of the 260-day cycle, it has been suggested that these buildings demonstrate the existence of this important calendar in the 2nd millennium BCE. They explain:
“For the purposes of the study, the site’s astronomical orientations on notable days of the 260-day calendar were analyzed. The most commonly occurring orientations were dated between 1100 and 750 BC, and aligned with sunrises on February 11 and October 29, dates that were separated end to end by the full 260 days.”
3D image of the site of Aguada Fénix based on LIDAR. (Takeshi Inomata / Nature)
The most common orientation of these buildings was 104°, which marked sunrises on February 11 and October 29, separated strangely enough by a period of 260 days, the same number of days in the Maya divinatory calendar. Stranger still, these large buildings discovered by LIDAR date to the earliest era of the Maya world, as early as 1200-1100 BCE, equivalent to the Late Bronze Age, close to the time of Akhenaten.
This same angle of orientation of sacred buildings has been observed at other Mexican cities. Over forty years ago, Anthony Aveni published the landmark book Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico, demonstrating that the alignments of major Maya sites contained a prominent south-of-east alignment, with the dominant group clustering around 103-104°. He also noted a prominent 104° peak in the orientations of buildings at Puuc Maya sites, including the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal. In central Mexico, this same orientation of the east–west axis of the Acropolis at the site of Xochicalco marks sunrises on February 12 and October 30. Meanwhile, at the biggest city in ancient Mexico, Teotihuacan, the massive Pyramid of the Sun is aligned to a distant mountain peak at 104°, while the towering pyramid Structure I at Calakmul has an azimuth of 104°19’.
Pyramid of the Magician at the Maya site of Uxmal, Mexico. It is aligned to the same angle of sunrise orientation as many earlier Mesoamerican buildings, as well as those at Amarna, city of Akhenaten. (By author.)
Many intriguing theories to explain the origins of the 260-day calendar have been proposed. Despite them, the new and unprecedented LIDAR discoveries from the Mexican jungles seem to indicate that its origins lie with observing sunrises on two important days 260 days apart - but how, and why? Scholars have been unable to explain why the unusual angle of 104° was employed, since it does not correspond to the equinoxes, solstices, or stellar risings. Why was this unusual angle of orientation used at so many buildings over three thousand years ago? Why was recording sunrises twice a year so important to the early Maya?
Sunrises an ocean apart, from Amarna, Egypt (left) and the Maya site of Yaxuna in the Yucatan, Mexico (right). Could these sunrises on important days of agriculture have helped lay the foundation for the Maya calendar? (By author)
Here Comes the Sun
Fascinatingly, many of the same unusual cultural ideas observed in Mexico were key features of the revolutionary religious program of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten. From 1355 to 1337 BCE he ruled Egypt, shutting down temples of all the gods except his own: Aten, the sun disc. He created a city called Akhet-Aten from scratch in a deserted plain on the banks of the Nile (modern-day Amarna), and built many large temples to worship his father, the sun god.
Today, these large temples have been reduced to heavily-denuded mud brick mounds, a pale shadow of their former glory. Far to the east of the city, in the barren desert cliffs, lay the opening to the Royal Wadi, a valley that led to the Royal Tomb of the King and his family. Many scholars believe that Akhenaten designed his city so that the temples faced this Royal Wadi. Twice a year in February and October, the sun appears to rise directly through the cliffs in such a manner as to replicate the “akhet” symbol. This is an example of a “solar hierophany”, a phenomenon where the sun appears to interact with either landscape or architecture in a unique and pre-planned manner.
From the Greek roots “?????” (hieros), meaning “sacred”, and “???????” (phainein) meaning “to reveal”, hierophanies signify a manifestation of the sacred in the mundane. A concept first introduced by Mircea Eliade in his 1963 book The Sacred and The Profane, he explained that they “give expression to the religious values of autonomy and power, of sovereignty, of intelligence.”
The North Palace at Amarna. Once a sumptuous palace with gardens, pools, and animals, it is now little more than denuded mud bricks and sand. (By author)
According to Jessica Joyce Christie, “Akhet is the principal hieroglyph in the city name Akhet-Aten and it strongly resembles a graphic sectional view of two cliffs connected by a depression, upon which rests the Aten sun disk. Cyril Aldred (the great 20th century Scottish Egyptologist) first observed that when viewed from the area of the Great and Small Aten temples, sunrise over the wadi takes on this very hieroglyphic form in the physical landscape. Thus the rebirth of Aten, the Sun, and the king his Son, is performed daily and in perpetuity along the east-west axis of Amarna.” Marc Gabolde has observed that this east-west axis runs between the city of Amarna and the Royal tomb of Akhenaten, thereby linking the rising sun with the eternal regeneration of the monarch.
View from the Small Aten Temple at Amarna, the ancient city built by Akhenaten around 1350 BCE, looking east towards the desert cliffs and the distinctive opening to the Royal Wadi. Twice a year the sun appears to rise through the valley opening completing the akhet symbol and forming a solar hierophany. By author. ADDED: The akhet hieroglyph, 2023. By Mazapan3210/CC0
Amazingly, an image of this exact solar hierophany appears on a wall in the Royal Tomb itself. In probably the tomb’s best-preserved scene, the king and his family can be seen worshipping the Aten as it rises through the cliffs east of the city, forming the “akhet” symbol, a true “manifestation of the sacred”. Birds sing out as sun rays stream forth to the king. Sunrise was the most important time of the day in the new solar cult, when Aten first passed through the “akhet”, the most powerful hour for magic. Inscription after inscription from the city describe sunrise, and the singing, rejoicing and dancing that accompanied it every day.
Detail of the Aten rising through the opening of the Royal Wadi at Amarna, creating the “akhet” hieroglyph. A scene from the Royal Tomb. (By author)
The words of Akhenaten himself are still preserved at the ancient city on his “Boundary Stelae”, massive inscriptions carved into the cliffs. They begin by describing the king lifting his arms “up to heaven, to the one who fashioned him, ATEN, declaring: As lives my father, ATEN— The beautiful living Aten who began life and ordains life, My Father who is with me … Who has no [equal] when he has filled the land with his rays, causing every face to live; The one at whom my eyes are sated, seeing him risen daily when he rises in this house of Aten in Akhet-Aten, having filled it utterly with himself, with his fair and loving rays.”
Akhenaten and Nefertiti worship the Aten as it rises in the eastern horizon in a scene in one of the Meketaten chambers. After U. Bouriant, G. Legrain, and G. Jéquier (1903), Monuments pour servir l’étude du culte d’Atonou en Egypte. Tome premier. Les tombes de Khouitatonou (Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut francais d’archeologie orientale), pl. 1.
Agricultural Angles
Over the last century, surveyors have carefully mapped Amarna and its temples and discovered that they were oriented at azimuth 103.4° ±0.5°. Meanwhile, Juan Antonio Belmonte and Mosalam Shaltout have measured the orientations of over five hundred temples in Egypt to make statistical observations. They found that the angle present at Amarna was the third most common angle of temple orientation in Egypt (101-104° ±0.5°), arguing that: “We speculate on the idea that this family had a solar origin, likely at Heliopolis.”
This was the Greek name for the ancient “City of the Sun”, where Atum the creator and Ra the sun god were worshipped for five thousand years. Akhenaten grew up in there, and later modelled his religious program, and even temple alignments, after its ancient sun cult.
Belmonte and Shaltout noted that sunrises along this orientation occur in February and October, exactly 243 days apart. They argue that this separates the traditional Egyptian farming seasons and might have acted as harbingers of the actual season of sowing (Peret) and harvest (Shemu). Buildings were therefore built to align with sunrises on these dates due to agricultural reasons, to provide an annual check on sowing and harvest times, even as the civic calendar drifted out of sync with the seasons over 1500 years.
Sunrises along this orientation, which could be observed down the Royal Wadi, would have marked the beginning of sowing in October and harvest in February, despite the actual date of the civic calendar. Amazingly, Ivan Šprajc has noted the same thing about the orientations of Mesoamerican buildings, which “refer to sunrises and sunsets on agriculturally important dates.” Scholars suggest they may have also marked key moments in Akhenaten’s reign, such as the founding of his city.
A similar but more famous solar hierophany occurs at the Abu Simbel temple of Ramesses II. On the same days in February and October, a beam of sunlight shines 56m through the cavernous temple to illuminate statues buried deep inside the mountain. Amelia Edwards described this in her book, A Thousand Miles up the Nile, published in 1888. Visiting the temple for 19 days in 1874, she wrote:
“It is fine to see the sunrise on the front of the Great Temple; but something still finer takes place on certain mornings of the year, in the very heart of the mountain. As the sun comes up above the eastern hill-tops, one long level beam strikes through the doorway, pierces the inner darkness like an arrow, penetrates to the sanctuary, and falls like fire from Heaven upon the altar at the feet of the Gods.”
The Temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simple. LEFT: exterior, RIGHT: the sun illuminates stone statues in a chamber 56m inside the temple. (Left: By turizm-art., Right: By Diego Delso.)
Fortunately, prior to the temple’s relocation in the 1960’s, a team of scientists was picked by UNESCO to assemble as much knowledge about the temple as possible. Jan van der Haagen was the director of the office for saving the Nubian monuments. He observed the sun’s rising points over six days, recording them on an image of the temple doorway (as seen from within the temple), showing the dates that the sun rose over the hills outside. Interestingly, the days of the solar effect are the same as at Amarna, and the cliffs even form an “akhet” symbol just like that at Amarna. So the question is: if Akhenaten observed the rising sun at the Royal Wadi on days that were 243 days apart, why did he make a calendar celebrating 260 days in Mexico?
Statues of Ramesses II as Osiris inside the temple of Abu Simbel, Egypt. Colored lithograph by Louis Haghe after David Roberts, 1849 CE. Royal Academy of Arts (Public Domain)
You need a Latitude Change
In my new book Moses in Mexico (2025), I explain how I believe Akhenaten did not die, but sailed across the ocean to explore Mexico. Interestingly, he would have likely arrived in the very area (the Gulf Coast) that archaeologists claim gave birth to the 260-day calendar circa. 1200-1000 BCE. If Akhenaten did live on to become the grand explorer the Feathered Serpent in the years past 1337 BCE, then it is also possible that he introduced a new calendar to the people he met, a calendar based on memories of his own life and city back in Egypt. But if the sun rose through the akhet 243 days apart, then why not make a calendar of 243 days?
I believe the solution to the mystery lies in the similar sunrise orientations of Abu Simbel. Since the temples at both Abu Simbel and Amarna target sunrises on the same days in February and October that mark the beginning of Sowing and Harvest, separated by 243 days, the only difference is their orientation. The angle of temple orientation at Amarna is 103.4° ±0.5° at latitude 27.6 ° N, while that of Abu Simbel is only 100.5° at the more southern latitude of 22.3° N. This shallower angle of orientation was required to achieve the sunrise hierophany on the same days.
What if a temple was built at an even more southern latitude, perhaps between 15 and 18°N like in Mexico, but at the same angle as the Amarna orientation of 103.4° ±0.5°? Shockingly, its alignment would mark a period between sunrises of 260 days! This can be seen in the most recent LIDAR study discussed above: “The most widespread orientation group in the Early period was group 1, corresponding to sunrises on February 11 and October 29, separated by 260 days. Examples of this orientation group include Site MFU 15456, oriented to 104°, and MFU minor 22305, which has mounds that connect 380m along azimuth 104.27°.”
The angle of sunrise orientation (104°) seen using LIDAR at ancient Mexican sites from 1100-750 BCE (top left: Site MFU 15456, top right: MFU minor 22305). This same angle exists at Amarna, where it occurs between the Small Aten Temple (A), the Royal Wadi, and the Royal Tomb (B). Top left and right: modified by author, from Ivan Šprajc, et al, “Origins of Mesoamerican astronomy and calendar: Evidence from the Olmec and Maya regions”, Science Advances 9 (1), 2023 (CC BY-SA 2.5)
Could the origins of the 260-day sacred Maya calendar lie in the angle of sunrise orientation from Amarna, transposed to the lower latitudes of Mexico, where the days between important solar hierophanies occurred no longer 243 days apart, but 260?
The Original “Radiant Lord”
I believe memories of Akhenaten were kept alive by the rulers of Mexico, including none other than the famous K’inich Janaab Pakal of Palenque. The first part of his name, k’inich, means “radiant”, and is an appellative of the Sun God Kinich Ahau. Compare this to Akhenaten’s own appellative of the Sun god, Akh, derived from the term for “radiant light”.
According to Alonso Mendez, “Divine rulers depended on their astronomical knowledge to predict the important solar stations such as the solstices, equinox, zenith and nadir passages. By associating their own lives to the movement of the Sun, rulers were able to project the illusion that they were the human presence of the Sun on Earth, thus gaining the appellative “K’inich Ahau” or “Radiant Lord”. In order to elicit this response from a faithful following, hierophanies were employed to evoke the presence of divinity on a temple place or person.”
This perfectly describes Pharaoh Akhenaten, who was the “Radiant spirit of the Sun” and original “K’inich Ahau”. He likewise considered himself the human presence of the Sun, who merged with Aten to become a living god. I believe that as a herald of Old World knowledge in the New World, as the Feathered Serpent, he would have wanted to create a memory of his past that would far outlast him.
His new calendar would memorialize his former city and its special east-west axis, along which he had observed the solar hierophanies of the Aten creating in physical form the very name of his city: Horizon of the Aten. In this manner, Amarna and its ruler would live forever, their memories kept alive by the Maya of Mexico and Guatemala who still follow the same calendar to this very day.
Jonathon Perrin is the author of five books on Amazon. His newest is Moses in Mexico (2025). A sequel to Moses Restored (2017), it examines the provocative theory that Moses sailed to the New World over three thousand years ago to become the Feathered Serpent of myth and legend. Visit www.jonathonperrin.com for more.
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