The central creed of Akhenaten’s new religion is expressed in the so-called Hymn to the Aten, which is really a hymn to light, the god of Akhenaten’s religion. Apparently written by the king himself, it is preserved in the tomb of one of his courtiers, Ay, the man who eventually succeeded Tutankhamun as pharaoh. The hymn begins with Akhenaten’s praise of light as it comes into the world at dawn:

Perfect is your appearance from the sky’s horizon,
 oh living one of the sun-disk, who determines life:
for you are risen from the eastern horizon
 and have filled every land with your perfection;
for you are beautiful, great, glittering, high above every land,
 and your rays embrace the land to the end of all you have made;
for you are in the sun, reaching to their end
 and subduing them for the son you love;
for you are far, yet your rays are on the land:
 you are in their face.

A key theme of the hymn is the unity of all creation. Beneath its diversity, all life depends on light:

How manifold is that which you make, even those hidden from sight,
 oh sole god, with no other except him—
creating the earth for your heart, while you are one:
 people, cattle, and all small animals,
 everyone on earth who walks on feet,
 all in the heavens, flying with their wings,
 foreign countries from Syria to Africa, and the land of Egypt;
giving every man to his place and making what they need:
 every one having his food, his lifetime reckoned,
 tongues parted in speech, their characters too,
 their skins distinguished, as you distinguish foreigners;
making the inundation in the netherworld and bringing it forth as you desire,
 to give life to the subjects, just as you make them for you—
 you lord of them all, who exhausts himself in them.
You lord of every land, who rises for them;
 you sun-disk of the daytime, great of awe;
all far-off foreign lands, you make their life,
 for you have given an inundation in the sky to descend for them
 and make waves on the mountains like the sea,
 in order to water their fields in their towns.
How functional are your designs, oh lord of continuity:
 an inudation in the sky for the foreigners and the flocks of every foreign land,
 an inudation coming from the netherworld for Egypt;
your rays nursing every plot of land,
 rising that they might live and grow for you;
making seasons to develop all you make:
 winter to cool them, heat that they might taste you.
You have made the sky far to rise in it,
 to see all you make, while you are One,
risen in your medium of the living sun-disk,
 apparent and shining, far and glittering,
making millions of evolutions from you, the sole source—
 cities, towns, fields, the river’s path—
every eye glimpsing you in relation to them,
 while you are in the sun-disk of the daytime above the earth.