Akhenaten (1352-1336 BC) was son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiy. During his reign both the art and religion in Egypt were marked by rapid change. When he initially succeeded the throne he was known as Amenhotep IV, but changed his name to Akhenaten in his fifth regnal year, and began to build a new capital called Akhetaten ("horizon of the sun"), in Middle Egypt. This phase, encompassing Akhenaten's and Smenkhkara's reign and the beginning of Tutankhamun's, is now referred to as the Armarna Period, and the site of the city of Akhetaten is now known as el-Amarna.

The major religious innovation of this reign was the worship of the sun disc Aten to the exclusion of the rest of the Egyptian gods, even Amun. Art took on a new distinctive style - the reliefs and stelae in the tombs and temples of Akenaten's reign show Akhenaten, his wife Nefertiti and the royal princesses worshipping and making offerings to the Aten, which was displayed as a sun-disc with radiating arms and hands stretched downwards (see pictures above). The names of other deities were removed from temple walls in an attempt to reinforce the idea of the Aten as a single supreme deity.

Akhenaten was a philosopher and a thinker, much more so than his forebears. His father Amenhotep III had recognised the growing power of the priesthood of Amun and had sought to curb it - Akhenaten however took matters a lot further by introducing the new "monothesitic" cult of worship to the sun-disc Aten. This was not a new idea, as a minor aspect of the sun god Ra-Horakty, the Aten had been somewhat venerated in the Old Kingdom. A large scarab belonging to Tuthmosis IV (Akhenaten's grandfather) has a text that mentions the Aten.

After a reign of around 18 years, Akhenaten was succeeded by Smenkhkara, whose exact identity is unknown. Soon after, Tutankhaten succeeded the throne, he may have been a son of Akhenaten's, or a younger son of Amenhotep III. Within a few years, Tutankhaten had abandoned the city at Tell el-Amarna in favour of the traditional administrative centre at Memphis, and changed his name to Tutankhamun, effectively signalling the end of the supremacy of the Aten. Many reliefs from this period were later heavily damaged as a reaction against the so-called heresy of Akhenaten.

The Aten is portrayed as a sun disc whose protective rays stretch down into hands holding the ankh, the symbol for life. Everywhere the royal family appeared they were shown to be under the protective rays of the Aten. The king, usually accompanied by Nefertiti and a number of their daughters, dominate the reliefs on walls of the tombs of the nobles at el-Amarna. This Aten symbol is prevalent in all of the distinctive art of the Amarna period, and is also depicted upon some of the treasures of the later pharaoh, Tutankhamun.

What happened to their bodies? One mystery remains surrounding the Amarna period - the disappearance of the bodies of Akhenaten and his immediate family. The royal tomb to the east of el-Amarna appears to never have been completed and there is little evidence to suggest that anyone other than one of his daughters was ever buried there. In 1907 a young male member of the royal family was discovered by Theodore Davis in tomb 55 in the Valley of the Kings. This mummy had been reburied with a set of funerary equipment mainly belonging to Queen Tiy, and was initially identified as that of Akhenaten (a view still accepted by some Egyptologists) but is now considered to be that of Smenkhkara.