The Hymn to the Aten and Psalm 104 are strangely similar in some aspects. “Tree and plants grow, birds fly up to their nests their wings in praise for your Ka. ” 6
“the trees of the lord drink their fill, the Lebanon cedars he planted, where the birds make their nest, the stork whose home is the cypresses.” Psalm 104 16-18
It is clear from these two excerpts that some of the psalm was borrowed from the ancient Hymn to the Aten. Although there are some similarities there are some technical differences pertaining to the times they were written. The hymn to Aten incorporated things like the Nile, the pharos of the time, as well as not just Aten but the embodiments of him (it?). The hymn to Aten is much longer and more descriptive and is constantly praising Aten and what he is able to do and provide, we see a little bit of this in the psalm but not nearly as much. The psalm is much more condenced and seems to give off the feeling of a close relationship to God that anyone can have as opposed to that relationship only being possible through divine kingship in the Hymn. At the end of the Hymn there is a very long drawn out praise for Aten and everything/everyone relating to him, the Psalm simply ends with “bless, o my being, o lord, hallelujah!” 35 The psalm is much shorter and to the point but clearly draws from the Egyptian hymn.
I was just thinking more about the similarities between the two, isn't it interesting that the hymn is longer? I recognize that it needs the extra lines per stanza because it is to be sung, but aren't psalms for singing too? The varying lengths in the book of psalms don't seem to have any rhyme or reason, and the songs of ascent are the most lyrical and the shortest. While psalm 104 is certainly more concise than the hymn, psalms is general are not particularly concisely written. I don't think this comment has a point, the comparison is just weird to me.
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