By the 1st century BCE, the cult resided in a farmlands situated outside of the city. Nevertheless, Akhenaten continued to be worshipped by a group of followers, who later constructed a sanctuary in Thebes, which was eventually replaced by the Temple of Karnak. His monuments were dismantled and hidden, his statues were destroyed, and his name excluded from the king lists, all in an attempt to erase him from Egyptian history.
In the aftermath of his death, Akhenaten was branded a heretic by most of the Egyptian population. Īkhenaten eventually died in the mid 1330s and was buried in a rock-cut tomb in the Valley of the Kings. As a result, many Egyptians were forced to celebrate their gods in secret. Revering the Apple's power, he and his wife Nefertiti introduced the monotheistic religion of Atenism to Egypt, and changing his name to Akhenaten in the process.
At some point during his reign, Amenhotep IV acquired an Apple of Eden, which he associated with Aten, the disk of the sun in ancient Egyptian mythology.