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Too hastily have scholars turned their back on Freud's theory that Ikhnaton taught monotheism to Moses.
Let it be realized that this theory belongs to Freud. His biographer Ernest Jones (v. III, p. 398) says “many others” held it earlier. Perhaps so, but their lasting impact must have been slight, and the only one he cites, Petrie (1898, no page listed; 1906, p. 193; 1924, p. 95 - cf also p. 93), held in fact exactly the opposite view: That Hebrew monotheism somehow inspired Ikhnaton.
This subject is of the greatest importance. Ikhnaton was a pharaoh (1375-1358 B.C.) all but forgotten by the Egyptians themselves but now well known from archaeology. He created a clear system of monotheism, with many striking parallels to Judaism. Moses, as is well known, was the first clear voice of the Jewish faith, which in turn gave birth to Christianity and also to the root ideas of Mohammed's Islam. So, if pharaoh Ikhnaton actually did inspire Moses, he would be the great ethical teacher of the human race. The coldness with which theologians and professional historians have spurned Freud's contention has to be seen in this light. To defend Ikhnaton's importance means to revise mankind's established beliefs at their very base.
Surprisingly, no one before Freud seems to have grasped that there could have been a direct chain in the passage of ideas from Ikhnaton to Moses. Petrie and Weigall held that old Hebrew ideas somehow influenced Ikhnaton - though we have no evidence that there were such older Hebrew ideas. Lieblein (1877) barely missed: he traced monotheism to Egypt but placed Exodus just before Ikhnaton instead of after him. Even Breasted in his diligent lifetime of searching