The Millennium Shrine - Atem as a Character

This page is all about Atem's role within the fiction of Yugioh itself, specifically the manga. I won't bother giving a full bio; his Yugipedia page does a plenty good job of that already. Instead, I'd like to talk about several particular topics that interest me.

When and Where was Atem Born?

This question is a bit more complex than one might think, so let's take it one element at a time.

First, the date, since that's the most straightforward part. According to guidebooks, his birthday is officially designated as "the 19th day of the third month of harvest season," as per the ancient Egyptian calendar. Now, I've seen people give some really bizarre conversions into the Gregorian calendar, usually saying something about the flooding of the Nile, but it really doesn't need to be that complicated. Why? Because the ancient Egyptian calendar is still in use today. If we follow the Coptic calendar, Atem's birthday is the 19th of Epip, which converts to either July 25th or 26th depending on leap years. This year it falls on the 25th. Happy birthday!

Next, the year. During Battle City, Ishizu states that the Nameless Pharaoh reigned during the 18th dynasty. This, however, doesn't actually make much sense. Think about it! They're constantly referencing the events of "three thousand years ago." The technological and cultural context of Yugioh seems to place its story contemporary with its publication- certainly, it can't take place any earlier than the mid-1990s. If we assume Atem died precisely 3,000 years before the year 1996, that puts us at 1004 BCE. Exploring timelines of ancient Egypt, such as this one from the Metropolitan Museum of Art or this one from the University of Memphis (Tennessee, not Egypt), we can see that this falls within the 21st dynasty, not the 18th. And if we subtract another 16 years, we get his birth year, for a final date of July 25th/26th, 1020 BCE.

So that just leaves the question of his birthplace. Since Atem is a pharaoh, and the direct descendant of his predecessor, it can be reasonably assumed that he was born and raised in the capital city. And since we now know he's from the 21st dynasty, that city would be Tanis, located near the western shore in the Nile delta. This site is known as San el-Hagar today.
Btw, check out these sick ass bracelets found at Tanis in the tomb of Shoshenq II. Let it never be said that Third Intermediate Period dudes didn't slay.

How is Atem's Name Written in Hieroglyphs?

We've seen Atem's name written out on the cartouche necklace given to him by Anzu:

This uses a very direct alphabetical transliteration of his name as spelled in Japanese: 𓄿𓏏𓇋𓅓𓅱 A-T-E-M-U.
That being said, hieroglyphs are a complicated script, and things aren't always so one-to-one. While I mean no disrespect to the late great Kazuki Takahashi-sensei, it is kinda giving "how to write your name in hieroglpyhs exercise everyone does in third grade history class." An alternate spelling I've seen proposed by folks who know much more about hieroglyphs than me is 𓄿𓍃 A-TM. Here's a visual for anyone whose browser can't render hieroglyphs.

Are Yuugi and Atem the Same Guy?

This is a fairly subjective and contentious question. To be honest I think it's rather up to personal interpretation, but if you want my opinion on the matter: Yes, but also no..? It's complicated.

If you're familiar with Kingdom Hearts, let me just lay it out straight: Yuugi is Atem's Nobody and Yami is Atem's Heartless. Case closed.
If you're not familiar with Kingdom Hearts, here's my interpretation of events:

  • Original Atem was normal, just one dude
  • Atem splits his soul into two parts
  • One part (Yami) gets sealed into the Millennium Puzzle, with his name and memories further contained behind a whole bunch of "collect all the dragon balls and then spin around three times in front of the Tablet of Memories while chanting bloody mary" bullshit
  • The other part (Yuugi) gets reincarnated, mostly normal but struggles emotionally and socially due to missing half his soul

In other words, my opinion is that the Yuugis were one guy originally, but the "real" Atem no longer exists as of the main plot of Yugioh; instead, he's been split into two entities who are both functionally their own individuals. So in a sense, the Yuugis are both Atem, but also not. Confused yet?

(If you're wondering how this affects my practice, the answer is that I'm a kemeticist. Everyone in my pantheon is sometimes the same person and sometimes different people and sometimes someone's wife or their mother or their sister or their daughter or all of these things at once and sometimes also their own spouse and sometimes also the Pharaoh. As far as I'm concerned, Yugioh and Kingdom Hearts are EXTREMELY straightforward.)

I think there are a number of things pointing towards the possibility of Yuugi and Yami both being two "halves" of the same original person. Firstly, we know reincarnation is a thing in Yugioh, with Seto, Isis/Ishizu, and Siamun/Simon/Grandpa being the most clear examples- all of them look very similar between their past lives and their reincarnations, and obviously Yuugi bears a strong resemblance to Atem. We also know that splitting souls into multiple pieces is very much possible, and there's also a bit in Millennium World in which Yuugi says that "half of [Yami's] soul" is with him.

With all this being said, there's also plenty of instances of the Yuugis being referred to as being "two souls in one body", so... Ultimately I do think it's up to interpretation. This is the interpretation that I find to be both the most plausible and the most interesting. If you disagree, that's totally fine!