The opposite of NATO is Otan

I humbly offer one theory that perhaps explains the obscure lyric from “Muse 2 the Pharaoh.” Over the Christmas break, I was talking to a friend about the lyric and played it for him. Prince doesn’t pronounce the word like o-tan, but pronounces it more like a-ten. My friend immediately said, oh, Aten is an Egyptian god for the underworld.

That actually made sense to me that Prince, now a Jehovah’s Witness and into Egyptian culture, would try to equate NATO to something satanic. However, I did a quick search on the Internet for the Egyptian god Aten, and it turns out that Aten is connected with the Sun gods. Aten originally represented the sun god, but later the deity was split into Atum and Ra. This doesn’t really seem to be the underworld concept, but there is one interesting thing. The Pharaoh Akhenaten attempted to establish a monotheistic cult with Aten as the object of worship. There was opposition from the powerful priests of Amun-Ra and from people who rejected the cult in favor of polytheism and Aten's significance dwindled.

Maybe Prince is trying to draw a comparison – the cult of Aten was viewed by the majority was trying to enforce its “evil” ways and political power over the people. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that the United Nations is Satan incarnate, so maybe they also feel that way about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. So maybe Prince is trying to say that NATO is evil.

All I can say is – whatever!

I just wish Prince would take a real semiotics class and learn the real stuff as opposed to only listening to Larry Graham’s fucked-up word play.