The Aten was a device of Goa'uld design that was present on P3X-314 within Sekhmet's Temple.
History[]
It resembled a platform device with numerous rings within the machine, with two of them rotating over two stationary ones at the center. A console was present that allowed a user to operate the machine, which functioned by being linked to something in solar orbit that triggered the release of magnetic energy in naturally active regions of the solar atmosphere. In effect, it simulated the creation of solar flares, and theoretically had the ability to bring about time travel if simulating such conditions in specified parameters. By working in conjunction with a Stargate, it afforded its user the ability to travel through time.
Sekhmet was noted to have one such device in her possession which SG-1 discovered in her abandoned temple. Once there, Samantha Carter determined the machine's nature, and learned that Sekhmet had been freed from her imprisonment, whereupon she intended to rise to power. There were fears that she had already entered into the timeline and made changes, after an alternate future version of Jack O'Neill arrived at Stargate Command and then died from radiation wounds. Despite their investigation, Sekhmet's forces arrived and took the Aten device away to prevent its destruction. (SG1: "Unleashed Ep 1")