Akhenaten

It is unsatisfying for a book to conclude that there is no conclusion, and with­out any reflections on the 'real' Akhenaten who lies behind the endless represen­tations. Yet it would be wrong to try to impose a neat and homogeneous ending onto a book that is really about diversity and multiplicity. And the historical Akhenaten was himself aware of the power of multiple representations. During his lifetime he had himself shown in many different guises, playing around with his own images and identities: dutiful son, all-encompassing ruler, warrior-king, parent, husband and various gods. In that sense the diversity of this book does represent something of the true nature of Akhenaten. This very diversity is what will ensure Akhenaten's presence as a cultural hallucination. If Akhenaten is not of an age but for all time, it is not because he transcends historical and cultural boundaries as the world's first individual. He has become a simulacrum, an end­lessly repeated copy with no original. His immortality lies precisely in what is not there. He has survived becausc behind those recognisable features there is a space where conflicting desires erotic, aesthetic, political - can be enacted and lived

APPENDIX

Literary treatments of Akhenaten, the Amarna period, or the archaeology of Amarna

Asterisks indicate books written for children or young adults; texts are in prose unless stated.

1890 Mallard Herbertson, Taia: A Shadow of the Mile, London: Eden and Co. 1892 Francis Turner Palgrave, 'Amenophis, or, the Scarch after God', in Ameno- phis, and Other Poems Sacred and Secular,

London: Macmillan: 211-46 (poetry). 1894 H(ardwick) D(rummond) Rawnsley, 'The Dream-City of Khuenaten', in

Idylls and Lyrics of the Mile, London: David Nutt: 93-4 (poetry). 1910 L(ilian) T(heodosia) Bagnall, 'In the Tombs of the Kings', The London Magazine 25: 439-55 (short story).

H. Rider Haggard, Smith and the Pharaohs, serialised in Strand Magazine 44: 673-85; 45: 1-12 (short story).

Norma Lorimer, A Wife out of Egypt, London: Stanley Paul & Co.

Norma Lorimer, There Was a King in Egypt, London: Stanley Paul & Co.

Victor Curt Habicht, Eehnaton:Novella,

Hanover: Paul Steegemann.

A. E. Grantham (pseudonym of Alexandra Herder), The Wisdom of Akhna­ton, London: John Lane (drama).

1923 Anthony Armstrong (pseudonym of Anthony Armstrong Willis), When Nik Was Young, London: Hutchinson.

Archie Bell, King Tut-Ankh-Amen, Boston: St Botolph Society.

Lina Eckenstein, Tutankh-aten: A Story of the Past, London: Jonathan Cape. 1924 William Ellery Leonard, Tutankhamun and After, New York: B. W. Huebsch,

Inc. (poetry).

1924 [1927] Dmitri Sergeyevitch Merezhkovsky, Akhnaton King of Egypt,

trans. N. A. Duddington, London: J. M. Dent & Sons (the second date is of the English translation of the original language edition. The title of the German trans­lation by J. von Gtinther is Der Messias. Roman, which has an afterword called 'Sein oder Nichtsein des Christentums' that is not in the English edition).

William H. Williamson, The Panther Skin, London: Holdcn.

Walter Erich Schafer, Eehnaton. Trauerspiel, Stuttgart (drama).

1926 Adelaide Eden Phillpotts, Akhnaton: A Play, London: Thornton Butterworth (drama).

1928 Simeon Strunsky, King Akhnaton: A Chronicle of Ancient Egypt, London: Longmans, Green & Co.

Reinhold Conrad Muschler, Nofretete. Novella, Berlin: Paul NeffVerlag.

[1943] Thomas Mann, Joseph in Agypten,

Vienna: Bermann-Fischer Verlag, part 3 of Joseph und seine Brilder. First English translation as Joseph in Egypt, London: Seeker & Warburg (the second date is of the first English transla­tion of the original language edition).

1936 Jean Moscatelli, Akhenaton, ou la religion la meilleure, Cairo: Paul Barbey (short story, originally published in the magazine Carre/our).

1938 Erick Berry (pseudonym of Allcna Best), Honey of the Nile, London: Oxford University Press.

Lucile Morrison, The Lost Queen of Egypt, London: Seeker & Warburg.*

Margaret Dulles Edwards, Child of the Sun: A Pharaoh of Egypt, Boston: The Beacon Press.*

1939 FranzWerfcl, 'EchnatonsSonncngesang',in Gedichteaus30Jahren, Stockholm, Bermann-Fischer Verlag: 219-21 (poetry).