Akhenaten

To sum up: there is no doubt that Akhenaten's reign saw many upheavals, some of whose origins lay in debates about the nature of divinity which had been current in elite culture for some time. The most radical changc was the way in which the Aten became increasingly distanced from representation in human or animal form, at the same time becoming identified with kingship and Akhenaten. These changes were concentrated on the usual concerns of pharaohs, and were brought about in conventional ways, often using materials and texts sanctioned by tradition to make their point. Even the most innovatory images of Akhenaten, such as where he replaces Osiris in the non-royal tombs, may be an attempt to revive the status enjoyed by the pharaoh in distant antiquity, before Osirian religion had made the individual more powerful vis-a-vis the monarch in ritual terms. This is also true of the 'hymns' to the Aten, the texts usually adduced as evidence of Akhenaten's religious sincerity. Alongside much that is new, they recycle and resignify religious formulae that were not. The 'hymns' are certainly great religious poems which lyrically evoke the natural world, but this should not blind us to the fact that their real subject is kingship and Akhenaten's role as sole interlocutor for the Aten. They have little to say to people outside elite culture, in spite of their supposed universalism. Although Akhenaten was certainly monola- trous and rejected the cults of other gods, this does not

per se mean that he was a monotheist; and his monolatrous policies may not have been carried out consist­ently throughout Egypt. Finally, other monotheisms cannot be proved to have originated with him. This is a relic of old 'diffusionist' doctrines, current from the 1890s, which argued that cultural developments cannot happen independently in different times and places, but have only one origin from which they are spread.

It may be misleading to think about Akhenaten as a rebel or a heretic. His interests may have been more conservative than those terms imply. But answer­ing this definitively comes back to the problem of what Akhenaten himself actually believed, which wc can't know. The 'hymns' may give a sense of an individual and his beliefs from a modern viewpoint, but as William J. Murnane observes, 'very little in the voluminous records from the period of Akhenaten's heresy sheds light on the man himself. . . the individual remains hidden behind the carefully crafted persona'. '¹

' What may be more useful is to consider why, given Akhenaten's 'carefully crafted persona', we believe that we can make any attempt to guess at how his mind worked. A crucial part is played by the artistic productions of his reign, the next building-block of the myth.

'Exquisite deformities': art and the body

'Then came AMENHOTEP's son, AKEN-ATEN, a physical degenerate and a religious fanatic.' Physical degenerate indeed! How on earth do they know that? . . . One knows what modern artists can do in the way of distending and emaciating the figure, and early Egypt may have suffered under similar sorrows.

'Respecting the Pharaohs', satire in Punch, 14 February 1923

In a culture like Egypt, where the image was such a rich medium of expression, one would expect political, social or religious change to be reflected in a change in the various artistic forms. Therefore, once Akhenaten started to modify his theological position, a changc in art and in the way he was represented is not surprising. This artistic style, whose precise meanings are much debated, evolved rapidly throughout the reign. It was supposedly initiated by the king's own interest in art. The only evidence for this is a statement by one of Akhen­aten's sculptors, Bak. He described himself as 'having received the teaching of his Person [i.e. Akhenaten], chief of sculptors in the great and important monuments of the king in the House of Aten in Akhet-aten'.⁵' This statement should not be taken too literally. At all periods of pharaonic history people boasted of how their jobs brought them into prestigious personal contact with the pharaoh.