Akhenaten

One example is Civitas So lis (The City of the Sun) by Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639), published in 1623. A mystic convinced of his own messianic mis­sion, Campanella was arrested and tortured by the Inquisition, and wrote Cwitas Solis while he was in prison. Its central text is a verse of the Bible, Isaiah 19:18: 'In that day there shall be five cities in the land of Egypt . . . one shall be called the city of the sun.' Around this verse Campanella created an elaborate Utopia, an answer to the ecclesiastical and political corruption of his day. The city of the sun was ruled by a pacifist and benign theocracy, who worshipped a sun-god oddly like the Aten. 'They serve under the sign of the sun which is the symbol and visage of god from whom comes light and warmth and every other thing.'

⁷⁸ Another example is the allegorical novel Sethos (1731) by the French scholar and classicist Abbe Jean Terrasson (1670-1750), which is based closely on Manetho. Sethos

is mostly remembered for its influence upon Masonic myth, but Terrasson also created a parallel of the Akhenaten myth without ever having heard of Akhenaten himself. Sethos is a highly moral tale. It tells the story of Prince Sethos, son of King Osoroth of Egypt and Queen Nephtc. Osoroth cares only for pleas­ure and nothing for the business of government. He delegates the tedious work of ruling to his capable wife. Sethos is the paradigmatic good prince, and very much his mother's son. He is keen to take instruction on spiritual and temporal matters from the priests of Memphis in order to rule well; but he finds that they are too corrupt, and goes in search of a purer, older wisdom at the Pyramids. Here he is enlightened, and to mark his new spiritual status, Sethos changes his name to Cheres. Terrasson borrowed this name from Manctho's account of the successors of Amunhotep III in the Eighteenth Dynasty. Cheres-Sethos suffers many tribu­lations because of his political rivals, and though he is reviled at the time, his message lives on after his death as an instruction for the future.

Who is this hero, sprung from gods. Whom, from afar, my eyes survey? Sec him approach! His features I can trace: My heart knew Cheres, ere my eyes his face. Is he that hero? Was his valour giv'n To be the instrument of gracious heav'n?⁷⁹

Terrasson's novel corresponds to the basic motifs of the Akhenaten myth closely, even down to 'Nephte' being one of the principal characters! Present are the distant lazy father like Amunhotep, the energetic domineering mother like Tiye, the close bond between mother and son, the change of name, the spiritual ascent towards a lost ancient wisdom which is misunderstood at the time but survives because of its transcendent worth.

'My heart knew Cheres, ere my eyes his face': the line makes as much sense when Akhenaten is substituted for Cheres. The similarities of Campanella's and

Terrasson's elaborate fables to Akhenaten's history are coincidental, but they still show the extent to which Akhenaten's story had already been written long before his historical rediscovery. This becomes all the more striking in the light of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century interest in the variously named successors of Amunhotep III (Manetho's Akencheres/Akencherses/Achencheres), because of their supposed connection with Moses and the Exodus. Following popular histories, such as the Histoire universelle

of Bossuet, some historians at this time believed that the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt was a time of supreme importance in human history. One British writer went so far as to say that 'there is every probability that the founders of that dynasty were also the founders and originators of the entire frame-work of social organisation which exists at the present day'.⁸⁰ British social and political institutions, such as a division between church and state, universities to maintain high culture, even land taxes, were all supposed to have originated in Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty. And who brought these benefits from Egypt to England? The last of Amenophis' line, Akencheres, the pseudo-Akhenaten, 'whose expulsion . . . led to the civilisation of Greece, of Europe, and it may be emphatically said, of this country'.⁸'