Akhenaten

For the sake of convenience, I refer to Akhenaten as such throughout, even for the period before he assumed the name, when it is technically incorrect to do so. The terms 'king' and 'pharaoh' have been used interchangeably, even though both are anachronistic. Although not consistent with my practice elsewhere, I have hyphenated Akhet-aten to distinguish it from the pharaoh's name in sections where both names occur frequently. I usually use Akhet-aten when discussing the city in Akhenaten's day, Amarna for most other periods in its history. Most Egyp­tian personal names have been translated when they first occur, to give a sense of them as dogmatic phrases, often with theological meanings. All translations are my own unless otherwise acknowledged. Dates are to the Common Era (ce = ad) or Before the Common Era (bce = bc). ce dates are usually left undesignated unless there is any ambiguity.

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AKHENATEN IN THE MIRROR

Faced with the remains of an extinct civilization, I conceive ana­logically the kind of man who lived in it. But the first need is to know how I experience my own cultural world, my own civilization. The reply will once more be . . . that I interpret their behaviour by analogy with my own.

Merleau-Ponty 1962: 348

Histories and biographies of Akhenaten usually end with the destruction of his city and the obliteration of his name by those who wanted to erase his memory for ever. But this only marks one sort of ending, which is really another begin­ning. Amazing edifices continue to be built out of the ruins that Akhenaten's opponents left behind, and over the last century and a half Akhenaten has had an extraordinary cultural after-life. Akhenaten-themed theologies, paintings, novels, operas, poems, films, advertisements, fashion accessories and pieces of domestic kitsch have all been created. This book is the first attempt to look at them and try to understand why their makers chose Akhenaten. I want to know what interests are served, at particular historical moments, by summoning up the ghost of a dead Egyptian king. These representations of him are not struc­tured by Akhenaten's own history but by struggles for legitimation and author­ity in the present. Such multiple and contradictory redrawings of characters from ancient history like Sappho, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra and Julius Caesar are always more concerned with the importance of the issues discussed through them than their historicity. In that respect Akhenaten is no exception - he is a sign rather than a person. But in another way he is a unique sign. Unlike those other iconic figures, Akhenaten has become a sign almost entirely through the medium of archaeology. The classical historians do not mention him explicitly, and so he was never a part of western cultural history in the same way as other famous pharaohs like Cheops and Cleopatra. Revealed by archaeology in the early nineteenth century, Akhenaten emerged largely unencumbered by cultural baggage and ready to be reborn. Since that time, the Akhenaten myth has developed, a myth which is a unique barometer for exploring the fascination of the west with ancient Egypt over the last two centuries or so.