Akhenaten

damaged by vindictive hands, Vernon asked if it was the work of fanat­ical Mohammedans . . . when Stella told him that it was either the work of Christians, or it might be of the heretic king Amen-hetep IV, who tried to overthrow the gods of the priests of Amon and teach the chil­dren of Egypt, more than one thousand years before Christ's coming, almost the same religious beliefs and morals as the broad-minded and intellectual classes in the world are accepting to-day, he said 'byJove' and no more. To Stella the character of this great reformer was tremen­dously interesting, and his life's story strangely pathetic, so much so that she tried to interest her lover in his personality. But Vernon said he could not picture to himself the personality of any real individual who existed so long ago.¹³

Stella begins to realise that Vernon Thorpe is not the right man for her when she meets the archaeologist Michael Ireton - a thinly disguised version of Edward Ayrton (1882—1914), one of the Egypt Exploration Fund's excavators who in 1907 had discovered tomb 55 in the Valley of the Kings, perhaps the tomb of Akhenaten (see Plate 2.4). In another archaeological in-joke, Flinders Petrie is also mentioned, thinly disguised as the eccentric 'Professor Eritep'. Michael and Stella's love story then becomes implicated directly in political reform, with the introduction of Girgis, the radical nationalist Copt. He wants to end British occupation and plans to blow up the train of the governor, Lord Minton. Once again Akhenaten is a useful comparison: Girgis is 'with all his love of progress and hunger for modernity, a reincarnation of that ancient pharaoh'.'" In spite of the threat of violence and the disruption of imperialism, all ends happily. Girgis is arrested before bombing the train, and Stella breaks off her engagement to Vernon and marries Michael. She settles down to a philanthropic life in Cairo, devoted to bettering the lot of oppressed Coptic women. This is no easy task, and Akhenaten remains an appropriate role model: ' "Reformers must suffer persecu­tion; it's splendid work!"' Stella remarks to her English former governess Miss McNaughten ('Naughtie' to her intimates).²¹

Ireton and Stella also feature in Lorimer's There Was a King in Egypt.

Over­shadowed by the First World War (published in 1918 but set in 1914—15), There Was a King in Egypt is a far less cheerful novel in spite of its happy ending. Like

A Wife out of Egypt, it is essentially a romance, in which a spectral Akhenaten drifts in and out to offer a resonant message of pacificism and universal love, and spiritual guidance to the protagonists. It is also a Bildungsroman,

charting the cen­tral couple's spiritual progress, in which Akhenaten acts as a sort of doctrinal adviser who brings about the revelation of true earthly and heavenly love. Now Akhenaten's teachings come over as distinctly trite; in Lorimer's day, when orthodox Christianity was proving inadequate to cope with the flood of death and bereavement caused by the First World War, it probably read quite differently.

The novel opens with Margaret Lampton arriving in Egypt to join the expedition in the tomb of Tiye led by Margaret's brother Freddy, 'one of England's finest Egyptologists'. Also on site is Michael Amory, a sensitive and spiritual artist, who is copying the paintings in the tomb. Immediately Margaret is spiritually affected by the quality of the light in the desert. 'In that Theban valley it seemed as if she would live on light, that it would supply food for both soul and body. In Egypt, God is made manifest in the sun.' This focus on sun-worship sets up the first vision of Akhenaten. He appears to Margaret in a dream, with 'the face of a saint and a fanatic', in whose 'eyes there was a world of suffering and sorrow'. He has returned to see whether his teachings of love and pacificism have survived. Akhenaten's speech to her embeds phrases from the 'hymn' to the Aten and two of the hundred names of Allah in a more general Christian matrix:

Aton's love is great and large. It filled the two lands of Egypt: it fills the world today. . . . You can tell the one who is to do my work, the one who knows and loves Aton, the compassionate, the all-merciful. Tell him that I bid him take up my work.²"