Akhenaton revisited

Some consider him as the precursor of Christ. Others see in him a proto-hippy or the figurehead of the gay movement. A monotheist before the concept was invented, husband of Nefertiti and the father of Tutankhamen, this pharaoh had everything it takes to make the West fantasise. In the bibliography devoted to him  (1), the Liège Egyptologist Dimitri Laboury filters the old myths through contemporary science.

How to write a trustworthy biography of a king who disappeared over thirty centuries ago? Much depends on the abundance and the quality of the sources which time has permitted to come down to us. But in the case of Amenhotep IV- Akhenaton (Amenophis IV, in Ancient Greek), the major problem resides in the manner in which the information available about him has been interpreted since he was ‘rediscovered’, in the middle of the 19th century. His character has effectively been distorted, sometimes in ways bordering on the ridiculous, by the fantasies and the needs of identity formation felt by the West, vis-à-vis Ancient Egypt. This civilisation has in effect been perceived since the end of the Middle Ages as a precursor of contemporary societies and their values. Thus were attributed to the ‘monotheistic’ pharaoh behavioural and personality features which at times had nothing to do with what he really was and what he really did. Amongst the innumerable biographies of the monarch, be they openly romanticised or declare themselves as scientific or scholarly, nearly none of them escape this distorting mirror effect created by the expectations of the era as regards this unusual sovereign, who ruled Egypt for seventeen years (+/- 1352-1335 av. J.-C.). The Egyptologists themselves have generally been unable to escape this form of ‘cultural hallucination’; on the contrary, they have often contributed to it!

It also needs to be distinguished between what has been historically verified and what is a matter of personal opinion – or even personal projection – between Akhenaton as the precursor of Christ, the spiritual father of Moses, a pre-scientific humanist, a ‘good leader who loved humanity,’ or an enlightened despot, who practiced real politik, the first instigator of theosophy, Nazism or perestroika, or an eccentric degenerate, iconoclastic and dictatorial, a pre-Socratic philosopher or the first fundamentalist in history, to only post up some of the portraits brushed by eminent Egyptologists. But what can be said if we add a proto-Islamic Akhenaton, that of the Afro-centrists, the fathers of psychoanalysis, the Marxists, the proto-hippy of the 1960s, the idol of rappers, a figurehead of the gay movement or even the extraterrestrial Akhenaton, who is experiencing a certain success on the Internet today? From the adventures of Blake and Mortimer in The Mystery of the Great Pyramid to the hero of the Nobel Prize for literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz, from a play by Agatha Christie to the esoteric Nazi writer Savitri Dévi, the pharaoh has literally been adapted to suit each and every purpose! A wide range of successive Akhenatons have thus been fantasized over the eras, according to a ‘Western-centric’ reading conditioned by the sensibilities of the times and the needs of the moment, to such a point that the monotheistic pharaoh constitutes a genuine case study to illustrate the influence of the prevailing context on the writing of history. But Akhenaton’s immense popularity surely accounts for the revelation, in the 1920s, of the magnificent and celebrated bust of his wife Nefertiti, and then the most emblematic and most mediatised of all the discoveries in the history of archaeology: the bringing to light, in 1922, of the almost intact funerary treasure of a child-king delivered up from the realm of the forgotten: Tutankhamen, who would later be revealed to be the son of Akhenaton.

(1) Dimitri Laboury, Akhénaton, Pygmalion, Paris, 2010, 482 pages. 

‘The exceptional popularity of Akhenaton and the diversity of his romantic reinterpretations remind Egyptologists of their primary duty to society,’ cautions Dimitri Laboury, FRS-FNRS Senior Research Associate at the University of Liège. ‘To spread amongst the widest possible general public the knowledge related to Ancient Egypt that it is possible to establish through scientific methods.’ In sifting clearly between what things we do know and the things we don’t know. In taking care to distinguish certitudes from what is only probable, likely and plausible, or uncertain, cannot be demonstrated, hypothetical or simply seductive. This is the precept which the author has taken pains to respect in his biography, which has just been published by Pygmalion.

The new sun theology

A late child of the pharaoh Amenhotep III and the queen Tiy, prince Amenhotep, the future  Akhenaton, came into the world during one of the most sumptuous periods of Ancient Egypt: never had the country been so rich and powerful as during the reign of his father (+/- 1391-1353). Around 1352 B.C., doubtless still an adolescent, he came to the throne of a country in which the modern distinction between political power and religion had no meaning, as the Pharaoh was considered a god, the earthly progeny of the divinities. But, since the reforms initiated by Amenhotep III, each of the pantheon’s divinities was more and more considered as a particular manifestation of the supreme god, which the sun had incarnated since the dawn of the pharaonic civilization, for obvious reasons linked to the Egyptian biotope. There thus emerged an omnipotent god who was superior to the others, and who, without breaking it up, structures the pantheon as a ramified emanation of his power. Under Amenhotep III, Egyptians began to think their connection to the world from a perspective influenced by the new imperial status of their civilization, which seemed to dominate the known world. This profound transformation made the reign of Amenhotep III a period of a genuine intellectual and religious turmoil, in which the ancestral paradigms of pharaonic thought began to be called into question, notably in terms of their polytheistic representation of the world.

Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton) was to radicalise the ‘new sun theology’ shaped by his father. His religious policy evolved in stages, over the course of which he increased the innovations which accentuated the royal and exclusive dimension of the god who was the guardian of his power. By beginning to stress the living character of the divinity, now represented in the form of a simple luminous disc whose rays, turned towards the ground, ended in hands which took care of the king and the members of his family. The appellation of the sun king could now be encapsulated by ‘Aton’, ‘the solar star.' It was in year four of his reign that Amenhotep IV married Nefertiti and started thinking about his line of descendents. But it was above all then that he imposed his new theocracy, a new ideological system which legitimized his power. Aton, the tangible and deified manifestation of the sun’s luminous energy, became the only source of his legitimacy to rule, of his theocratic power. T

The new god doubtless strongly resembled the divinity which had already assumed this function for over half a millennium, and which it was visibly trying to supplant: Amon-Rê, ‘the king of the gods.’ But, differently to the former, Aton had no relationship with the other divinities. And, above all, it is a completely mute god, muzzled, with whom only the monarch can really communicate. By the mirror effect which, in Egyptian thought, had since for all time united the king with his divine progenitor, Amenhotep IV became the ‘effective image’ of god on earth, the source of all life and everything which was beneficial. Thus did he also change his name, abandoning the patronymic which placed him still under the protection of Amon (Amenhotep), to now have himself called Akhenaton, ‘he who is of use to Aton.’ Aton thus appeared as an alternative to Amon-Rê.  But, above all, he offered to the king the advantage of being easily controllable, as his sole interlocutor and unique interpreter is now the pharaoh himself! The political danger which Amon-Rê presented in calling into question the legitimacy of a sovereign who was already in place was thus totally overcome.

Monotheism, the word which raises hackles

It was for a long time believed that he had wanted to extinguish any reference to the divinities which preceded the Egyptian pantheon, but we today know that his prosecution was specifically targeted at the divine individual Amon-Rê. At the beginning at least the other divinities of the traditional pantheon remained tolerated. Thus has been raised the question which has so intrigued – and sometimes violently set against each other – modern commentators on Akhenaton, be they Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims or atheists: is Atonism really a monotheism, that is an ideological system which only envisages the existence of but a single god? There are reasons to doubt it, as he didn't really abolish polytheism as it stood, contenting himself with neglecting or even ignoring it, to the benefit of supreme divinity. But, over the course of time, Atonism would finish in an almost visceral rejection of all the other deities, which justifies our being able to consider it as a genuine monotheism.  Akhenaton's principle innovation nevertheless resides in his initiative in monopolizing this supreme god as his personal divinity, thus locking in place a really theocratic power. Reform is not imposed without provoking opposition, and that is no doubt one of the elements which convinced the sovereign to abandon Karnak, the fiefdom of the ancient god (close to Luxor; the ancient Thebes), and to move his court to a new capital, created on a site free from any occupation in Central Egypt: Amarna (2) , quite close to being half way between Thebes (in the South) and Memphis (in the North). From the colossal building site which opened up there in the fifth year of his reign would spring Akhet-Aton, the new 'Horizon of Aton,' a city entirely dedicated to the new theocracy and its guardian god, on the Nile's right bank.

Plague and defeats: the gods avenge themselves!

It is there that the reign experienced its apogee, then its decline. Nefertiti gave birth to a boy who would be called Tutankhamen.  'the living image of Aton.' But a gloom was cast over this happy news by a series of deaths, probably due to the plague, which decimated the royal family. And, on a geopolitical level, Egypt underwent several diplomatic and military reverses which threatened its protective 'glacis' in the Near East. The region was also coveted by the expansionism of the Hittites, who were no longer satisfied with Anatolia and now threatened the Syro-Palistinian territories, up until then under pharaonic rule. It was thus that Akhenaton died, shortly after Nefertiti, at the end of 17 years of reign, around 1335 B.C. He left Egypt in a particularly delicate situation.

(2) Better known under the name of  Tel el-Amarna. 

Dimitri Laboury's book lifts a part of the uncertainties which had until now hidden the succession of the monotheistic pharaoh. He explains how his eldest daughter, Mentaton, seized the throne around the age of 13 years, in momentarily sidelining the male heir, Toutankhaton, this little boy who would become Tutankhamen. These years are tangled up in a Machiavellian fabric, of duplicity and lies in comparison with which certain intrigues of the Italian Renaissance would have an air as innocent as a pasta dish cooked in butter. It is in any case certain that it was Mentaton, reigning under the name of Neferneférouaton, who initiated the restoration of a theocracy basing pharaonic legitimacy on a polytheistic religious system, as before the reign of her father. Exit Aton, return to the ancien regime! Why such a rapid turnaround? One can imagine that the teenager sovereign came under maximum pressure from her royal entourage, for a long time bristling over the Atonist 'heresy.' And that she had to bow before the members and auxiliaries of the court, indispensable cogs in establishing her power, which was still far from assured.

It was nevertheless her young brother Toutankhaton, climbing to the Egyptian throne a little later, under the name of Tutankhamen ('the living image of Amon'), who fully appropriated the decision to return to the previous regime. The young pharaoh and his entourage justified the abandoning of Atonism by the state of decay it had plunged the country into: if Egypt had been subject to reverses externally, if it had been heavily stricken by epidemics, it was because the gods had turned away from them to punish the king for having abandoned them. This restoration of 'the country as it had been the first time' went hand in hand with the abandonment of Akhet-Aton as the royal residence. Amarna was thus relinquished, its edifices to a large extent dismantled so that their materials could be reused for new constructions, and the site given up to a silence swept by the winds. Never again would official mention be made of the rule of Akhenaton, deliberately wiped from the collective memory.

Human, as he was able to be

Pilloried by his successors because his sacrilegious heresy had brought Egypt the worst calamities, Akhenaton has continued to fascinate Westerners since his 'rediscovery,' at the end of the 19th century. And that because of the to a greater or lesser extent romanticised multiple speculations, theories and fantasies which have since then gravitated around him. But the Akhenaton who emerges from Laboury's book will doubtless surprise many readers, as he is incompatible with the visionary mystic or the generous humanist that certain people will perhaps expect to encounter, such as he had been 'recreated' by the Western imaginary. The pharaoh we discover here is nonetheless indeed the character suggested to by the attested facts of his reign, in the current situation of Egyptologist science. He was above all an absolute monarch, who tried to hijack Egyptian religion to his exclusive benefit, to underpin his unrivalled theocratic power. Far from the qualities and faults which have been assigned to him, Akhenaton thus becomes once again simply human. As a potentate in Antiquity was able to be…