It is a similar case with both pharaohs' use of the past. Amunhotep Ill's interest seems almost antiquarian, scrutinising ancient monuments in order to get the period details right for his own re-enactments of historic rituals like the sed- festival.Under Akhenaten, however, it seems possible to see a different motivation behind the ways in which ancient objects or architectural types were used. For Amunhotep III, this can be seen as part of the religious pluralism of his reign, and for Akhenaten as part of his larger project of getting rid of any intermediaries between heaven and earth other than himself and his family. There are many hints of this at Akhet-aten, such as the open-air temples whose architecture and decoration have similarities with some Old Kingdom temples. Even the placement of the tombs at Akhet-aten, with those of the courtiers clustering round the king's, recalls the layout of the Old Kingdom necropolis at Saqqara and Giza. And among the wreckage of Akhenaten's funerary furniture is a fragmentary bowl inscribed with the names of Khaefre (= Chcphren), one of the pyramid-building pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty, c. 2520-2495 bce.''1 The inclusion of this object might suggest more than Akhenaten's wish to locate himself within the lineage of esteemed ancestors. It could imply that desirable models of kingship were to be found a thousand years earlier in the pyramid age, when the pharaoh was supposed to have had an uncontested status as living god with no competitors. There are other hints of the conservative nature of
Akhenaten's revolution. The texts that were used to teach scribes were the traditional ones, dating from the Middle Kingdom. While certain parts of these texts were altered to remove unacceptable elements, such as the writings of divine names, it is still significant that old texts with a link to the past were retained, rather than replaced by new ones which conformed to the new orthodoxy.53 Such conservatism is particularly striking in an educational context. Teaching materials are often the first targets for an ideological overhaul when new political regimes come into power. Among the texts used at Akhet-aten was The Teaching of King Amunemhat I, from the Twelfth Dynasty, and so already over five hundred years old. The name Amunemhat means 'Amun-is-forcmost': one wonders how the scribes were instructed to write this politically unacceptable name. In some ways, then, Akhenaten's reign and its changes may be seen as looking back at a more distant past rather than a break with it.
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.
Interpreting this art presents a special set of challenges. First, there is the question of decontextualisation. Much was deliberately vandalised after Akhenaten's death, so losing its contexts and explanatory texts. Most Amarna art cannot be appreciated in its original setting, in spite of efforts at reconstruction. Images soon take on new valencies once divorced from the circumstances in which they were meant to be displayed and seen. While this is a problem with all images, it is particularly acute with Egyptian religious art, which relies on a complex interrelationship of word and image to convey its meanings. Perhaps more seriously, the loss of context has resulted in certain categories of Amarna art objects becoming canonical 'art pieces' in their own right, without need of context — the sensuous heads with elongated skulls; voluptuous torsos with clinging drapery; blue ceramics; brilliantly coloured faience inlays with natural scenes, and so on (see Plate 2.5). Museum displays of these objects show them floating and detached, emerging from a vague background that places them apparently in some other realm of existence. Here, archaeological history stands before the museum visitor as a detached and fetishised objectivity, mysterious to the viewer. Via the fragment, the past is revealed to the modern viewer, who experiences both without any real