Of One Blood's ccntrcpiccc is an archaeological expedition to Meroe undertaken by its Harvard-educated hero, Reuel Briggs. At first, Hopkins deliberately keeps Briggs' racial origins vague - all she does is hint that he can pass as white, as her subtitle The Hidden Face implies. In the Egyptian setting his first name is significant, for the biblical Reuel recognises Moses as an Egyptian and later becomcs his father-in-law (Exodus 2:18). Is Hopkins suggesting the possibility of a black Moses? Once among the ancient monuments of Egypt, Briggs has a stunning revelation: that the Egyptians and their civilisation have managed to live on secretly, waiting for the coming of the king who shall restore them to their former glory and rightful place in world history. Briggs is to be that king. He is recognised as the new Ergamenes, the educated black hero of the classical historian's anecdote. Reuel thus acknowledges his own, previously ambiguous, family heritage as well as the cultural riches of that heritage, and Hopkins makes Briggs' expedition to Egypt into a metaphor for the return home after the black diaspora.
It is a curious coincidence that Hopkins called the prime minister of her ancient Egyptians-in-waiting 'Ai', the same name as Akhenaten's son-in-law and eventual successor of Tutankhamun as pharaoh. But once Akhenaten's life and times became better known, it was inevitable that he would be co-opted to help relocate the pharaohs in black Africa, because particular aspects of his story are uniquely suitable to the project. First, there is Akhenaten's physical appearance, especially in the Karnak statues from the early part of his reign, in which his features can be seen as (stereo)typically African: thick-lipped, broad-nostrilled (see
Plate 2.1). The Karnak statues have often been called hideous, grotesque, deformed and so on, and these negative judgements of Akhenaten's appearance could seem to prove the racist conspiracy by white historians to deny and degrade the blackness of the Egyptians. The labels in the Brooklyn exhibition of Amarna art which mentioned Akhenaten's ugliness according to white canons of beauty were frequently criticised by African American visitors. The dark wooden head from Medinet el-Gurob, supposed to be Akhenaten's mother Tiye, is an important icon here. It gives him a mother whose face is unequivocally dark-skinned. In Afroccntrist books, sculptures of Akhenaten, his mother and daughters are juxtaposed with photographs of contemporary Africans or people of African descent to illustrate the facial similarities between them.1" The political prominence of the royal women during Akhenaten's reign can be presented as evidence for the theory of an ancient African matriarchy in which power is inherited through the female line. This theory was popularised by the doyen of Afrocentrist historians, Chcikh Anta Diop, and is still widely believed in some quarters, though not by most Egyptologists.
Sccond, there is Akhenaten's perceived religious idealism. An appealing anti- racist message can be read into the religious compositions of his reign. Parts of the 'hymn' to the Aten can be interpreted as regarding all peoples equally as creations of the Aten and that hierarchies based on skin colour, language and customs are unimportant.11 More importantly, Akhenaten's religious reforms can provide monotheism with an Egyptian lineage. This is particularly important for some black Muslim groups, who follow Elijah Muhammad in regarding Christianity as a white religion of enslavement that no enlightened black person could possibly accept.1' Akhenaten's is a form of monotheism which bypasses the Judaeo-Christian tradition and can be held up as a precursor of Islam, as the Reading mural implies. Some who do not necessarily follow Elijah Muhammad's religious teachings regard him as having reclaimed the symbols of religion in a non-Eurocentrist way favourable to black people of African descent. Other black non-Muslims argue that a black Moses was taught by Akhenaten and that monotheism is an ancient African concept.
Finally, certain aspects of Akhenaten's self-liberation from an oppressive religious tradition make him a powerful and attractive parallel for African American religious and political leaders. The changing of names on conversion is one aspect of this. Akhenaten repudiated Amunhotep, his former name which linked him with the corrupt religion of Amun, in favour of one more appropriate to his new religious convictions, in the same way that Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam, changed his 'slave name', Elijah Poole, after he became a Muslim and a radical.
It was with Elijah Muhammad's teacher, W. D. Fard, that Akhenaten's involvement with Afrocentrism began in earnest, in Detroit around 1930. Fard deliberately allowed enigma to surround his name and history: he is believed by some black Muslims to be the earthly incarnation of Allah.15 What is clcar is that he started out in the Detroit ghetto selling African products from door to door, and used that point of contact to tell people about the superiority of African customs and beliefs. Fard soon developed a personal following; meetings were held in people's houses where Fard would prcach on the pride to be found in a recovered African descent, and against the evils of white exploitation. Eventually so many wanted to hear him that a hall had to be hired to hold the meetings: he named it the Temple of Islam. The many impoverished black migrants from the South living in Detroit during the Depression provided a ready audience for Fard's message. His speeches were reinforced by instructing chosen followers. Fard used a wide range of books, including the Bible and Quran but also Masonic literature and Breasted's The Conquest of Civilization (1926). In The Conquest of Civilization Breasted says Akhenaten was 'full of vision, fearless, strong', and his reign was 'a new age, in which the vision of the Nile-dwellers expanded into far-seeing universalism, bringing with it monotheism centuries before it happened anywhere else'.14 Breasted, of course, did not believe that Akhenaten was an African, and in The. Conquest of Civilization he remarks that the white race was the fundamental carrier of civilisation. But once it was believed that the Egyptians were black, it was possible to ignore Breasted's racism and adopt his heroic Akhenaten. Breasted's picture of a new era led by a fearless and idealistic African political leader who was also a theologian struck many chords among Fard's supporters. In the Detroit slums during the Depression, Akhenaten had once again found the perfect cultural moment to be reborn.
At roughly the same time, but in a very different social and cultural milieu, Akhenaten and his family underwent another rebirth among African Americans. This was during the Harlem renaissance, the great flowering of African American artistic achievement centred around Harlem in New York. A ccntral figure in the Harlem renaissance was the hugely influential pan-Africanist W. E. B. Du Bois (1869-1963), leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who argued passionately for the past and future cultural achievements of black people. In the 1920s his magazine The Crisis sometimes used Amarna-derived graphics by the black artist Aaron Douglas (1899-1979). Douglas' portrait of Tutankhamun, based on his famous funerary mask, appeared on the cover of The Crisis in September 1926 (vol. 32, no. 5); from the same year a poster for a black theatre group uses Amarna art elements.10 In his political works, Du Bois follows the standard line that Amarna was the apogee of ancient Egypt. Universal humanitarianism, pacifism and domestic affection were 'the ideal of life' there, but originated and ruled over by a black pharaoh. Du Bois cited Gardner Wilkinson, the first excavator of Amarna, to the effect that the facial features of Akhenaten's father Amunhotep III seemed negroid, and went on to quote his friend Anna Melissa Graves' observation that Akhenaten,