though less Negroid than his mother was more of the mulatto type than his father, and the portrait busts of his daughters show them all to be beautiful quadroons, though perhaps octoroons. And this Mulatto Pharaoh - Akhnaton - was not only the most interesting Pharaoh in all the
long lines of the many dynasties; but he was, in many ways, one of the most remarkable human beings who ever lived.11'
Graves' original publication of 1943, Benvenuto Cellini Had Mo Prejudice against Bronze: Letters from West, Africans, is illustrated with Amarna portrait heads next to photographs of African Americans, including one of a Maryland high school pupil who had graduated the same year. Her invitation for contemporary African Americans to identify personally with 'one of the most remarkable human beings who ever lived' seems clear - though rather illogical if she believed Akhenaten's daughters were 'quadroons' or 'octoroons' of mixed race and could pass as white.
Recent scholarship is more sceptical about Akhenaten's motivation and the originality of his achievements, but his importance continues for Afrocentrist teachers and educators. This is helped by the republication of works by Graves and Du Bois in black studies readers and course materials for teachers. Modern Afrocentrist curricula move the emphasis away from the traditional focus on Euro-American culture and values towards acknowledging the lives and achievements of black people, thus reorientating students of African descent to their continent of origin. In this process, feelings of self-worth, multicultural awareness and humanistic values are bestowed.1' Ancient Egypt obviously has a major role here as an ancient African civilisation whose achievements are easily demonstrable, widely known and with a long history of being valued by the west.18 Here Akhenaten has the most privileged place, though Ramcsses II is also important. A painting of the head of one of Akhenaten's colossi features as cover art for a recent book proposing a model Afrocentrist curriculum, C. Crawford's Recasting Egypt in the African Context (Africa World Press, 1996), as though Akhenaten is a sort of patron saint of the whole endeavour. Other educational projects are placed under Akhenaten's symbolic protection in the same way. An Amarna relief of him sacrificing appears on the cover of a teachers' pack produced in 1992 by the Equality Issues in the Humanities Project under the auspices of the Manchester City Council Education Department. The pack is intended to help the teaching of Ancient Egypt at Key Stage 2 (7-11-year-olds) in a non- Eurocentric way, based in part on American models. Akhenaten and Nefertiti are prominent in its contents, and are used thoughtfully to question racist and sexist assumptions about the ancient Egyptians. Students are encouraged to think about Nefertiti as an African woman of intelligence and political influence, rather than as a glamorous beauty queen, for example.19
Other Afrocentrist educational materials tend to present Akhenaten's reign as the pinnacle of Egyptian achievements which provide an exemplar to be followed. This is noticeable in the work of Maulana Karcnga, a leader of the 'Back to Black' movement of the 1960s which advocated traditional African clothing and hairstyles. Now chair of the Department of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach, he has become one of the most influential black educators in America and his ideas widely adopted. Karenga's pedagogical writings developed the concept of the Mguzo Saba (Swahili for 'seven principles'), whose adoption can help African Americans to regain self-esteem and control of their lives. He aims for what he calls 'a creative restoration in the African spirit of cultural restoration and renewal in both the ancient Egyptian and African American sense'. A re-evaluation of the ancient Egyptian idea of Ma'at, the personification of cosmic equilibrium, is central to Karenga's articulation of the Nguzo Saba. For him Ma'at encompasses righteousness, cosmic harmony and rcspect for ancestors, and is an African concept of great antiquity and reverence. 'Each pharaoh saw his or her reign, then, as one of restoration of Maat, i.e. the reaffirmation, re-establishment and renewal of the Good, the Beautiful and the Right.'2" Akhenaten's own special relationship with Ma'at gives him an importance in this updated adaptation of Maat, since official texts from his reign call Akenaten the 'beloved of Ma'at', 'the king who lives on Ma'at' or 'he in whom Ma'at has made her abode'; his city is likewise 'the place of Ma'at'.21 Akhenaten's self-presentation as the upholder of Ma'at can be enlisted here: according to Molefi Kete Asante, currently the principal theoriser of Afroccntrist education, it becomes 'the one cosmic generator that gave meaning to life'.22
The black radical traditions I have surveyed here involve a variety of concerns and approaches which I have partly glossed over. Some black radicals are committed to making demands on the establishment in the present, others more interested in cultural regeneration and pride; some have links to secular white or interracial traditions (particularly various forms of socialism), while others are more separatist and religious. Yet what strikes me as significant is the way that Akhenaten appears in these very different political traditions in much the same ways. He is of equal interest to a black Marxist like W. E. B. Du Bois and a black cultural nationalist like Asante, in spite of their very different ideas about promoting a glorious black past. Asante writes:
our poets, the great ancestral voices among us . . . sing of coconuts and palm trees, Martin Luther King avenues and soul blues, Chaka, Dini- zulu, Osei Tutu, Akhenaten, Piankhy, Tarhaka [j?V], Nzingha, Candace, Yaa Asantewa, Harriet and Sojourner.23
Invoking Akhenaten alongside Nzingha, the Angolan queen who conquered Portuguese colonialists, and American abolitionists such as Harriet Tubman (c. 1821-1913) and Sojourner Truth (1797-1883), makes him into a transhistorieal image both of black achievement and of black struggle. The way Akhenaten repeatedly appears alongside the Pyramids is illustrative of the transcendent qualities of both to stand, almost as hieroglyphs, for 'Egypt'. Presiding over what is seen as a high point in Egyptian history and civilisation, Akhenaten can also be presented as the Egyptian founder of a monotheism independent of Judaeo- Christianity. Akhenaten's spirituality and mystic associations also make him ripe for appropriation by adherents of alternative religions; and the ways in which he has been used by them is the subject of the next section.
Akhenaten and alternative religions
While Materialists deny everything in the universe, save matter, Archaeologists are trying to dwarf antiquity, and seek to destroy every claim to ancient wisdom by tampering with chronology. Our present-day Orientalists and Historical writers are to ancient History that which the white ants are to the buildings in India. More dangerous even than those termites, the modern Archaeologists - the 'authorities' of the future in the matter of Universal history - are preparing for the History of past nations the fate of certain edifices in tropical countries. . . . Historical facts will remain as concealed from view by the inextricable jungles of modern hypotheses, denials and skepticism.
Blavatsky 1888 I: 676
Pagan classical authors from Plato to Plutarch credited the ancient Egyptians with being the most spiritually sophisticated culture. Later, in early Christian times, the church fathers singled out Egyptian religion for mockery and vilification as the best example of paganism's emptiness. The tension between these two authoritative traditions helped make Egypt seem attractive to the first mystics who attempted to find an alternative to Christianity, in the late fifteenth century ce. Following their lead, Egypt has continued to occupy a privileged placc in the alternative religious traditions of the west. In the 1990s, with the growth of conccrn about ecology and the environment, Native American belief systems compete with Egypt for the title of pre-eminently spiritual, but ancicnt Egyptian religion is still the one which many mystics want to study as they embark on their spiritual odysseys. A visit to any occult or New Age bookshop will verify this: there are whole shelves of publications on ancient Egyptian religious mysteries, explaining their lessons for one's spiritual expansion.