The Egypt this Akhenaten rules over is populated by three distinct races, the Children of the Breath, the children of the life-spark, and the people of the south. The Children of the Breath (so capitalised by Rolfe) arc 'the artists, the makers of music, the craftsmen', god-like in appearance and blue-eyed. The children of the life-spark are the servants of the Children of the Breath, and were 'awkward, rather ungainly . . . dark-skinned men' whose modern descendants are the Arabs. The southerners, living in Nubia and Sudan, had, according to Rolfe, woolly, fuzzy hair, undeveloped speech, 'little brain-power, and were primitive in their habits'. The Children of the Breath were supremely spiritual and contemplative and responsible for the advances of Egyptian civilisation. These advances were themselves 'directed from a higher plane of consciousness than the earth'. Men and women were equal among the Children of the Breath, though among their Atlantean forebears the women had the gift of intuition and the men the gift of action.49
Rolfe's particular vision of Akhenaten's Egypt not only perpetuates dualisms about relationships between the sexes (women passively intuitive, men the doers), but also an ethnocentric and Eurocentric ideology. Although there is an assumption that there is an equality among souls (as in Theosophy, where all souls are identical with the 'Oversoul'), there seems to be a counter-assumption that some souls are more equal than others. In Initiation by the Nile there is a definite racial hierarchy, topped by the blue-eyed Children of the Breath, then their servants the children of the life-spark (explicitly described as non-white), and lowest of all the southerners. The revulsion expressed towards the bodies of the non-whites is particularly noticeable. Rolfe even echoes the 1920s attempts to make Akhenaten into an Aryan by creating alternative genealogies for his mother. Her Akhenaten illustrates the paradox behind many alternative religions: while presenting themselves as a liberation from the constraints of a corrupt world, they actually perpetuate many of that world's most obvious inequalities.
Akhenaten is popular with black alternative religionists, too. He is one of the linchpins for the widely held belief that the original Jews were black, and that monotheism is not a Jewish invention but has its genesis in African conceptions of a one god. Underlying this is the belief that the Bible was not revealed to the Jews but to black Africans, and that many indigenous Egyptian elements can be found in it. The parallels between Akhenaten's 'hymn' to the Aten and Psalm 104 arc often adduced as evidence; so are those between Proverbs and Egyptian wisdom literature. A crucial figure here is the black Moses, who is educated by Akhenaten in African monotheism. As the introduction to one Afrocentrist sourcc puts it, 'Moses who pioneered this concept received it from Pharoah Ankhnatcn [s/c] whose passion for a singular God caused him to ravage the temples of Egypt."" A major exponent of the quest for the black Moses is Yosef Ben-Jochannan in his Afrikan Origins of the Major World Religions (1975), in turn influenced by one of the classic works of Afrocentrist history, George James' Stolen Legacy: The Greeks Were Mot the Authors of Greek Philosophy, but the People of North Africa, Commonly Called the Egyptians (1954). James argued that the root word of 'Egyptian', aiguptos, meant black, and that since Moses is described in the Bible as Egyptian, he must have been black.51 Other circumstantial evidence is marshalled for the links between Akhenaten, the real Jews and the black Moses, such as the mentions of the mysterious 'Habiru', often believed to mean 'Hebrews', in the diplomatic correspondence found at Amarna. A central biblical text is Exodus 2:18, where Moses assists the daughters of the Midianite Reuel, who describe him to their father as an Egyptian.
Comparable ideas about the original Jews being black underlie the belief system proposed by Minister Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam.52 His speeches contain the most striking instances of Akhenaten's religious presence for this group of African Americans. Following the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, whom he eventually succeeded as leader, Farrakhan has refined a complex theology and alternative cosmology for the Nation of Islam. His speeches use iconic Egyptian images, often the Sphinx and Pyramids, alongside New Testament references to conjure up visions of the Armageddon which will soon engulf white dominance:
The first wonder of this world are the pyramids and the sphinx. And the
whole of the history of the world is written in the stones of the pyramids
. . . White folks have yet to figure the pyramids out - the black man put
it there ... a black face on the body of a lion, saying, 'I am the ruler. I am the lion. I am the King. I am asleep, but I've left a sign that before you were - I am, and after you go - I shall be. For I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the Ending of it all."5
Numerology is used extensively in Farrakhan's cosmology, with particular importance given to the number 19. It provides, for instance, the key to the underlying mathematical codc of the Qu'ran, which will enable the Nation of Islam to transmit the message within it from God to humanity. Farrakhan used Akhenaten to validate his numerology in his speech at the Million Man March in Washington in October 1995, again in connection with the powerful number 19. Because the number 1 represents the masculine aspect of the self-created First Supreme Being, and 9 his feminine presence (embodied by the sun and nine planets), it also communicates a symbolic image of the cosmos. The number 19 represents the unity of the masculine and feminine and the power of reproduction and creation, and thus the oneness of god and man.5' Akhenaten has an obvious significance in such an interpretation, since his body is perceived as combining masculine and feminine elements, and his religion as enabling humans to access the divine within themselves. In the same speech, Farrakhan pushes the parallels further. Among other important antecedents for the number 19, he points out that representations of Akhenaten in the presence of the Aten- disc show nineteen rays emanating from it, reaching out to touch the pharaoh and his family. '5 Then, in a neat piece of alternative philology, Farrakhan makes Akhenaten supremely relevant to the keynote of this portentous day. Farrakhan's central theme for the Million Man March was Atonement, because Atonement had enabled black people to survive in spite of centuries of hatred and oppression. He enlists Akhenaten to provide an aetiology for a black Day of Atonement which has no connection with Judaco-Christian monotheism. What is the derivation of the word 'atonement'? Aton, of course (pronounced with both vowels long, unlike the British pronunciation). Under the reproduction obelisk which dominates the Washington Memorial, Farrakhan puts an Egyptian spin on the language of charismatic Christianity:
When you 'a-tone', if you take the t and couple it with the a and hyphenate it, you get at-one. So when you 'a-tone' you become 'at-one'. At one with who? The 'atone', or the one God.51'