Surely such pictures must stir the imagination of those who live in small towns in the West and show them that, after all, the old East has much to teach the West in municipal construction and the value of permanent monuments which, founded on faith, stand forever as a memorial to the past glory of man reflecting the divine guidance of the Omnipotent.28
Yet the director did not have much success in getting such preachy parts of the film past the distributors, who wanted the love story and spectacle played up and the message reduced. Everything that dealt with 'the moral struggle of Tutankhamen between the proffered strength of the ancient Gods of Egypt, backed by the wealth of Thebes, and his faith to the Aton sun-symbol of Akhnaton, had to be cut out'.29 The truth was that by December 1923 many people were tired of Tutmania, especially when laced with solemn moralising from Akhenaten.
This theme of a once wealthy and powerful dynasty humiliated and eventually destroyed underlies almost all the Amarna fictions of the 1920s and 1930s. Their authors seem, consciously or not, to be thinking about the rccent end of many monarchies, especially the Romanov dynasty in Russia. The downfall of the tsarist regime in the 1917 revolutions, the internal exile and subsequent disappearance of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra and their five children, remained matters for speculation. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the story was kept alive in dozens of published memoirs of life at the Romanov court by Russian emigres to Europe and America, and also by the highly publicised claims of the woman who believed herself to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, youngest daughter of the tsar. Indeed, on the face of it, the story of Akhenaten and the story of the last tsar are oddly close. There is the great royal romance; the family of beautiful daughters; the supremely wealthy and cultured court; the religious fanaticism which leads to the neglect of state affairs; and ultimately political disaster and human tragedy. The final mystery is there too: what happened to Akhenaten, Nefertiti and the princesses? Fiction writers of the 1920s and 1930s developed these parallels to explore important ideas, as well as to tell a romantic and tragic story.
The most sophisticated of these treatments is by Dmitri Sergeyevitch Merezhkovsky, a widely read novelist in the 1920s, whose influence on Freud was outlined in Chapter 4. First published in Russian in 1924, his long novel was soon translated into German as Der Messias. Roman and into English as Akhnaton King of Egypt, the latter reprinted several times. Although little known outside Russia, Merezhkovsky is an important figure in twentieth-century Russian literature, of comparable status to (say) Ezra Pound, and was nominated for a Nobel prize in 1933. In the 1890s, Merezhkovsky had been one of the founders of the influential avant-garde Symbolist movement, and his historical novels on various Russian tsars, Emperor Julian the Apostate (reg. 363-6 ce) and Leonardo da Vinci were very successful Tsar Nicholas II even read some of them in exile.1" The marvellous cover art to the 1927 English edition of Akhnaton King of Egypt, in which Akhenaten has apparently encountered the luxurious Orientalism of the Ballet Russe, hints at the very Russian origins of Merezhkovsky's Akhenaten (see Plate 6.2).
Politically, Merezhkovsky was opposed to the autocracy of Tsar Nicholas II, but was also an opponent of Bolshevism and the 1917 revolutions. He fled to Paris in 1920, and continued to be active in anti-Communist and esoteric circles there for the rest of his life. Merezhkovsky had a typically Symbolist interest in the occult and alternative forms of Christianity. He sought a synthesis of the sensuality of paganism with the spirituality of Christianity, believing that the ideas of paganism and pre-Christian philosophers could together rejuvenate Christianity. After a second coming of Christ, paganism and Christianity would become apocalyptically resolved, and a Utopian world would result where higher spiritual truths were valued and crass materialism denounced. Merezhkovsky was much influenced by Nietzsche's ideas, and demanded the abolition of all restrictions on the individual, considering art, beauty and sensuality to be more
Plale 6.2 R. S. George, cover art to the English translation of Dmitri Merezhkovsky's novel Akhnaton, c. 1927.
important than prosperity and contentment. He also thought that the immortal perfect being who would synthesise paganism and Christianity would be androgynous, containing all sources of creativity within itself.31 In this spiritual and political background, Akhenaten was the perfect subject for Merezhkovsky to show off his literary skills. The facts of Akhenaten's life and reign (derived from Weigall) also gave the opportunity to discuss his theories on religion, pagan eroticism, and sectarian and racial politics.
What strikes one now about Akhnaton King of Egypt are its negative portrayals of Jews. Whether or not Merezhkovsky was himself anti-Semitic, the emigre circles he moved in certainly were. Many emigres believed that the tsar's overthrow was part of a vast Jewish conspiracy, a view notoriously spread by a fabricated book, Protocols of the Elders of Zjon, which purported to expose a plot by Jews and Masons to destroy Christian Russia and create a world-wide Jewish state. This seemed to be reinforced by the Jewish origins of many Bolshevik revolutionaries.Such views may also relate to Merezhkovsky's occult interests, especially in Theosophy, which argued that Jews and gypsies were degenerate relics of obsolete races. All this makes Merezhkovsky's Akhenaten novel a disturbing read.
Akhnaton King of Egypt is set towards the end of Akhenaten's reign when he is losing control of the political situation. He and his family are becoming unpopular, and there are plots to kill Akhenaten magically. Unusually, Nefertiti figures hardly at all in the novel, perhaps reflecting Russian hatred of the tsarina (as secretly pro-German) during the First World War. Akhenaten is still able to enjoy family life, however. Scenes in the luxurious Amarna palaces are juxtaposed almost filmically with vignettes from the lives of the Jewish slaves in their squalid camp (the workmen's village). This camp, 'the Dirty Jews' Village', is a place of symbolic filth and contagion, situated 'at the bottom of a deep cauldron-shaped hollow' where 'the sun was setting in the red mist, as in a pool of blood'.u Issachar, a Jewish dissident, plots the assassination of Akhenaten, and tries to stab him during a public appearance. The choice of name may be significant: the biblical Issachar headed one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Issachar fails to kill Akhenaten, is sentenced to be tortured (even though it is forbidden at Akhet- aten), but manages to escape. '"Shame, shame, upon all of us that the vile Jew has been spared!"' says one of Akhenaten's daughters when she hears this news. Merezhkovsky's belief in an apocalyptic second coming are put into the mouth of an anti-Semitic Akhenaten:
We Egyptians despise the Jews, but maybe they know more about the Son than we do: we say about Him 'He was', and they say 'He is to come.' I am the joy of the Sun, Akhnaton? No, notjoy as yet, but sorrow; not the light, but the shadow of the sun that is to rise - the Son!31