Akhenaten
See also: [Ancient Egypt]
[Thomas Hoving] (author "Art for Dummy's"; MOMA NY)
[Art Periods]
[Art Movements]
[(art) concepts]
[Time Line]
Akhenaten
On this page:
{Nicholas Reeves' "Egypt's False Prophet"} (review by Thomas R. Martin)
Nicholas Reeves
"Akhenaten: Egypt's Flas Prophet", (Thames & Hudson,
(Review by Thomas R. Martin. For more info: www.historybookclub.com)
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Akhenaten was the New Kingdom pharaoh notorious for the turmoil
-- a revolution ad Reeves calls it -- that his theological ideas
generated: His new capital city in the desert, his court's bizarrely
iconoclastic art, his queen's beauty and mysterious fate, and the
effort expended by later Egyptian kings to erase all memory of him.
Reeve's title announces where he stands in the still active debate
over Akhentan's reign.
Reformer or Tyrant
The most contentious issue today is whether the king's religious
reforms created the world's first true monotheism [sic]. Reeves
wastes little time exploring this idea. For him, Akhenaten was
interested in amasing power through religiou rathe than in reaching
divine truth. His interpretation is stark:
Akehenaten was clearnly not a man open to reasoned
argument; far above the sphere of ordinary mortals,
he demanded from his subjects compelte and utter
subservience. The tomb and temple releifes show him
and his family adored by a goveling populace, but the
adoration is far from spontaneous: Closer inspection
reveals that the people are kept in check by large
numbers of troops with batons. ... For ordinary folk,
there is little doubt that Akhenaten's actions as king
over time inflicted the greatest misery; the peole were
confused by the man's religious vision, frightened by
the ruthless manner in which it was imposed, and quite
likely appalled by his personal behaviour.
An interpreter less hostile to Akhenaten might not so readily assume
that soldiers or royal attendants were agents of oppression rather
than simply the customer reinue for an Egyptian king whom tradition
revered as a species of divine being. [good phrase!] And a less
hostile interpreter might not so easily generalise that there is
"little doubt" about the attitude of the masses or add that a
"despondency" settled on the country toward the end of Akhenaten's
reign.
Overall, however, Reeve's intepretations give bite and piquancy to his
account. Being provocative without veering into being out-rageous --
which Reeves mostly avoids except when implying a comparison with
Hitloer and Stalin -- is not a bad thing in writing a history of so
controversial a ruler. [actually, i was thinking of Sadam Hussein]
Mysterious Malady
Reeves is particularrly effective in countering the infamous hypothesis
that the endocirine disorder of Froehliche's Syndrome} caused Akhenten's
peculiar appearnce and rendered him retarded and impotent, or that he
was a eunich or a homosexual. Instead, we are shown why the genetic
disorder of {Marfan's Syndrome} plausibly explaines the pharoh's
physiognomy. Eually convincing is the presentation of the recent
scholarly view that Queen Nefertiti neither died nor disappeared,
but in fact became Akhenten's co-regent under a new name.
The volume is copiously illustrated... The chapters, vivid with abundant
detail, read crisply. This spirited book is as close to a page-turner
as ancient history can come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nicholas Reeves is Director of the Amarna Royal Tombs
Project, Valley of the Kings, and Honorary Research
Fellow at the Institute of Archaelogy, University College, London.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Thomas R. Margin is Jeremaiah O'Connor Professor of
Classics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worchester,
Massachusetts.
Source: "H-106-D" flyer for the History Book Club (www.historybookclub.com)
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Notes
(This section only)
[Froehlich's Syndrome]
Back to the TEXT]
[Marfan's Syndrome]
Back to the TEXT]
Chronology