THE WEIRDEST RULER IN HISTORY

I am not tired yet of repeating again and again that these entries, whether Egyptian or any others are here on my personal whimsy, and they do not represent any kind of historical narrative or continuity. The Egyptian miniseries continues now with Ikhnaton, also known as Akhenaton, or, in the rejected regular sequence of royal succession, Amenhotep IV, Pharaoh of Egypt from 1375 to 1358 BC. Ikhnaton and his wife Nefertiti have personified by far the strangest ruling couple in human history, and, therefore, my special tribute The Weirdest Ruler In History is completely and totally unavoidable.

In Goethe’s jocular suggestion, the mark of genius is some kind of physical deformity, or inadequacy. Our hero, Akhenaton, is a supreme genius, by that standard. Pictures of his misshapen body on the walls of old temples have attracted the interest of modern pathologists. He had a drooping jaw, an abnormally thin neck, narrow sloping shoulders, a grotesque pot belly, and disproportionately large thighs. Despite his historical record of having six daughters, his sexual capacity to father children at all has been questioned by scholars knowledgeable in such matters.

With such credentials alone, he would stand out of the crowd, but the incredible cultural revolution, which he conducted in Egypt, even though it did not survive beyond his reign, has become one of the strangest of all events in human history.

On his accession to the throne of Egypt after the death of his father Amenhotep III the new pharaoh was for some time known by his regular name Amenhotep IV, and indeed he started his reign with fairly traditional policies. But the changes followed soon. The old gods and their temples were suddenly abandoned and new worship was introduced, of the sun-god Aton, a distinctly monotheistic cult, discarding human and animal representations of divinity, and focusing attention on the disc of the sun. ‘Amenhotep IV’ ceased to exist, to give way to Akhenaton (“Aton’s servant”). Fervently supported by his wife Queen Nefertiti, whose beauty was in salient contrast with Akhenaton’s hideous ugliness, the two of them, literally, invented a brand-new religion and then proceeded to impose it on the great Egyptian culture with a shocking impunity, as though the mighty priests, the nobles, and the whole population of Egypt, had been completely emasculated by the surge of this duo and could not raise a concerted hell, or else, quietly dispose of the two brazen heretics, for the greater glory of Egypt.

While Akhenaton and Nefertiti were worshiping their sun, the populace naturally started worshiping them. The couple’s odd images are seen on most sarcophagi of the time, Akhenaton replacing Osiris and Nefertiti taking the place of the traditional goddesses protecting the dead in the afterlife. Apparently, the couple did not mind being the objects of such worship, as otherwise they could have banned it altogether, just like they had successfully banned the old religion.

Meanwhile, a new city, called Akhetaton, was built at the site of modern Amarna, and the capital of Egypt was transferred to it. This was now the place chosen by the royal couple as their permanent residence. An entirely new form of art was encouraged, much livelier and more realistic than the traditional art before it. Akhenaton was writing hymns to his god Aton, and the religion itself became a happy-go-lucky brand of a non-binding, undemanding daily expression of gratitude to the sun for its life-sustaining warmth.

At the end of Akhenaton’s reign, the Aton-centered idyll started to crumble. The beautiful Nefertiti proved to be much more steadfast in her faith than her odious husband, remaining true to it to her death. There is evidence, however, of a growing estrangement in those last years between her and Akhenaton, as the latter started shifting back to the traditional Egyptian religion and culture, which he had only recently gallantly repudiated. Under these circumstances, it becomes entirely possible that it was under Nefertiti’s influence over her husband that the Aton cult was to become possible at all, which takes something from the king’s alleged genius, while transferring more of it to his great wife. But the brief historical phenomenon, which was Akhenaton’s reign, lasting from 1379 to 1362 BC, has become so much larger than life that it does not really matter whether he finally failed or not, as long as he clearly succeeded in making it happen.

After Akhenaton’s death, and a brief humdrum sojourn of his weakling son-in-law, yet another son-in-law became Pharaoh. His Atonic name had been Tutankhaton, but in the onward-to-the-past spirit of the times he changed it to the Amonic Tutankhamen. A lesser ruler, he, probably, left a greater mark in history than much-much better kings than himself, by virtue of restoring the old Egyptian culture, ravished by the Aton cult, and because of the splendor of his sarcophagus, making “the Tut” the most famous mummy in history, and the Tutankhamen name with it.

And finally, considering the conspicuous uniqueness of Akhenaton’s monotheistic religious adventure, it is surprising with how much caution Christian commentators approach his reign. According to Halley’s Bible Handbook, “this Monotheistic move may have been an indirect influence of Moses’ miracles,” performed, allegedly, some years before, which is all it has to say, a far cry from an enthusiastic endorsement. There is also a rather uneducated effort to represent Akhenaton’s mother as Jewish, which cannot stand scrutiny at all, as it was under his mother Tiye’s pressure that Akhenaton became estranged from his true believer wife Nefertiti and relented/repented enough to restore some elements of the old religion of Egypt even before his successors were to go with it all the way.

Another historical mystery? Nah! How about climate change in the air, turning a previously benevolent sun into one murderous heat-breathing monster, and forcing Egypt to seek protection under her former gods?...