Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,189

on the papyri and the tomb inscriptions. As far as I can manage, the Egyptians speak in their own words. Where they were silent, I have supplied my own and if I have four contending theories as to what something means, I have picked the one I liked best.

I am quite probably wrong in some cases, but with the state of learning in this field, who could possibly prove me so?

On the Pathology of Akhnaten and Related Subjects

I don’t know what some historians think with (see previous remarks on the state of Egyptology) and I do not exempt myself from this criticism. Much study can send one mad, and much study on a small bit of a complex subject can render one bonkers faster than an indulgence in white crystalline powders of unknown origin.

The pathology of Akhnaten is a case in point. The depiction of the King grew progressively more grotesque with every passing year, as can be seen by comparing the early shabti of a plump boy with drooping breasts and a belly which overflows his cloth, with the full blown freak on the colossi in the Cairo museum. This is not a normal person. He has an exaggerated jaw, sloping, bulging eyes, a receding forehead, breasts, no visible penis or scrotum, and the fat distribution seen in such women as the author. He had classic childbearing hips, a belly which bulges and folds, and thick, heavy thighs.

There are some signs that this physique was adopted by courtiers for their own portraits—and this is not uncommon. There was, for example, a short-lived period in China where all the court ladies were fat, because the Dowager was fat (and they were very attractive, too) but this reverted to the Chinese ideal of a willowy beauty as soon as the Dowager departed the scene—but there are no ‘Akhnatens’ after Akhnaten is gone.

Two theories are extant: the general freedom of Amarna art produced mannerism; or the king had Frohlich’s syndrome, or some other endocrine disease, possibly caused by a pituitary tumour. The second has the advantage of combining with the first—the realism of Amarna art meant that the king was depicted as he was, i.e., deeply strange.

There is, as far as my untrained eye can discern, no mannerism in Amarna art beyond the freeing of the figure to be depicted face-onwards, the addition of many subjects which were not drawn before (like the lady throwing up at a party), and a certain fluency of drawing. Egyptian art was never realistic—consider the unpleasantness of meeting a man with two visible sideways shoulders and one leg perpetually advanced—but Akhnaten’s reign certainly loosened the style considerably.

I therefore was immediately drawn to the second theory—that there was something wrong with the king which was not wrong with other members of his immdediate family, as evidenced by the examination of their mummified bodies. There was nothing awry Akhnaten’s brothers, Smenkhare or Tutankhamen; or with his father Amenhotep III, afflicted with toothache as the poor man must have been.

We do not have Akhnaten’s body, so all this must be speculation.

However, the learned Cyril Aldred, author of Akhenaten Pharaoh of Egypt, has considered that Frohlich’s syndrome is the most reasonable explanation.

On p 104 he says: ‘Until recently it was possible to speculate that though the daughters of Nefert-iti were described as begotten of a King, it is by no means certain that the king was Akhnaten, particularly when Amenhotep III was alive two years after the youngest had been born…’

This entirely agrees with the theory at which I had independently arrived; and I was astonished to read Mr Aldred’s conclusion:

The discovery of damaged texts at Hermopolis…has made it reasonably clear that Akhnaten claimed responsibility at least for begetting the eldest daughter Meryt-Aten; and the presumption is that he is also the father of the other five daughters of Nefert-iti. If he is not, he cannot also be the father of the daughters of Meryt-Aten and Ankhes-en-pa-aten….[it might be argued that they are the children of Smenh-ka-re]… but it seems that both princesses bore children before Smenh-ka-Re could marry either of them. In that case the royal father of their children can only have been Akhnaten.

In that case the father can only be Akhnaten?

Historians are bound by the mores of their own time (as am I) but all of them assume that there must be some betrayal or deception if children are not fathered by the husband of the mother, because they lived in a biologically-limited society, when marital fidelity