If there is a desire for Akhenaten to be the first gay man, it is no surprise that he has a notable presence in modern gay histories and constructed gay lineages. As I suggested in Chapter 2, Akhenaten would inevitably be recast in this way because he has so often been represented in terms of the hoariest stereotypes of gay men: over-fond of their mothers, artistic and emotionally disturbed. But he is also caught up in the crusade to find a legitimising cultural history of gay identity, in which the ancient world plays a vital part. Egypt, Greece and Rome, the ancient cultures most highly esteemed by the west, have been repeatedly plundered to provide homosexuality with a validating presence, an ancestry and a voice. Now Akhenaten has acquired the same meaning for many gay men as Sappho has for many lesbians: they are historical and cultural firsts, individuals whose voices can be heard speaking their own words, and whose (homo)sexual lives can be reconstructed and known. Akhenaten and Sappho stand at the inception of a cultural narrative of identity: before them there are no names or voices, only an inferred silent presence. In many ways, these gay strategies of appropriating Akhenaten are similar to the strategies that underlie Afrocentrist uses of him. Both revolve around redistributing the historical periods and characters which have accumulated the most cultural capital to groups or communities who feel marginalised by the majority culture. The marginalised group can then claim for itself the contributions to civilisation and culture made by that historical character or in that period. This has been called 'the will to descend' or 'empowerment through genealogy'.8 Academic historians often regard such rewritings or reclamations of history as ultimately conservative and self-defeating but, as I
explained in Chapter 5, I prefer to see them as transforming and liberating resources which allow different voices to be heard and important questions to be explored.
Having said that, the conservative historian in me does feel uncomfortable about some of the versions of Akhenaten created by gay men. While it is very important for historical narratives to include a homosexual presence, it is also important not to do violence to the past and people it with gay communities of similar individuals to those that make up modern ones. Most of the versions of Akhenaten currendy circulating in gay culture are esscntialist, based on the idea of a shared sexual identity which binds people together across temporal and cultural boundaries. These versions are also very positive, even hagiographic (unsurprisingly, since most of them seem to be derived from Aldred's biography). Akhenaten is always marvellous, a suitably empowering patron saint for modern gay men. For instance, the members of a gay men's leather and Levi club in the cities of Minneapolis and St Paul's, Minnesota, call themselves the Atons. Their Web page, with its backdrop of pyramids, gives an account of why they chosc to place themselves under the Aten's symbolic aegis. Under the heading 'Gay Pride: In the Beginning', they say:
Called the first true individual in history, Akhenaten was also the first historical gay person. . . . Like the sunrise, Akhenaten sheds the first rays of light on a heritage we can be proud of. May we have the courage of heretics and, like the Ancient Egyptians, may we have the courage to 'Live in Truth.'"
Apart from his supposed sexuality, another aspect of the Akhenaten myth feeds into the Atons' appropriation: the notion that he was a free spirit who flouted conventions to express his own voice and find his true self. The Atons put a gay gloss on Akhenaten's own self-applied and highly specific religious tide 'living in truth' (i.e. Maat, the force which keeps the universe in correct equilibrium), and make it relevant to modern identity politics. By refusing to collude with the hypocrisy of the heterosexual majority, Akhenaten functions here as a sort of ancestor of the coming out.
