Akhenaten полностью

How and where Akhenaten was brought up is unknown, but it is still worth considering the general educational experience of New Kingdom princes, if only to nail the myth of a shrinking Akhenaten surrounded by a bevy of female relatives. There is not a shred of evidence for Akhenaten as Tiye's mummy's boy, yet another instance of how he has been fabricated in terms of post-Freudian ideas about the development of personality. Biographers assume that Akhenaten grew up dominated by the prominent and visible women of his father's court, and that being raised in this feminine atmosphere had a significant - probably malign - effect on his psyche. This disturbing assumption helps to underpin the many Oedipal interpretations of Akhenaten: that he was motivated to destroy his father's gods and rcjcct the name they both bore out of hatred for him and desire for his mother. In turn, this Oedipal Akhenaten allows him to be seen in terms of stereotypes of homosexual men. He is over-fond of his mother, therefore interested in 'feminine' things such as art and poetry instead of 'masculine' things such as war and politics, and consequently emotionally disturbed! Even though there is no evidence whatever for these ideas, they still permeate all the biographies.¹² If anything, the little that is known of Egyptian princely education suggests an opposite scenario. Princes' contact with their parents was probably limited, as they seem to have spent their formative years with a male tutor and in the company of other males, whether in the priesthood, the military or other institutions. The relationships formed in these male-centred institutions remained important throughout life.⁴⁵ Such practices as the naming of princcs and the ritual duties expected of them also point to their significant allegiances lying with the esteemed paternal line, not to their mothers or their mothers' families. The training of Akhenaten's brother Djehutmose is a case in point. Named after his father's father, his education included being a .rewz-priest, which involved playing the part of a ritual 'son' in honouring the unbroken paternal lineage of kings.

Other New Kingdom princes were educated by tutors, but if Akhenaten had one his name is not yet known. The tombs of these men advertise their pres­tigious closeness to the royal family in sccncs showing them with the prince seated on their laps, sometimes dressed in full regalia. It is just possible that one such scene depicts Akhenaten on the lap of his tutor, whose name may be Heqareshu. In this tomb, decorated in the middle of Amunhotep Ill's reign, the owner is shown with four princes wearing a sidelock, a visual signifier of childhood (see Figure 2.6). This image emphasises the owner's length of service in the royal family, starting forty years before in the reign of Amunhotep II, so the four princcs could represent generations of children born into the family during his time with them. Whether one of these princes is Akhenaten, or indeed a real prince at all rather than an iconographic convention for 'long and faithful royal service', is difficult to say. The appearance oifour princes may be telling: if there were three, it would be possible to read the image as the hieroglyph for 'princes', but showing four perhaps hints that specific boys are being indicated. Apart from some time with such a tutor, Akhenaten's education and preparation for kingship could have included a spell as a priest at Memphis, like his older brother, or at Heliopolis if Djehutmose was still alive.⁴⁴ Other royal heirs of the New Kingdom had similar educations.

The first explicit mention of the future Akhenaten is on the seal of a jar, oncc containing food supplied to the palace built specially for Amunhotep Ill's sed- festival celebrations (his so-called 'jubilee'). The ,y«/-festival had ancicnt origins, going back over a millennium, but had been revived by Amunhotep III in its full glory to suggest the magnific.cnt celebrations of earlier times. The name of his W-festival palacc, in an area of the West Bank at Thebes now known as Malqata, significantly honoured the Aten. It was named the Palace of the Dazzling Sun- Disc. (aten) and House of Rejoicing. The seal from Malqata simply says 'dedj [an unknown food product] from the estate of the true king's son, Amunhotep'.^4S It implies that by this time in his father's reign, Akhenaten had a separate house­hold with agricultural estates attached, but gives no clue to where in Egypt this estate may have been. The other royal estates which supplied the provisions were all over Egypt. It is from around this time that the first visual representations of Akhenaten can be identified, also in connection with the celebrations of his

aten, from Thcban tomb 226. Redrawn from Davies 1933.