If there is any common denominator to Freud's and the Fascists' conceptions of Akhenaten, it is the idea of legitimation through an appeal to the past. It's worth remembering that when they began, both psychoanalysis and Nazism were eccentric fringe movements with no legitimating history of their own, and the only way they could get one was by aligning themselves with esteemed figures from history. The same processes are at work in the way Akhenaten is used by the groups I turn to in the next chapter, who are still very much at the boundaries of orthodoxy: Afrocentrists and alternative religionists.
RACE AND RELIGION
I think you have a good collection. But I was very disappointed about what you said about Akhenaten being grotesque. Only a white would say he was ugly.
Your exhibit seems to deny Akhenaten and Nefertiti were Black Africans - which they were. I am sure you did not ask any black historian to contribute.
A knowledge of Reincarnation and Karma is necessary to understand this Exhibit. THEOSOPHY-MYSTICISM-
Comments from the visitors' book of an exhibition of Amarna art
in the Brooklyn Museum, quoted in Wedge 1977: 56-7, 114
In the autumn of 1973, visitors to a major exhibition of Amarna art held at the Brooklyn Museum were invited to record their reactions to the show in a visitors' book. They make interesting reading. Alongside practical observations about the lighting, labelling and provision of seats, many comments revealed how political the exhibition was perceived to be. Since it was held during a period of renewed hostilities between Egypt and Israel, many people responded to the ancicnt objects in sectarian terms relating to the modern Middle East: 'Long Live Egypt! Down with the Barbarians!' or 'Not bad considering its [.rac] Arab.'1 Other visitors, however, interpreted the exhibition in terms of conflicts they felt very personally. Many African Americans who wrote comments thought that too little attention had been paid to the African origins of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and that the labelling and presentation of exhibits was racist. There was also a crop of comments by believers in a whole range of heterodox religions. Some were inspired by the alternative cosmologies of chaos theorist and Akhenaten buff Immanuel Velikovsky, but others related to prophecy fulfilment, numerology, Theosophy and Spiritualism. Several combined alternative religion with racial politics:
Oh ATEN; The truth ist [«c] Light. The Sun People will rise again; to take back our art (Afrikan) from the Enemy of the Sun. And to ratify [.rac] the Big Lie of the Egyptians being white (Hamite and Semite). The time of truth is upon us. Today the Egyptians, Nubians, etc. arc called
In New York in 1973, Akhenaten was a meaningful symbol for all kinds of
