Furthermore, exponents of alternative Akhenatens use very similar strategies to argue against conventional Egyptology. Many of them believe that there is an academic conspiracy which denies the true extent of Egyptian spiritual or cultural achievement, and deliberately falsifies the evidence by mistranslating hieroglyphs, for instance.4 Alternative religionists and Afrocentrists can, and do, present themselves as being far ahead of the academic community, having new ideas, new perspectives on perceived wisdom, and new evidence. All in all, my search for the alternative Akhenatens of mysticism and Afrocentrism led me into an alternative intellectual universe. It has its scholars, but it is also a world of committed amateurs and passionate autodidacts, people who are concerned with finding answers to fundamental questions about their own lives and place in the world. In some ways they recall the self-taught plebeian radicals of the English Civil War - the Ranters, Levellers, Diggers, Muggletonians, Tryonists, Familists and Fifth Monarchists. Like the alternative 'Akhenatenists', many of these groups believed that vital secret meanings lay behind familiar texts and images - secret meanings which could only be understood after traditional wisdom was unlearned. It is this unlearning of received interpretations that support an unacceptable social and political status quo which both alternative religionists and Afrocentrists take as their point of departure.
Black pharaohs
Egyptian royalty, our affection for each other is chronicled along the walls of the Pyramids. Our belief in one God was considered quite radical for our time. Who are wc?
(Black Lovers' Quiz by Essence Corporation (http: / / www.essencc.com.lover-quiz.htm))
Overlooking a busy main road on the way to the university quarter of Reading, there is an impressive mural which stands out vividly from the nineteenth- century red-brick buildings surrounding it (see Plate 5.1). It is divided into five scenes, each with a montage of iconic figures from black history, who do not form a coherent political tradition but are of meaning to the mural's black British creators. This lineage of heroes begins in Egypt. A huge head of Akhenaten is placed against a backdrop of the desert and Pyramids at Giza, and identified by a cartouche with his name in hieroglyphs.5 Underneath the hieroglyphs of Akhenaten's name, the linear bands used by ancient Egyptian artists to divide up scenes in wall-paintings are given an extra African connection by being painted black, red, green and gold - the colours Marcus Garvey proposed to symbolise an independent Africa under black government, with the gold of the Jamaican flag added. To the left of Akhenaten's head there is a rendering of the Berlin painted bust of Nefertiti, whose face, like Akhenaten's, is shown here as blaek-skinned. The hieroglyphs above and below Nefertiti translate as something like: 'Rage is what God loves to hearken to: and you should live up to yourself in his name.'
On Akhenaten's other side, there is a figure in white Arab dress who I assume must be the prophet Mohammed. Behind him is a rising sun with an Amarna- style ray terminating in a hand, reaching out towards Akhenaten. Superimposed over this rising sun is a red crescent, symbol of Islam. The juxtaposition of Akhenaten and Mohammed, linked compositionally by the Pyramids and doc- trinally by the Aten-disc and red crescent, implies that Akhenaten is the religious precursor of Mohammed. Here in the mural they are the first representatives of a glorious line of black religious and political leaders, starting with Akhenaten, then Toussaint l'Ouverture, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Emperor Hailc Selassie, and ending with Bob Marley. To make the mural's message of pan- African cultural continuity even stronger, the artist has certainly researched Amarna art and cleverly resignified the ancient Egyptian elements. Following the Akhenaten-Mohammed scene, Nigerian Yoruba motifs frame the centre of the whole composition (a large window), and underneath this section there is a plaque inscribed:
Central Reading Youth Provision Black History Mural
Livicated on 16June 1990 to the memory of C. L. R.James (1901-1989) and
the peaceful anti-apartheid demonstrators who were massacred in Soweto.
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