Akhenaten полностью

Unlike Lesage's large oils, Moindre used gouache for his much smaller paint­ings, in which Moses is a recurrent figure. Moses was Moindre's spirit guide, and he is typically shown as a man with a heavy forked beard surrounded by Egyptian symbols such as sphinxes, Osiris-figures, and sometimes Aten-discs, whose rays significantly touch Moses' hair. In spite of his paintings' small size and monodi- mensional feel, Moindre's figures have a certain monumental quality, appropriate to the important spiritual messages he hoped to convey through them. Some of his paintings explore his interest in Akhenaten and his relationship to Moses. In Moise, pharaons et divinites (Plate 5.2), painted some time in the 1940s, Moses hold­ing the tablets of the law is flanked by two figures obviously based on the statues of Akhenaten from the Gem-pa-Aten complex, excavated in the 1930s (see Plate 2.1). Details such as the cartouches on Akhenaten's torso have been carefully reproduced, though Moindre used his imagination to restore the missing lower halves of the statues. On a temple tympanum, an Aten-disc with uraeus spreads its rays over the whole assemblage. Moindre probably knew of the theory that

Plate 5.2 Joseph-Albert-Alfred Moindre (1888-1965), Moise, pharauns et divinites, 1940s. Height 30 cm, width 15 cm. Private collection.

Moses had learned about monotheism at Akhenaten's court - something also hinted at in Moindre's long and detailed spirit correspondence with Moses him­self. In these messages, Akhenaten is part of a generic assemblage of mystic Egyptian props. Moindre invokes the Sphinx and the Pyramids alongside him as the numinous objects which will enable him to complete his spiritual mission:

I have communicated with him [i.e. Moses] and I have been able to confirm that Egyptology is above all the heavenly garden which has allowed those initiated in its knowledge to make themselves known before replying to the questions which are put to him. He surveys the paths which are around the Sphiijx and the Pyramids. Moses ... I ask you to be kind enough to set Amenophis IV upon my road to guide me along the sacred paths of the Sphinx and the Pyramids which, together with yourself, will become my guides so that I may complete my present

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mission.

Akhenaten seems to have been influential to Lesage and Moindre both as alternative religionists and as artists. Yet their interest in him is only known because their artistic impulses led them to record it, and many others who believe they have had personal contact with Akhenaten remain silent about their experi­ences. An exception is Maisie Besant, a British medium who in the late 1940s realised that the Egyptian guide who had been speaking through her was Akhen­aten. A book of the messages she received from him was published in 1991.⁴¹ Besant led what Spiritualists call a 'developing circle' to develop the latent mediumistic powers of its members, and thus produce more mediums. Develop­ing circlcs usually take place in the medium's own home. According to Besant, a visitor to her developing circle knew some ancient Egyptian and, suspecting something about her spirit guide, asked him a question in that language. The spirit duly answered in Egyptian and revealed his identity. Akhenaten went on to provide Besant with numerous messages relating to spiritual healing - an import­ant focus of developing circles is the healing of members and giving of advice about health. In the course of these messages Akhenaten discourses on many of the things he regards as wrong with the modern world, from technology run amok to jeans. 'The drab uniform of the past has moved into the blue-jean uniform of the present young. If only they knew what lies behind this unlovely dress. It is the sackcloth and ashes', he says.⁴² Jeans, according to Akhenaten, are a travesty of the wonderful Amarna blue, a colour which has particular reson­ance for Spiritualists because of its healing powers. (Blue lights are also used when conducting past life regressions.) Akhenaten goes on to recommend that blue be used to cure mental disorders: you put them into 'a visualised bubble, and pour music into that bubble such as your Blue Danube waltz (we do like the Strauss waltzes for this work)'.¹³ Inveighing against the youth of today to the strains of the Blue Danube in Mrs Besant's front room, her Akhenaten is as homely as a half-knitted cardigan. Yet his rhetoric is the familiar one of the materialist modern world having corrupted the pure spiritual heritage of Egypt. Here the past becomes a primitive space where the evils of industrialisation and modernity can be cured - and Akhenaten is its perfect mouthpiece.