Akhenaten, et al

Ugh, third morning of waking up feeling like somebody’s been shoveling snot down my nostrils and beating the backs of my legs with a cricket bat while I was asleep. But as of today, Day Seven, I’m roughly 8,520 words up and three chapters down, and I’m still not absolutely sure what’s next, though I have at least…three more chapters already planned out. Exciting! Scary! But I think I will mainly stick to making up my word-count for today by continuing to transcribe notes, because I’m still pretty damn tired from that orgy of posting on Wednesday night/Thursday morning.

So, stuff I haven’t talked about: On Wednesday day, agincourtgirl came over to see Cal (and me, I assume)—we went to buy banker’s boxes at Staples, to hopefully keep Cal away from those frigging RPG texts of Steve’s that he will not bloody leave alone, and then ended up at the Patrician Grill, where Cal ate fries and I talked a blue streak about Akhenaten.

Ever since re-finishing the Porter verse-novel, I‘ve been going back over all the other stuff (fiction and non-) I have to hand that deals with that particular crazy/visionary, long-skulled monotheist. I found and re-read Pauline Gedge’s The Twelfth Transforming, for example, and yesterday afternoon I picked up a brand-new reissued copy of Gwendolyn MacEwen’s King of Egypt, King of Dreams. One of the things which continues to fascinate with this soap opera of dynastic suicide is how little we really know for sure about what went on, and the way that various authors choose various theories to run with, interpreting the "facts" to fit their own image of who Akhenaten was, what he did, why he did it. Or even who any of the other players were, let alone their various motivations.

Take the spectral figure of Smenkhare, Akhenaten’s brother (maybe), lover (maybe) and heir (maybe). He might have briefly occupied the throne just after (or concurrently with) Akhenaten, and just before Tutankhamun, but no one’s sure whose son he was—possibly Akhenaten’s father’s by Akhenaten’s mother Tiye, possibly by Akhenaten’s Great Royal Sister/potential first wife Sitamun, who may have also been Tutankhamun’s mother (unless that was Tiye, who may have eventually married and had sex with her own son to secure the line of succession).

While it’s fairly well-confirmed that Akhenaten had sex with and impregnated at least three of his own daughters by Queen Nefertiti—Meketaten, who died in childbirth because she wasn’t developed enough not to; Meritaten, who may have been promised to and even may have eventually married Smenkhare; Ankhesepaaten, who definitely ended up with her younger "uncle" Tutankhamun, and later changed her name to Akhesenamun—some people choose to ignore the further implication that he "welcomed" Smenkhare into the family by also having sex with him, making him into a sort of unofficial Great Royal Wife.

Some people even go further, saying he never existed at all, and that "Smenkhare" was a title/male persona Nefertiti adopted in order to become Akhenaten’s co-Pharoah, so there’d be at least one person on the throne who didn’t just spend all day writing hymns to the glory of the sun-disk. Certainly, there are murals in which she seems to have had herself depicted with traditionally male skin- and hair-coloration, driving a chariot, punishing Mitanni prisoners. Or…is that even her?

One way or another, the whole era seems to have become a bit of a Rorschach blot for creative types, and the way they push and pull it into a form which best suits their interests is really, in itself, fairly neat. A bit like fandom, I guess—though the original source material is considerably less accessible, and considerably easier to reinterpret without immediate outcry from the "experts".;)

Okay, well…coffee now. And then back to the grind, moving my bits and pieces around, hoping someone starts to talk to me directly. I’ll see y’all.