Books in Brief

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More Than a Revision

Akhenaten: King of Egypt

Cyril Aldred

(London & New York: Thames & Hudson, 1988), 320 pp., 107 illustrations, $35.00

Cyril Aldred’s Akhenaten: King of Egypt is definitely not a mere revision of his 1968 book Akhenaten, Pharaoh of Egypt, despite the initial reaction of this reviewer and many others. Indeed, neither the dust jacket nor Aldred himself even notes the publication of the earlier work. With a few exceptions, the new book represents a thorough reworking, rewriting and updating of the materials related to Akhenaten.

As part of his new presentation, Aldred has chosen to jump right into the discovery of Tell el-Amarna and Amarna-related materials in Part I, “The Evidence.” By doing so, he immediately captures the reader’s attention with solid content related to the book’s main appeal. This section is without question the strongest part of the book. After what one might term an overture to the whole in the first chapter, entitled “The Discovery of Akhenaten,” Aldred starts most of this section’s chapters with excellent historical summaries of the different kinds of Amarna- and Akhenaten-related materials. These summaries include discussions of both the private and royal tombs, the boundary stelae of Amarna, finds of buried evidence, the recent work on the Karnak talatat (inscribed and decorated building blocks from Akhenaten’s palaces; see Donald B. Redford, “The Monotheism of the Heretic Pharaoh,” BAR 13:03), the monuments related to Akhenaten located outside Amarna and Karnak, the Amarna-related mummies and the history of the different interpretations of the king and his religion. There is little to quibble about in this section save for the glaring lack of annotation. To be sure, the author includes a select bibliography for each chapter and cites all direct quotes, but he does not provide the interested reader, scholarly or lay, the opportunity to follow up specific issues raised in the text. Indeed, he leaves the reader hanging in one instance when he discusses the mummy of “Elder Woman B” found in KV Tomb 55. In this involved discussion he notes, “The blood group of the mummy shows that while in theory it could be a daughter of Yuya and Tuyu, this is not very probable” (p. 105). One asks why it is not probable, but the reader is given no help from a citation to pursue the question.

Part II presents “The Milieu” in which Amarna occurred. The chapters in this section lack the precision and thoroughness of the earlier pages. The discussions of the foreign and home affairs of XVIIIth Dynasty Egypt are particularly deficient. For instance, the chapter concerning home affairs focuses primarily on the army and chariotry, which, although innovative in XVIIIth Dynasty Egypt, were only one part of domestic life at that time. In the chapter on foreign affairs, I was struck by his unusual use of the term “Naharin” rather than the more expected “Mitanni.” Various other oddities, which a little annotation might have helped clear up, appear in the same chapter. In addition, the chapters on Tuthmosis IV and Amenophis III, Akhenaten’s immediate predecessors, should have included reference to Donald Redford’s work on the antecedents to the sun-disc.^a

In contrast, the chapter in this section that discusses the God’s Wife and the Chief Queen—sometimes, but not necessarily, the same person—followed in the next part by a chapter devoted to the Amarna Queens, reflects recent concern and work with the female side of Egyptian history, religion and culture. The God’s Wife is an especially complex situation. Aldred deserves commendation for his attempt to deal with it.

The third part, “The Enigmas,” represents the weakest section of the book. In this section, Aldred has lifted verbatim one entire chapter (“The Amarna Letters”) and parts of at least three others from his earlier book. Furthermore, two of the chapters (including “The Amarna Letters”) show no attempt to incorporate the available scholarship of the last 20 years. In view of Aldred’s thorough revisions in most of the rest of the book, this lapse is very surprising.

The chapter on the co-regency also omits the use of significant recent material, most notably William J. Murnane’s Ancient Egyptian Coregencies (1977), a seminal work on the issue. In this case, Aldred’s concern seems to be an adherence to the idea of a 12-year co-regency between Amenophis III and Akhenaten, a hypothesis that few others support, though many consider a shorter co-regency between the two to be a possibility. He thus appears to avoid Murnane’s work because it does not permit him to keep this long co-regency, though it is interesting that he does follow Murnane in lowering the date of Akhenaten’s accession from 1378 B.C. in his earlier book to 1358 B.C. in this new volume. This chapter also includes sections taken from the corresponding chapter of his older work, as do the chapters on Tomb 55, on the Valley of the Kings and on the pathology of the king, always an intriguing subject.

Part IV, “The Amarna Period,” brings the reader to Aldred’s interpretations and understanding of Amarna and Akhenaten. Here the author addresses Akhenaten’s reign, first as Amenophis IV and then as Akhenaten, the name taken by the king in the fifth year of his reign. A chapter follows on the king’s later reign and another dealing 008with the confused post-Amarna period. The short final chapter concludes that in the end, notwithstanding the controversy over this enigmatic ruler, the materials from Akhenaten’s reign portray him as “The Good Ruler Who Loves Mankind.” Aldred briefly refers to similarities in creed between the king and his father and then notes the main difference: “the propagation of a monotheistic religion that excluded other gods” (p. 306). The king and his religion suffered a complete eclipse in Egypt after Akhenaten’s death, but during the past century and longer, Akhenaten has evoked more discussion and fascination than perhaps any other Egyptological subject.

The main problem with this book lies in its total lack of annotation beyond quotes. A work as detailed and, in places, controversial as this one fairly cries out for annotation. Furthermore, how are Egyptologists to expect their colleagues in ancient Near Eastern studies to stay current with Egyptological thinking and scholarship when this type of presentation occurs? Perhaps the lack of annotation embodies the hope of reaching a nonspecialist audience by reducing what is perceived as daunting critical apparatus. However, one can seriously question whether the inclusion of notes at the end of a chapter is truly discouraging to the interested nonspecialist. This reviewer thinks not.

A second difficulty lies in the placement of, and reference to, plates and text figures. Their apparent random placement means that when one finds a marginal note to a specific figure or plate, there is no real sense of where to go to find it. Thus the reader either gives up finding the relevant illustrations or makes a major interruption of his or her reading to seek it.

Despite these shortcomings, Aldred’s Akhenaten: King of Egypt deserves the attention of Egyptologists, Biblical historians and other interested persons because of its scope, its fine summaries of the history of the various issues and its frank presentation of the unknowns. By being alert to Aldred’s particular biases, namely the 12-year co-regency of Akhenaten and Amenophis III and the lack of desire to tangle with recent scholarship on the Amarna letters, one can get a new perspective, unavailable elsewhere, on this fascinating, complex and still far-from-understood period.

More Than a Revision

Akhenaten: King of Egypt

Cyril Aldred

(London & New York: Thames & Hudson, 1988), 320 pp., 107 illustrations, $35.00