ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines what might be called the paratextual conditions of the mythic Akhenaten the other circumstances which help to produce specific views of him and assist in his mythologisation. It concentrates on two Akhenaten's which sometimes overlap: the mystic Akhenaten of alternative religionists, and the black Akhenaten of Afrocentrists. The book looks at literal readings of Amarna art, based on an inapplicable notion of naturalism, and the consequent fixation on Akhenaten's body. It points out the extent to which the west has internalised ancient Egypt and made it its own, and then enables everybody who is interested to look at Akhenaten with a little more neutrality. Finally it examines the fantasy of the lost Utopian city, and the ways in which Akhenaten had already been discovered in a sense before anything factual was known about him.
