ABSTRACT
This chapter explores speculation about Akhenaten's sexual biology flourished, people also wondered about the nature of his personal relationships. Egypt, Greece and Rome, the ancient cultures most highly esteemed by the west, have been repeatedly plundered to provide homosexuality with a validating presence, an ancestry and a voice. The British film-maker, artist and activist Derek Jarman and the American minimalist composer Philip Glass had very different reasons for appropriating Akhenaten Jarman in an unrealised screenplay and Philip Glass in the opera Akhnaten. As Akhenaten, Nefertiti and the rest sang their parts, extras in modern Islamic dress plays peasants winnowing corn or making bricks, never leaving the stage. The action in ancient Egypt proceeds chronologically, but it was taken out of time by Orientalist touches in the production. The ambiguous ends of Akenaten, which may offer hope for the future rather than a masochistic image of internalised oppression, pain and loss, also echoes the messages of Jarmans other films.
