14 SEPTEMBER 1962, Page 15

AFTER BLOND GODS Sia.-If your reviewer has information about a

scarab on which Akhenaten's mother appears blue- eyed, he ought to disclose it to the learned world. If Akhenaten's mother was a Mitannian (which is a bare possibility, not a fact), and therefore by definition an Aryan, why does Mr. Porteus assume that she was a blonde? Is he not aware that Indians, Persians and Sicilians have this much in common: they are all Aryans? Does it follow that they are all blondes?

Light pigmentation is not a monopoly of Aryans. There survive from the Old Kingdom in Egypt a considerable number of portrait statues with elabor- ate and very realistic inlaid eyes. Among them grey eyes are rather more common than brown. (Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries.)