Horemheb

Early career

Horemheb is believed to have originally come from Hnes, on the west bank of the Nile, near the entrance to the Faiyum, since his coronation text formally credits the god Horus of Hnes for establishing him on the throne.

His parentage is unknown but he is believed to have been a commoner. According to the French Egyptologist Nicolas Grimal, Horemheb does not appear to be the same person as Paatenemheb (Aten Is Present In Jubilation), who was the commander-in-chief of Akhenaten's army. Grimal notes that Horemheb's political career began under Tutankhamun where he "is depicted at this king's side in his own tomb chapel at Memphis."

He is known to have served in the military during the reign of Akhenaten. In the earliest known stage of his life Horemheb served as "the royal spokesman for [Egypt's] foreign affairs" and personally led a diplomatic mission to visit the Nubian governors. This resulted in a reciprocal visit by "the Prince of Miam (Aniba)" to Tutankhamun's court, "an event [that is] depicted in the tomb of the Viceroy Huy." Horemheb quickly rose to prominence under Tutankhamun, becoming commander-in-chief of the army and advisor to the pharaoh. Horemheb's specific titles are spelled out in his Saqqara tomb, which was built while he was still only an official: "Hereditary Prince, Fan-bearer on the Right Side of the King and Chief Commander of the Army"; the "attendant of the King in his footsteps in the foreign countries of the south and the north"; the "King's Messenger in front of his army to the foreign countries to the south and the north"; and the "Sole Companion, he who is by the feet of his lord on the battlefield on that day of killing Asiatics."

Reign

Tutankhamun's Iry-pat

When Tutankhamun died while a teenager, Horemheb had already been officially designated as the rpat or iry-pat (often translated hereditary or crown prince) and idnw (deputy of the king in the entire land) by the young pharaoh; these titles are found inscribed in Horemheb's then private Memphite tomb at Saqqara, which dates to the reign of Tutankhamun since the young king's

... cartouches, although later usurped by Horemheb as king, have been found on a block which adjoins the famous gold of honour scene, a large portion of which is in Leiden. The royal couple depicted in this scene and in the adjacent scene 76, which shows Horemheb acting as an intermediary between the king and a group of subject foreign rulers, are therefore to be identified as Tut'ankhamun and 'Ankhesenamun. This makes it very unlikely from the start that any titles of honours claimed by Horemheb in the inscriptions in the tomb are fictitious.

The title iry-pat (Hereditary Prince) was used very frequently in Horemheb's Saqqara tomb but not combined with any other words. When used alone, the Egyptologist Alan Gardiner has shown that the iry-pat title contains features of ancient descent and lawful inheritance which is identical to the designation for a "Crown Prince." This has been taken to mean that Horemheb was the openly recognised heir to Tutankhamun's throne, and not Ay, Tutankhamun's immediate successor. On the other hand, more recent assessment of the titulary has translated iry-pat as "Executive" and attaches a less specific and exceptional importance to the title. The Dutch Egyptologist Jacobus Van Dijk observes:

There is no indication that Horemheb always intended to succeed Tut'ankhamun; obviously not even he could possibly have predicted that the king would die without issue. It must always have been understood that his appointment as crown prince would end as soon as the king produced an heir, and that he would succeed Tut'ankhamun only in the eventuality of an early and / or childless death of the sovereign. There can be no doubt that nobody outranked the Hereditary Prince of Upper and Lower Egypt and Deputy of the King in the Entire Land except the king himself, and that Horemheb was entitled to the throne once the king had unexpectedly died without issue. This means that it is Ay's, not Horemheb's, accession that calls for an explanation. Why was Ay able to ascend the throne upon the death of Tut'ankhamun, despite the fact that Horemheb had at that time already been the official heir to the throne for almost ten years?

Kingship

Kawai notes that Horemheb himself likely "did not plot revenge on Ay, probably because Ay was old and would likely die soon" and merely kept his military power. After Ay's reign, which lasted for a little over four years, Horemheb managed to seize power, presumably thanks to his position as commander of the army, and to assume what he must have perceived to be his reward for having ably served Egypt under Tutankhamun and Ay. Horemheb resented Ay's attempt to sideline him from the royal succession and acted to quickly removed Nakhtmin's rival claim to the throne and arranged to have Ay's WV 23 tomb desecrated by smashing the latter's sarcophagus, systematically chiseling Ay's name and figure out of the tomb walls and probably destroying Ay's mummy. Horemheb also usurped and enlarged Ay's mortuary temple at Medinet Habu for his own use and usurped a 17-foot colossal statue by erasing Ay's titulary on the back of the state, which itself had been written over the titulary of Tutankhamun, and carving his own titulary in its place.

Horemheb's actions against Ay were a damnatio memoriae to remove the memory of his rival from the historical records. However, he spared Tutankhamun's tomb from vandalism presumably out of respect because it was Tutankhamun who had overseen his rise to prominence in the first place and because he had no antagonism with Tutankhamun.

Upon his accession, Horemheb initiated a comprehensive series of internal transformations to the power structures of Akhenaten's reign, due to the preceding transfer of state power from Amun's priests to Akhenaten's government officials. Horemheb "appointed judges and regional tribunes reintroduced local religious authorities" and divided legal power "between Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt" between "the Viziers of Thebes and Memphis respectively."

These deeds are recorded in a stela which the king erected at the foot of his Tenth Pylon at Karnak. Occasionally called The Great Edict of Horemheb, it is a copy of the actual text of the king's decree to re-establish order to the Two Lands and curb abuses of state authority. The stela's coronation and prominent location emphasizes the great importance which Horemheb placed upon domestic reform.

When Haremheb ascended the throne after the death of Ay II, he consolidated his rule by centralizing the state and continuing to establish a court in Thebes, where he could supervise the powerful and scheming priests there. He had his successful reforms inscribed on the tenth pylon in the temple complex in nearby Karnak. The text can be interpreted as a “government code”, defined by the direct will of this ruler.

Disputed reign length

Scholars have long disputed whether Horemheb reigned for 14–15 years or 27 years. Manetho's Epitome assigns a reign length of 4 years and 1 month to a king called Harmais. Scholars previously assigned this reign-length to Ay; however, evidence from excavations in Horemheb's tomb (KV57) indicates that this figure should be raised by a decade to [1]4 years and 1 month and attributed to Horemheb. These excavations, conducted under G.T. Martin and Jacobus Van Dijk in 2006 and 2007, uncovered a large hoard of 168 inscribed wine sherds and dockets, below densely compacted debris in a great shaft (called Well Room E) in KV 57. Of the 46 wine sherds with year dates, 14 have nothing but the year date formula, 5 dockets have year 10+X, 3 dockets have year 11+X, 2 dockets preserve year 12+X and 1 docket has a year 13+X inscription. 22 dockets "mention year 13 and 8 have year 14 [of Horemheb]" but none mention a higher date for Horemheb.

The full texts of the docket readings are identical and read as:

Year 13. Wine of the estate of Horemheb-meren-Amun, L.P.H., in the domain of Amun. Western River. Chief vintner Ty.

Meanwhile, the year 14 dockets, in contrast, are all individual and mention specific wines such as "very good quality wine" or, in one case "sweet wine" and the location of the vineyard is identified. A general example is this text on a year 14 wine docket:

Year 14, Good quality wine of the estate of Horemheb-meren-Amun, L.P.H., in the domain of Amun, from the wineyard of Atfih, Chief vintner Haty.

Other year 14 dockets mention Memphis (?), the Western River while their vintners are named as Nakhtamun, [Mer-]seger-men, Ramose, and others.

The "quality and consistency of the KV 57 dockets strongly suggest that Horemheb was buried in his year 14, or at least before the wine harvest of his year 15 at the very latest." This evidence is consistent "with the Horemheb dockets from Deir el-Medina which mention years 2, 3, 4, 6, 13, and 14, but again no higher dates ..." while a docket ascribed to Horemheb from Sedment has year 12." The lack of dated inscriptions for Horemheb after his year 14 also explains the unfinished state of Horemheb's royal KV 57 tomb – "a fact not taken into account by any of those [scholars] defending a long reign [of 26 or 27 years]. The tomb is comparable to that of Seti I in size and decoration technique, and Seti I's tomb is far more extensively decorated than that of Horemheb, and yet Seti managed to virtually complete his tomb within a decade, whereas Horemheb did not even succeed in fully decorating the three rooms he planned to have done, leaving even the burial hall unfinished. Even if we assume that Horemheb did not begin the work on his royal tomb until his year 7 or 8, ... it remains a mystery how the work could not have been completed had he lived on for another 20 or more years." Therefore, some scholars now accept a reign of 14 years and 1 month.

Year 16 date of Horemheb attested

Unfortunately, however, Van Dijk's arguments that Horemheb either died in his Regnal Year 14 or that he started a Regnal Year 15 but died before the wine harvesest of his final 15th year is now known to be incorrect. Egyptologists have discovered a secure Year 16 date of Horemheb. Peter J. Brand, in his 2023 book, titled "Ramesses II: Egypt's Ultimate Pharaoh" by Lockwood Press notes that:

Recently fragments of another battle scene, from a temple Horemheb built at Thebes, have come to light. They depict him assaulting a Syria citadel. This time, a part of the hieroglyphic caption text identifies the enemy fortress as “the town His Person captured in the land of Ked—.” The end of the name is missing, but it is likely Kadesh, indicating that Horemheb reconquered the city. Another text dated to Horemheb’s sixteenth regnal year reports that his armies penetrated deep into Hittite-controlled territory as far north as Carchemish.

Horemheb's success, however, was shortlived since Kadesh soon after reverted back to Hittite rule. The Hittitologist Jared L. Miller established that Horemheb--called 'Arma'a in Hittite royal records--had actively campaigned against the Hittities in Year 7 and 9 of Mursilis II possibly even before Horemheb's own coronation as Egypt's king "in his role as viceroy and commander of Egypt's Asian territories, that is to say, before his reign as pharaoh." Horemheb may likely have continued these activities as king to conquer Kadesh and Carchemish in North Syria as pharaoh himself to regain lands lost under Akhenaten.

Peter Brand specifically notes in footnote 39 of his 2023 book that: "A granite bowl records Horemheb’s "first campaign of victory” against Carchemish in northern Syria in his sixteenth regnal year. Redford first described the piece in the early 1970s, but it soon vanished and most scholars long rejected it as a forgery. But [Nicholas] Grimal [a French Egyptologist] has now located and published the bowl, proving beyond all doubt that it is genuine: Redford 1973; Grimal 2018."

This conclusive evidence proves that Horemheb lived into his Year 16 and more likely for a few more years later...since he was still actively campaigning against the Hittites around this date. The fact that the authenticated granite bowl mentions only Horemheb's "first campaign of victory" inevitably suggests there was a second or third "victorious" campaign conducted against the Hittites by Horemheb--after his Year 16 for which no historical records have yet survived.

Cartouches and symbols

Horemheb turned to several gods because of his various names: his throne name, Djeserkheperure, means 'Sacred are the manifestations of Ra' and his name birth name is accompanied by the epithet Meryamun, which means 'beloved of Amun'.

It is not yet proven whether Horemheb had really exorcised the Amarna period, the great iconoclasm began only after his death. To be able to build for himself, however, he did have the Per-Aten temple at Karnak pulled down and constructed a pylon of the Amun temple with its stone blocks. The Aten reliefs from the Amarna period on those blocks therefore remained fairly well preserved.

Horemheb appear in reliefs wearing the typical pleated linen robe of a high-ranking official depicted sitting in front of an offering table, as a pharaoh holding the pole and the sekhem sceptre of a high official (the luraeus was added after his ascension to the throne), with a benu-bird regarded as the protector of the dead as the soul of Ra sitting on a stand, and finally a man worshipping a benu-bird.

The coronation inscription on the back of a double statue, showing Horemheb with his wife, tells that he is under the protection of Horus and appointed by Amun. It reports further that he had the damaged statues of the old gods remade and had the temples that had fallen into disrepair rebuilt. For the Amun cult, 'he provided them with servants to the god and lector priests from the military elite'. In a decree on a stele in Karnak, he again officially confirms the restoration of the old order.

Succession

Under Horemheb, Egypt's power and confidence were once again restored after the internal chaos of the Amarna Period; this situation set the stage for the rise of the 19th Dynasty under such ambitious Pharaohs as Seti I and Ramesses II. Geoffrey Thorndike Martin in his excavation work at Saqqara states that the burial of Horemheb's second wife Mutnedjmet, as well as that of an unborn or newborn baby, was located at the bottom of a shaft to the rooms of Horemheb's Saqqara tomb. He notes that "a fragment of an alabaster vase inscribed with a funerary text for the chantress of Amun and King's Wife, Mutnodjmet, as well as pieces of a statuette of her [was found here] ... The funerary vase in particular, since it bears her name and titles would hardly have been used for the burial of some other person."

Eugen Strouhal studied a skull and other bones and concluded that they belonged to the queen. According to Strouhal's analysis of her remains, the queen lost her teeth at an early age. She died at around age thirty-five to forty-five, possibly in childbirth, as the remains of a fetus were found with her body.

Since Horemheb had no surviving son, he appointed his Vizier, Paramessu, to succeed him upon his death, both to reward Paramessu's loyalty and because the latter had both a son and grandson to secure Egypt's royal succession. Paramessu employed the name Ramesses I upon assuming power and founded the 19th Dynasty of the New Kingdom. Horemheb's second successor, Seti I, was married to a possible daughter of Horemheb's, Tanodjmy. While the decoration of Horemheb's KV 57 tomb was still unfinished upon his death, this situation is not unprecedented: Amenhotep II's tomb was also not fully completed when he was buried, even though this ruler enjoyed a reign of 26 years.

Although many of his monuments were later usurped by Seti I, Seti left the name of Horemheb on the veil of the Amun bark on a pedestal in Luxor temple untouched, likely out of respect. This is similar to how Horemheb left the name of Tutankhamun on the veil of Amun bark at Karnak temple untouched.

Tomb and excavation

Because of his unexpected rise to the throne, Horemheb had two tombs constructed for himself: the first – when he was a mere nobleman – at Saqqara near Memphis, and the other in the Valley of the Kings, in Thebes, in tomb KV 57 as king. The tomb KV57 was discovered 22 February 1908 by Edward R. Ayrton working for the American, Theodore Davis. The corridors are long, maintaining the trend of enlargement in their height and width and descend. The first pillared hall is much more square than before and the burial chamber is notable for a two pairs of pillars and the steps to the crypt with pink granite sarcophagus, which containing a skull and several bones, but in Davies's publication of the tomb no description is given of them, and no other mention than the brief note in the preface.