| Horemheb I The Good | |
|---|---|
| |
| Pharaoh of Egypt | |
| Reign | 28 June 1323 - 02 August 1295 |
| Predecessor | Ay II |
| Successor | Ramesses I |
| Born | March 14, 1389 Hnes, Egypt |
| Died | August 2, 1295 (aged 94) |
| Spouse | Amenia, Mutnedjmet |
| Issue | Tanedjemet I |
| Full name | |
| Horus Name: Kanakht Sepedkheru Nebty Name: WerbiawetemIpetsut Golden Horus Name: Heruhermaat Sekhepertawy Praenomen: Djoserkheperura Setepenra Nomen: Horemheb Meriamun | |
| House | Yuya (by marriage) |
| Dynasty | Ahmosid - Thutmosid |
| Father | Senusret |
| Mother | Neferet |
| Religion | Kemetism 1389-1351 Atenism 1351-1338 Kemetism 1338-1295 |
Horemheb, called Horemheb the Good (Ancient Egyptian: ḥr-m-ḥb, meaning "Horus is in Jubilation"), was the last pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt (1570–1295 BC). He ruled for 28 years between 28 June 1323 - 02 August 1295 BC. He had no relation to the preceding royal family other than by marriage to Mutnodjmet, who was the daughter of his predecessor, Ay II; he is believed to have been of common birth.
Before he became pharaoh Horemheb was the commander-in-chief of the army under the reigns of Tutankhamun and Ay II. After his accession to the throne, he reformed the Egyptian state and it was during his reign that official action against the preceding Amarna rulers began, which is why he is considered the ruler who restabilized his country after the troublesome and divisive Amarna Period.
Horemheb demolished monuments of Akhenaten, reusing the rubble in his own building projects, and usurped monuments of Tutankhamun and Ay. Horemheb presumably had no surviving sons, as he appointed as his successor his vizier Paramesse, who would assume the throne as Ramesses I.
Early career and accession to kingship[]
Horemheb is believed to have originally come from Hnes, on the west bank of the Nile, near the entrance to the Payom, 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 is known 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."
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 Mekhattawy 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."
When Tutankhamun died while a teenager, Horemheb had already been officially designated as the rpat or iry-pat (basically the hereditary or crown prince) and idnw (deputy of the king in the entire land) by the child pharaoh; these titles are found inscribed in Horemheb's then private Memphite tomb at Mekhattawy, which dates to the reign of Tutankhamun since the child 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 Mekhattawy 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 means that Horemheb was the openly recognised heir to Tutankhamun's throne, and not Ay, Tutankhamun's immediate successor. 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?
Nozomu Kawai, however, rejects Van Dijk's interpretation that Tutankhamun had nominated Horemheb as his successor and reasons that:
- "If Horemheb was appointed as the “Crown Prince” at the beginning of Tutankhamun’s reign, this means that the end of the royal bloodline was already arranged. If this arrangement was made, people like Ay, who were closely connected to the royal family, would not have accepted it. Although Horemheb had already boasted of his strength in his pre-royal career, the statements must have been exaggerated, especially in his [ie. Horemheb's] coronation inscription, which was undoubtedly intended to propagate his legitimacy as the king. Notably, he called himself the ‘Eldest son of Horus’, a title that regularly refers to the Crown Prince. For van Dijk this means that he was already the designated successor of Tutankhamun. Janssen, however, states that the “Eldest Son” was honorific and did not indicate the surviving heir to the throne. I would suggest that this expression seems to have been a propaganda title meaning the “Eldest son of Horus of Hutnesu,” Horemheb’s birthplace."
While no objects belonging to Horemheb were found in Tutankhamun's tomb, and items among the tomb goods donated by other high-ranking officials, such as Maya and General Nakhtmin, were identified by Egyptologists. Nozomu Kawai maintains that Horemheb was an active participant at Tutankhamun's burial. Kawai writes:
- "Many scholars have suggested that Horemheb did not leave any evidence in Tutankhamun’s tomb, while prominent persons such as Ay, Maya and Nakhtmin left either funerary items or iconographic images. However, the wall scene of the tomb shows Tutankhmun’s coffin dragged by a group of officials in a mourning procession that contains a man who seems to be Horemheb (Fig. 3). The lone figure standing behind the two viziers must be Horemheb, which also makes him situated closest to the mummy of Tutankhamun. This means that Horemheb acted as the leader of the funerary procession."
Kawai maintains rather that both Ay and Horemheb held important high administrative roles during Tutankhamun's reign with Ay participating in royal cultic activities whereas Horemheb acted as a royal military leader and legislator. But after Ay became the pharaoh, his relationship with Horemheb changed. The aged Vizier Ay initially succeeded Tutankhamun, possibly because he made an arrangement with Horemheb. However, during his brief 4 year reign, Ay proceeded to nominate Nakhtmin as his successor--who Ay named as "King's Son" (zꜣ-nswt). rather than Horemheb. The title of “King’s Son” [(zꜣ-nswt)] was clearly meant to designate the king's successor and Ay, therefore, sidelined Horemheb's claim to the throne with this action. Ankhesenamun, Tutankhamun's queen chose not to marry Horemheb, a commoner, and this also solidified Ay's kingship.
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 notes Kawai. 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 chiselling 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 Djamet for his own use and erased Ay's titulary on the back of a 17 foot colossal statue by 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 because it was Tutankhamun who had overseen his rise to prominence in the first place and because he had no antagonism with Tutankhamun.
Internal reform[]
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 Ipetisut. 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 creation and prominent location emphasizes the great importance which Horemheb placed upon domestic reform.
Horemheb also reformed the Army and reorganized the Setmaatniwt workforce in his 7th year while Horemheb's official Maya renewed the tomb of Thutmose IV, which had been disturbed by tomb robbers in his 8th year. While the king restored the priesthood of Amun, he prevented the Amun priests from forming a stranglehold on power, by deliberately reappointing priests who mostly came from the Egyptian army since he could rely on their personal loyalty. Horemheb was a prolific builder who erected numerous temples and buildings throughout Egypt during his reign. He constructed the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Pylons of the Great Hypostyle Hall, in the Temple at Ipetisut, using recycled talatat blocks from Akhenaten's own monuments here, as building material for the first two Pylons.
Horemheb continued Tutankhamun's restoration of the old order that had been established before the Amarna period. He reintroduced the ancient cults, particularly Amun, thus proving himself a true pharaoh who established Maat (world order).
Because of his unexpected rise to the throne, Horemheb had two tombs constructed for himself: the first – when he was a mere nobleman – at Mekhattawy near Memphis, and the other in the Valley of the Kings, in Thebes, in tomb KV 57 as king. His chief wife was Queen Mutnodjmet, who may have been Nefertiti's younger sister. They had no surviving children, although examinations of Mutnedjmet's mummy show that she gave birth several times, and she was buried with an infant, suggesting that she and her last child died in childbirth. Horemheb is not known to have any children by his first wife, Amenia, who died before Horemheb assumed power.
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 Mekhattawy states that the burial of Horemheb's second wife Mutnodjmet, as well as that of an unborn or newborn baby, was located at the bottom of a shaft to the rooms of Horemheb's Mekhattawy 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."
Eugene Strouhal studied a skull and other bones and concluded that they belonged to the queen. According to his analysis, the queen lost her teeth at an early age. She died at around age forty, possibly in childbirth, as the remains of a fetus were found with her body.
Since Horemheb had no surviving son, he appointed his Vizier, Paramesse, to succeed him upon his death, both to reward Paramesse's loyalty and because the latter had both a son and grandson to secure Egypt's royal succession. Paramesse 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, Tanodjmet. 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.
Tomb and excavation[]
Directly after his accession to the throne, Horemheb had a tomb built in the Valley of Kings, abandoning his earlier one near Memphis. For the first time, scenes from the Book of Gates were used in the burial chamber as a decoration for a royal tomb.
Horemheb's tomb was excavated in the early 20th century by Theodore M. Davis. Davis discovered it in a poor state due to robbers and earth movements over the centuries. The lid of the sarcophagus had been taken off and smashed by robbers.