Horemheb

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Djeserkheperure Horemheb was the last Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt's 18th Dynasty from 1321 BC to early 1292 BC. Horemheb came from Herakleopolis Magna near the entrance to the Fayum. His parentage is unknown but he is universally believed to be a commoner. Horemheb's birth name and epithet was Horemheb Meryamun, meaning Horus is in Jubilation, Beloved of Amun. His name is sometimes spelled Horemhab or Haremhab. Technically, this name is transliterated as ḥr-m-ḥb mry-ỉmn, which is written in Egyptian hieroglyphs to the right. He may have been the same person as Paatenemheb (Aten Is Present In Jubilation), but this is unclear. [1].

He rose to become Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and advisor to the Pharaoh, under Tutankhamun. When Tutankhamun died while still a teenager, Ay succeeded to the throne. After Ay's brief reign of 4 Years and 1 Month, Horemheb seized power and had Ay's tomb desecrated for plotting to undermine his own claim to the throne. Ay had nominated a military officer named Nakhtmin to succeed him but Horemheb easily pushed aside this rival from his position as Commander of the Army to assume what he perceived to be his just reward for ably serving Tutankhamun and Ay. However, he spared Tutankhamun's tomb from vandalism presumably because it was the Boy King who had promoted his sudden rise to power in the first place. Horemheb enlarged Ay's mortuary temple at Medinet Habu 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. This statue is now in the Oriental Institute of Chicago.

His throne name was Djeserkheperure Setepenre, meaning "Holy are the Manifestations of Re, Chosen of Re". This name is transliterated as dsr-ḫprw-r‘ stp-n-r‘, which is also written in hieroglyphs to the right.

1 Internal Reform
2 Reign Length
3 Succession
4 Trivia
5 See also
6 External links

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Internal Reform

Upon his accession, Horemheb initiated a comprehensive series of internal reforms meant to curb the gross abuses of power and privileges that had begun under Akhenaten's reign, due to the overcentralization of state power and privileges in the hands of a few officials. He "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," (Nicolas Grimal, pp.243).

These deeds are recorded in a stela which the king erected at the foot of his Tenth Pylon. Sometimes 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 Deir el-Medinah 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. Horemheb was a prolific builder: in his life-time, he built numerous temples and buildings throughout Egypt. He constructed the Second, Ninth and Tenth Pylons of the Great Hypostyle Hall, in the Temple at Karnak using recycled talatat blocks from Akhenaten's own monuments, as building material for the first two Pylons, (Grimal, op.cit., p.243 and 303).

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 KV57, as king. His Chief Wife was Queen Mutnedjmet but she failed to bear him a successor. He is not known to have any children by his first wife Amenia either.

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Reign Length

Despite some scholarly debate, Horemheb's Highest Year date is likely attested in a hieratic graffito written on the shoulder of a now fragmented statue from his mortuary temple in Karnak which mentions the appearance of the king himself, or a royal cult statue representing the king, for a religious feast. The ink graffito reads "Year 27, first Month of Shemu day 9, the day on which Horemheb, who loves Amun and hates his enemies entered" the temple for this event. (JNES 25[1966], p.123) Donald Redford, in a BASOR 211(1973)#37 footnote observes that the use of Horemheb's name and the addition of a long "Meryamun" epithet in the graffito suggests a living, eulogised king rather than a long deceased king. Rolf Krauss, in a DE 30(1994) paper, has argued that this date may well reflect Horemheb's accession where a Feast or public holiday was proclaimed to honour a deceased or a currently serving king. Krauss supports his hypothesis with evidence from Ostraca IFAO 1254 which was initially published by Jac Janssen in a BIFAO 84(1984) paper under the title "A Curious Error." The ostraca records the number of days on which an unknown Deir el-Medinah workman was absent from work and covers the period from Year 26 III Peret day 11 to Year 27 II Akhet day 12 before breaking off. The significant fact here is that a Year change occurred in the ostraca from Year 26 to Year 27 around the interval IV Peret day 28 and I Shemu day 13. The Year 27 date of Horemheb is located within this interval and would reflect Horemheb's accession date, as Krauss suggests. Ay's accession date was somewhere in the month of III Peret. (Beckerath, Chronologie, p.201) Since Manetho gives Ay reign of 4 years and 1 month, this ruler would have died around the month of IV Peret or the first half of I Shemu at the latest. This is precisely the time period noted in Ostraca IFAO 1254. Since the ostraca records the case of only one worker rather than an entire group of workmen, the necropolis scribe cannot be presumed--at first glance--to have committed a dating error in altering the unknown king's Year date around the interval IV Peret 28 and I Shemu 13.

Janssen, in his original BIFAO paper, noted the curious fact that no known New Kingdom Pharaohs who reigned for a quarter of a century including Ramesses II and Ramesses III had their accession date in this time frame and suggests the Year change was an error committed on behalf of the scribe. He then attributed the ostraca to Ramesses III, whose accession date was I Shemu day 26 and expressed his view that the scribe may have inadvertently implemented the Year change two weeks early instead. Janssen also observed that the palaeography of the ostraca suggests a date in the 20th Dynasty partly because it followed the later New Kingdom form of writing and due to its provenance in the Grand Putit region, which features numerous Dynasty 20 ostracas. However, this form of writing is also attested in monuments of Ramesses II and it would, therefore, not be unexpected to find it in a document from the very late 18th Dynasty since the change in use from the Early New Kingdom to the Late New Kingdom Form of writing had occurred prior to the end of Horemheb's reign, as Frank Yurco once noted. Indeed, Janssen's palaeographical reference for his paper--Prof. Georges Posener--himself suggested a date in the 19th Dynasty due to the form of the wsf (absent) and akhet (inundation) text. As Janssen himself writes (p.305), a few 19th Dynasty ostracas have been found in the Grand Putit area prior to the 20th Dynasty's intensive exploitation of this region. This does not exclude some late 18th Dynasty work here either. Secondly, both Jansssen and Krauss stress in their papers that the relative scarcity of the hieratic text in Ostraca IFAO 1254 precludes a clear dating of the document to either Ramesses II or III's reign and that palaeography, in general, does not give a precise date for a document's creation. Hence, a dating of the ostraca to Horemheb's reign on the basis of the Year change is eminently plausible. On other matters, a damaged wall fragment painting from the Petrie Collection mentions Horemheb's 15th or 25th Year.

Another important Text--The Inscription of Mes--from Mes' 19th Dynasty tomb records that a court case was initiated by a rival branch of Mes' family in Year 59 of Horemheb. Since the Mes inscription was composed during the reign of Ramesses II when the Amarna-era Pharaohs were struck from the official king-lists, the Year 59 Horemheb date certainly includes the 17 Year reign of Akhenaten, the c.2 Year reign of Smenkare, the 9 Year reign of Tutankhamun and the 4 Year reign of Ay. Once all these rulers reigns are deducted from the Year 59 date, Horemheb would have still enjoyed a reign of 27 Years. At a well known 1987 Conference from Gothenburg Sweden, Kenneth Kitchen astutely noted that any attempt to explain away the Year 59 Horemheb date as a "scribal error" fails to consider the long and volumnious listed series of court trials and legal setbacks which Mes' family endured in order to win back control over certain valuable lands which had been stolen from his family's line. Indeed, Mes likely ordered the protracted legal dispute--which is presented as a series of depositions and testimonies of various plaintiffs and witnesses--to be inscribed on his tomb walls in order to create a permanent ('carved in stone') record of his family's ultimately victorious struggle to win back these lands. Mes, hence, could hardly be expected to forget the beginning of his family's legal tribulations in Year 59 of Horemheb. Kitchen also observes in his paper that Horemheb's extensive building projects at Karnak supported the theory of a long reign for this Pharaoh and stressed that "a good number of the undated 'late 18th Dynasty' private monuments that are in both Egypt and the world's Museums must, in fact, belong to his reign." Horemheb, hence, probably died after a reign of 27 or 28 Years.

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Succession

Under Horemheb, Egypt's power and confidence was once again restored after the chaos of the Amarna period; this situation set the stage for the rise of the 19th Dynasty under such ambitious Pharaohs like Seti I and Ramesses II. Since Horemheb was childless, he appointed his Vizier, Paramesse as his chosen succeessor before his death. Paramesse employed the name Ramesses I upon assuming power and founded the 19th Dynasty of the New Kingdom. While the decorations of Horemheb's KV57 tomb walls was still unfinished upon his death, this situation is not unprecedented: Amenhotep II's tomb was also not completed when he was buried and this ruler enjoyed a reign of 26 Years.

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