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==Reign== ===Tutankhamun Iry-pat=== 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 Saqqara, which dates to the reign of Tutankhamun since the child king's {{blockquote|... 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.<ref name=vanDijk1993>{{cite thesis |title=The New Kingdom Necropolis of Memphis |series=Historical and Iconographical Studies |first=Jacobus |last=van Dijk |publisher=University of Groningen |type=dissertation |place=Groningen, NL |year=1993 |chapter=Chapter One: Horemheb, Prince Regent of Tutankh'amun |chapter-url=http://www.jacobusvandijk.nl/docs/Horemheb_chapter.pdf |access-date=2012-04-07 |archive-date=2011-03-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110313125527/http://www.jacobusvandijk.nl/docs/Horemheb_chapter.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>{{rp|pages=17–18 / PDF pp. 9–10}} }} 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 H. Gardiner|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."<ref>{{cite journal |first=Alan |last=Gardiner |author-link=Alan H. Gardiner |title=The coronation of King Haremhab |journal=Journal of Egyptian Archaeology |volume=39 |year=1953 |pages=13–31}}</ref> 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: {{blockquote|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?<ref name=vanDijk1993/>{{rp|pages=48–49 / PDF pp. 40–41}} }} 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 (pharaoh)|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."<ref>Nozomu Kawai, [https://www.academia.edu/395389/Ay_versus_Horemheb_The_Political_Situation_in_the_Late_Eighteenth_Dynasty_Revisited Ay vs Horemheb: The Political Situation in the Late 18th Dynasty Revisited], JEH 3 (2010), p.270</ref> [[File:Saq Horemheb 01.jpg|thumb|The forecourt of Horemheb's Memphite [[Tomb of Horemheb (Memphis)|tomb]] at Saqqara.]] 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 (Egyptian)|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."<ref>Nozomu Kawai, [https://www.academia.edu/395389/Ay_versus_Horemheb_The_Political_Situation_in_the_Late_Eighteenth_Dynasty_Revisited Ay vs Horemheb: The Political Situation in the Late 18th Dynasty Revisited], JEH 3 (2010), p.271</ref> 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.<ref>Nozomu Kawai, [https://www.academia.edu/395389/Ay_versus_Horemheb_The_Political_Situation_in_the_Late_Eighteenth_Dynasty_Revisited Ay vs Horemheb: The Political Situation in the Late 18th Dynasty Revisited], JEH 3 (2010), pp.270-71</ref> But after Ay became the pharaoh, his relationship with Horemheb changed. The aged Vizier [[Ay (pharaoh)|Ay]] initially succeeded Tutankhamun, possibly because he made an arrangement with Horemheb. However, during his brief four-year reign, Ay proceeded to nominate [[Nakhtmin]] as his successor—whom Ay named as "King's Son" ([[wikt:zꜣ-nswt|zꜣ-nswt]])<ref>Wolfgang Helck, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie: Texte der Hefte 20-21 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1984), pp. 1908–1910</ref>—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.<ref name=vanDijk1993/>{{rp|pages=50–51, 56–60 / PDF pp. 42–43, 48–52}} ===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.<ref>Nozomu Kawai, [https://www.academia.edu/395389/Ay_versus_Horemheb_The_Political_Situation_in_the_Late_Eighteenth_Dynasty_Revisited Ay vs Horemheb: The Political Situation in the Late 18th Dynasty Revisited], JEH 3 (2010), pp.287</ref> 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 [[WV23|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.<ref>Ay's tomb WV 23 in the western annex of the Valley of the Kings; see {{cite book |author1=Porter |author2=Moss |name-list-style=amp |title=Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyph Texts, Reliefs and Parts |volume=1 |at=Part 2 pp. 550–551 |place=Oxford, UK |publisher=Clarendon Press |year=1960}}</ref> Horemheb also usurped and enlarged Ay's mortuary temple at [[Medinet Habu (temple)|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. 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. [[File:StatueOfHoremhebAndTheGodHorus KunsthistorischesMuseum Nov13-10.jpg|left|thumb|A statue of Horemheb with [[Horus]] at the [[Kunsthistorisches Museum]] of [[Vienna]], [[Austria]].]] [[File:Statue of king Horemheb with the god Amun.png|thumb|A statue of Horemheb with [[Amun]] at the [[Museo Egizio]] of [[Turin]], [[Italy]].]] 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 and Lower Egypt|Upper Egypt]] and [[Upper and Lower Egypt|Lower Egypt]]" between "the [[Vizier (Ancient Egypt)|Vizier]]s of [[Thebes, Egypt|Thebes]] and [[Memphis, Egypt|Memphis]] respectively."<ref name=Grimal1992/>{{rp|page=243}} 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]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/edict_of_horemheb.htm |title=The Great Edict of Horemheb |publisher=reshafim.org.il |access-date=2008-02-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180817035720/http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/edict_of_horemheb.htm |archive-date=2018-08-17 |df=dmy-all |url-status=dead}}</ref> 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-Medina]] 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.<ref>{{cite book |first=Peter |last=Clayton |title=Chronicle of the Pharaohs |url=https://archive.org/details/chronicleofphara00clay |url-access=limited |publisher=Thames & Hudson Ltd |year=1994 |page=[https://archive.org/details/chronicleofphara00clay/page/137 137]|isbn=9780500050743 }}</ref> Horemheb was a prolific builder who erected numerous temples and buildings throughout Egypt during his reign. He constructed the Second, Ninth, and Tenth [[Pylon (architecture)|Pylons]] of the [[Great Hypostyle Hall, Karnak|Great Hypostyle Hall]], in the [[Karnak|Temple at Karnak]], using recycled [[talatat]] blocks from [[Akhenaten]]'s own monuments here, as building material for the first two Pylons.<ref name=Grimal1992/>{{rp|page=243, 303}} 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).<ref name=":0" /> Because of his unexpected rise to the throne, Horemheb had two tombs constructed for himself: the [[Tomb of Horemheb (Memphis)|first]] – when he was a mere nobleman – at [[Saqqara]] near [[Memphis, Egypt|Memphis]], and the other in the [[Valley of the Kings]], in [[Thebes, Egypt|Thebes]], in tomb [[KV57|KV 57]] as king. His chief wife was Queen [[Mutnedjmet]], 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. It has been suggested that Horemheb and Mutnedjmet at least had a daughter who was simply not mentioned on any monuments.<ref name=dh156>Aidan Dodson & Dyan Hilton, ''The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt''. Thames & Hudson, 2004, {{ISBN|0-500-05128-3}}, pg 156</ref> Horemheb is not known to have any children by his first wife, [[Amenia, Wife of Horemheb|Amenia]], who died before Horemheb assumed power.<ref>{{cite book |first=Joyce |last=Tyldesley |title=Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt |url=https://archive.org/details/chroniclequeense00tyld |url-access=limited |publisher=Thames & Hudson |year=2006 |page=[https://archive.org/details/chroniclequeense00tyld/page/n139 140]|isbn=9780500051450 }}</ref> ===Disputed reign length=== [[File:La tombe de Horemheb (KV.57) (Vallée des Rois Thèbes ouest) -6.jpg|thumb|The sarcophagus of Horemheb and wall reliefs in his [[KV57]] tomb.]] 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.<ref name=vanDijk2008>{{cite journal |first=Jacobus |last=van Dijk |title= New evidence on the length of the reign of Horemheb |url=https://www.jacobusvandijk.nl/docs/JARCE_44.pdf |journal=Journal of the American Research Centre in Egypt |volume=44 |year=2008 |page=195}}</ref> The full texts of the docket readings are identical and read as: :{{blockquote|Year 13. Wine of the estate of Horemheb-meren-Amun, L.P.H., in the domain of Amun. Western River. Chief vintner ''Ty''.<ref name=vanDijk2008/>}} 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.<ref name=vanDijk2008/> A general example is this text on a year 14 wine docket: :{{blockquote|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''.<ref name=vanDijk2008/>}} Other year 14 dockets mention Memphis (?), the Western River while their vintners are named as Nakhtamun, [Mer-]seger-men, Ramose, and others.<ref name=vanDijk2008/>{{rp|page=196}} 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."<ref name=vanDijk2008/>{{rp|page=196}} 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."{{refn|van Dijk (2008)<ref name=vanDijk2008/>{{rp|page=197–198}} cites Nagel (1938), for year 2;<ref>{{cite book |first=G. |last=Nagel |title=La ceramique du Nouvel Empire a Deir Medineh |place=Cairo |year=1938 |volume=15 |page=6}}</ref> Koenig (1979–1980)<ref>{{cite book |first=Y. |last=Koenig |title=Catalogues des etiquettes de jarres hieratiques de Deir el Medineh |place=Cairo |year=1979–1980}}</ref> for year 3 (no. 6299), year 4 (no. 6295), year 6 (no. 6403), year 13 (no. 6294), and year 14 (no. 6345); Martin (1988)<ref>{{cite book |first=G.T. |last=Martin |contribution=Three Objects of New Kingdom Date from the Memphite Area and Sidmant: 3. An inscribed amphora from Sidmant |editor1-first=J. |editor1-last=Baines |display-editors=etal |title=Pyramid Studies and Other Essays presented to I.E.S. Edwards |place=London |year=1988}}</ref>{{rp|at=pl. 21, pp. 118–120}} }} 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."<ref name=vanDijk2008/>{{rp|page=198}} Therefore, some scholars now accept a reign of 14 years and 1 month. In 1995, prior to the 2006 and 2007 discovery of wine dockets from Horemheb's tomb, Van Dijk in a 1995 [[Göttinger Miszellen|GM]] article already argued, based on the career of [[Maya (treasurer)|Maya]]'s chief sculptor, Userhat Hatiay, that Horemheb far shorter reign of between 15 and 17 years.<ref>Jacobus Van Dijk, "[https://www.jacobusvandijk.nl/docs/GM_148.pdf Maya's Chief Sculptor Userhat-Hatiay. With a Note on the Length of the Reign of Horemheb PDF]", GM 148 (1995), pp. 29–34</ref> [[File:Colossal Statue of King Tutankhamun (10466439746).jpg|thumb|Colossal [[Quartzite]] statue usurped to represent Horemheb excavated from the ruins of the Ay and Horemheb temple in the 1930s, now on display in the [[Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures]]. Traces of previous cartouches on the statue confirm that the statue was originally of [[Tutankhamun]].]] The argument for a 27-year reign derived from two texts. The first is an anonymous [[hieratic]] [[Graffito (archaeology)|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 the event]. It was disputed whether this was a contemporary text or a reference to a festival commemorating Horemheb's accession written in the reign of a later king.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Rolf |last=Krauss |title=Nur ein kurioser Irrtum oder ein Beleg für die Jahr 26 und 27 von Haremhab? |journal=Discussions in Egyptology |volume=30 |year=1994 |pages=73–85}}</ref> The second text is the Inscription of Mes, from the reign of [[Ramesses II]], which records that a court case decision was rendered in favour of a rival branch of Mes' family in year 59 of Horemheb.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/mes.htm |title=Inscription of Mes |publisher=reshafim.org.il |access-date=2009-04-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161121144717/http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/mes.htm |archive-date=2016-11-21 |df=dmy-all |url-status=dead}}</ref> It was argued that the year 59 Horemheb date included the reigns of all the rulers between Amenhotep III and Horemheb. Subtracting the nearly 17-year reign of Akhenaten, the 2-year reign of [[Neferneferuaten]], the 9-year reign of Tutankhamun and the reign of Ay suggested a reign of 26–27 years for Horemheb. However, the length of Ay's reign is not actually known and Wolfgang Helck argues that there was no standard Egyptian practice of including the years of all the rulers between Amenhotep III and Horemheb.<ref name=Helck1984>{{cite book |first=Wolfgang |last=Helck |title=Urkunden der 18 Dynastie: Texte der Hefte 20–21 |place=Berlin |publisher=Akademie-Verlag |year=1984 |pages=1908–1910}}</ref>{{rp|at='''IV''':2162}}<ref name=vanDijk2008/>{{rp|page=198–199}} The most recent interpretation of the archeological evidence today favours 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 harvest of his final year was processed, and that later Rammasside pharaohs included the reigns of all the rulers between Amenhotep III and Horemheb to give him a total of at least 47 years. As David Aston notes in a 2012 Ägypten und Levante paper, this theory means that R. "Hari's [1964] emendation of the [partly damaged] Horemheb text London UC 14291 to Year [1]5 is possible but to year [2]5 is unlikely."<ref>David Aston, [https://www.academia.edu/39997434/Radiocarbon_Wine_Jars_And_New_Kingdom_Chronology Radiocarbon, Wine Jars and New Kingdom Chronology PDF], Ägypten und Levante/Egypt and the Levant 22, 2012, p.296</ref> === Cartouches and symbols === Horemheb turned to several gods because of his various names: his throne name means 'Sacred are the manifestations of Ra' and his name birth name is accompanied by the epithet 'beloved of Amun'.<ref name=":0" /> 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.<ref name=":0" /> 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 uraeus 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.<ref name=":0" /> 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.<ref name=":0" />
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