Book: The Treasury of Ancient Egypt

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Nevertheless the revolution offered many attractions. The frivolous
members of the court, always ready for change and excitement, welcomed
with enthusiasm the doctrine of the moral and simple life which the King
and his advisers preached, just as in the decadent days before the
French Revolution the court, bored with licentiousness, gaily welcomed
the morality-painting of the young Greuze. And to the more
serious-minded, such as Horemheb seems to have been, the movement must
have appealed in its imperial aspect. The new god Aton was largely
worshipped in Syria, and it seems evident that Akhnaton had hoped to
bind together the heterogeneous nations of the empire by a bond of
common worship. The Asiatics were not disposed to worship Amon, but Aton
appealed to them as much as any god, and Horemheb must have seen great
possibilities in a common religion.

It is thought that Horemheb may be identified amongst the nobles who
followed Akhnaton to El Amarna, and though this is not certain, there is
little doubt that he was in high favour with the King at the time. To
one whose tendency is neither towards frivolity nor towards fanaticism,
there can be nothing more broadening than the influence of religious
changes. More than one point of view is appreciated: a man learns that
there are other ruts than that in which he runs, and so he seeks the
smooth midway. Thus Horemheb, while acting loyally towards his King, and
while appreciating the value of the new movement, did not exclude from
his thoughts those teachings which he deemed good in the old order of
things. He seems to have seen life broadly; and when the new religion of
Akhnaton became narrowed and fanatical, as it did towards the close of
the tragic chapter of that king's short life, Horemheb was one of the
few men who kept an open mind.

Like many other nobles of the period, he had constructed for himself a
tomb at Sakkara, in the shadow of the pyramids of the old kings of
Egypt; and fragments of this tomb, which of course was abandoned when he
became Pharaoh, are now to be seen in various museums. In one of the
scenes there sculptured Horemheb is shown in the presence of a king who
is almost certainly Akhnaton; and yet in a speech to him inscribed
above the reliefs, Horemheb makes reference to the god Amon whose very
name was anathema to the King. The royal figure is drawn according to
the canons of art prescribed by Akhnaton, and upon which, as a protest
against the conventional art of the old order, he laid the greatest
stress in his revolution; and thus, at all events, Horemheb was in
sympathy with this aspect of the movement. But the inscriptions which
refer to Amon, and yet are impregnated with the Aton style of
expression, show that Horemheb was not to be held down to any one mode
of thought. Akhnaton was, perhaps, already dead when these inscriptions
were added, and thus Horemheb may have had no further reason to hide his
views; or it may be that they constituted a protest against that
narrowness which marred the last years of a pious king.

Those who read the history of the period in the last chapter will
remember how Akhnaton came to persecute the worshippers of Amon, and how
he erased that god's name wherever it was written throughout the length
and breadth of Egypt. Evidently with this action Horemheb did not agree;
nor was this his only cause for complaint. As an officer, and now a
highly placed general of the army, he must have seen with feelings of
the utmost bitterness the neglected condition of the Syrian provinces.
Revolt after revolt occurred in these states; but Akhnaton, dreaming and
praying in the sunshine of El Amarna, would send no expedition to
punish the rebels. Good-fellowship with all men was the King's
watchword, and a policy more or less democratic did not permit him to
make war on his fellow-creatures. Horemheb could smell battle in the
distance, but could not taste of it. The battalions which he had trained
were kept useless in Egypt; and even when, during the last years of
Akhnaton's reign, or under his successor Smenkhkara, he was made
commander-in-chief of all the forces, there was no means of using his
power to check the loss of the cities of Asia. Horemheb must have
watched these cities fall one by one into the hands of those who
preached the doctrine of the sword, and there can be little wonder that
he turned in disgust from the doings at El Amarna.

During the times which followed, when Smenkhkara held the throne for a
year or so, and afterwards, when Tutankhamon became Pharaoh, Horemheb
seems to have been the leader of the reactionary movement. He did not
concern himself so much with the religious aspect of the questions:
there was as much to be said on behalf of Aton as there was on behalf of
Amon. But it was he who knocked at the doors of the heart of Egypt, and
urged the nation to awake to the danger in the East. An expedition
against the rebels was organised, and one reads that Horemheb was the
"companion of his Lord upon the battlefield on that day of the slaying
of the Asiatics." Akhnaton had been opposed to warfare, and had dreamed
that dream of universal peace which still is a far-off light to mankind.
Horemheb was a practical man in whom such a dream would have been but
weakness; and, though one knows nothing more of these early campaigns,
the fact that he attempted to chastise the enemies of the empire at this
juncture stands to his credit for all time.

Under Tutankhamon the court returned to Thebes, though not yet
exclusively to the worship of Amon; and the political phase of the
revolution came to an end. The country once more settled into the old
order of life, and Horemheb, having experienced the full dangers of
philosophic speculation, was glad enough to abandon thought for action.
He was now the most powerful man in the kingdom, and inscriptions call
him "the greatest of the great, the mightiest of the mighty, presider
over the Two Lands of Egypt, general of generals," and so on. The King
"appointed him to be Chief of the Land, to administer the laws of the
land as Hereditary Prince of all this land"; and "all that was done was
done by his command." From chaos Horemheb was producing order, and all
men turned to him in gratitude as he reorganised the various government
departments.

The offices which he held, such as Privy Councillor, King's Secretary,
Great Lord of the People, and so on, are very numerous; and in all of
these he dealt justly though sternly, so that "when he came the fear of
him was great in the sight of the people, prosperity and health were
craved for him, and he was greeted as 'Father of the Two Lands of
Egypt.'" He was indeed the saviour and father of his country, for he had
found her corrupt and disordered, and he was leading her back to
greatness and dignity.


[Illustration: PL. XXI. Head of a granite statue of the god Khonsu,
probably dating from about the period of
Horemheb.
--CAIRO MUSEUM.]

[_Photo by Beato._


At this time he was probably a man of about forty years of age. In
appearance he seems to have been noble and good to look upon. "When he
was born," says the inscription, "he was clothed with strength: the hue
of a god was upon him"; and in later life, "the form of a god was in his
colour," whatever that may mean. He was a man of considerable eloquence
and great learning. "He astonished the people by that which came out of
his mouth," we are told; and "when he was summoned before the King the
palace began to fear." One may picture the weak Pharaoh and his corrupt
court, as they watched with apprehension the movements of this stern
soldier, of whom it was said that his every thought was "in the
footsteps of the Ibis,"--the ibis being the god of wisdom.

On the death of Tutankhamon, the question of inviting Horemheb to fill
the vacant throne must have been seriously considered; but there was
another candidate, a certain Ay, who had been one of the most important
nobles in the group of Akhnaton's favourites at El Amarna, and who had
been the loudest in the praises of Aton. Religious feeling was at the
time running high, for the partizans of Amon and those of Aton seem to
have been waging war on one another; and Ay appears to have been
regarded as the man most likely to bridge the gulf between the two
parties. A favourite of Akhnaton, and once a devout worshipper of Aton,
he was not averse to the cults of other gods; and by conciliating both
factions he managed to obtain the throne for himself. His power,
however, did not last for long; and as the priests of Amon regained the
confidence of the nation at the expense of those of Aton, so the power
of Ay declined. His past connections with Akhnaton told against him, and
after a year or so he disappeared, leaving the throne vacant once more.

There was now no question as to who should succeed. A princess named
Mutnezem, the sister of Akhnaton's queen, and probably an old friend of
Horemheb, was the sole heiress to the throne, the last surviving member
of the greatest Egyptian dynasty. All men turned to Horemheb in the hope
that he would marry this lady, and thus reign as Pharaoh over them,
perhaps leaving a son by her to succeed him when he was gathered to his
fathers. He was now some forty-five years of age, full of energy and
vigour, and passionately anxious to have a free hand in the carrying out
of his schemes for the reorganisation of the government. It was
therefore with joy that, in about the year 1350 B.C., he sailed up to
Thebes in order to claim the crown.

He arrived at Luxor at a time when the annual festival of Amon was being
celebrated, and all the city was _en fete_. The statue of the god had
been taken from its shrine at Karnak, and had been towed up the river to
Luxor in a gorgeous barge, attended by a fleet of gaily-decorated
vessels. With songs and dancing it had been conveyed into the Luxor
temple, where the priests had received it standing amidst piled-up
masses of flowers, fruit, and other offerings. It seems to have been at
this moment that Horemheb appeared, while the clouds of incense streamed
up to heaven, and the morning air was full of the sound of the harps and
the lutes. Surrounded by a crowd of his admirers, he was conveyed into
the presence of the divine figure, and was there and then hailed as
Pharaoh.

From the temple he was carried amidst cheering throngs to the palace
which stood near by; and there he was greeted by the Princess Mutnezem,
who fell on her knees before him and embraced him. That very day, it
would seem, he was married to her, and in the evening the royal heralds
published the style and titles by which he would be known in the future:
"Mighty Bull, Ready in Plans; Favourite of the Two Goddesses, Great in
Marvels; Golden Hawk, Satisfied with Truth; Creator of the Two Lands,"
and so forth. Then, crowned with the royal helmet, he was led once more
before the statue of Amon, while the priests pronounced the blessing of
the gods upon him. Passing down to the quay before the temple the figure
of the god was placed once more upon the state-barge, and was floated
down to Karnak; while Horemheb was led through the rejoicing crowds back
to the palace to begin his reign as Pharaoh.

In religious matters Horemheb at once adopted a strong attitude of
friendship towards the Amon party which represented the old order of
things. There is evidence to show that Aton was in no way persecuted;
yet one by one his shrines were abandoned, and the neglected temples of
Amon and the elder gods once more rang with the hymns of praise.
Inscriptions tell us that the King "restored the temples from the
marshes of the Delta to Nubia. He fashioned a hundred images with all
their bodies correct, and with all splendid costly stones. He
established for them daily offerings every day. All the vessels of their
temples were wrought of silver and gold. He equipped them with priests
and with ritual-priests, and with the choicest of the army. He
transferred to them lands and cattle, supplied with all equipment." By
these gifts to the neglected gods, Horemheb was striving to bring Egypt
back to its normal condition, and in no way was he prejudiced by any
particular devotion to Amon.

A certain Patonemheb, who had been one of Akhnaton's favourites in the
days of the revolution, was appointed High Priest of Ra--the older
Egyptian form of Aton who was at this time identified with that god--at
the temple of Heliopolis; and this can only be regarded as an act of
friendship to the Aton-worshippers. The echoing and deserted temples of
Aton in Thebes, and El Amarna, however, were now pulled down, and the
blocks were used for the enlarging of the temple of Amon,--a fact which
indicates that their original dedication to Aton had not caused them to
be accursed.

The process of restoration was so gradual that it could not have much
disturbed the country. Horemheb's hand was firm but soothing in these
matters, and the revolution seems to have been killed as much by
kindness as by force. It was probably not till quite the end of his
reign that he showed any tendency to revile the memory of Akhnaton; and
the high feeling which at length brought the revolutionary king the name
of "that criminal of El Amarna" did not rise till half a century later.
The difficulties experienced by Horemheb in steering his course between
Amon and Aton, in quietly restoring the old equilibrium without in any
way persecuting those who by religious convictions were
Aton-worshippers, must have been immense; and one cannot but feel that
the King must have been a diplomatist of the highest standing. His
unaffected simplicity won all hearts to him; his toleration and
broadness of mind brought all thoughtful men to his train; and his
strong will led them and guided them from chaos to order, from fantastic
Utopia to the solid old Egypt of the past. Horemheb was the preacher of
Sanity, the apostle of the Normal, and Order was his watchword.

The inscriptions tell us that it was his custom to give public
audiences to his subjects, and there was not a man amongst those persons
whom he interviewed whose name he did not know, nor one who did not
leave his presence rejoicing. Up and down the Nile he sailed a hundred
times, until he was able truly to say, "I have improved this entire
land; I have learned its whole interior; I have travelled it entirely in
its midst." We are told that "his Majesty took counsel with his heart
how he might expel evil and suppress lying. The plans of his Majesty
were an excellent refuge, repelling violence and delivering the
Egyptians from the oppressions which were around them. Behold, his
Majesty spent the whole time seeking the welfare of Egypt, and searching
out instances of oppression in the land."

It is interesting, by the way, to note that in his eighth year the King
restored the tomb of Thutmosis IV., which had been robbed during the
revolution; and the inscription which the inspectors left behind them
was found on the wall when Mr Theodore Davis discovered the tomb a few
years ago. The plundering of the royal tombs is a typical instance of
the lawlessness of the times. The corruption, too, which followed on the
disorder was appalling; and wherever the King went he was confronted by
deceit, embezzlement, bribery, extortion, and official tyranny. Every
Government officer was attempting to obtain money from his subordinates
by illegal means; and _bakshish_--that bogie of the Nile Valley--cast
its shadow upon all men.

Horemheb stood this as long as he could; but at last, regarding justice
as more necessary than tact, we are told that "his Majesty seized a
writing-palette and scroll, and put into writing all that his Majesty
the King had said to himself." It is not possible to record here more
than a few of the good laws which he then made, but the following
examples will serve to show how near to his heart were the interests of
his people.

It was the custom for the tax-collectors to place that portion of a
farmer's harvest, which they had taken, upon the farmer's own boat, in
order to convey it to the public granary. These boats often failed to be
returned to their owners when finished with, and were ultimately sold by
the officials for their own profit. Horemheb, therefore, made the
following law:--

"If the poor man has made for himself a boat with its
sail, and, in order to serve the State, has loaded it
with the Government dues, and has been robbed of the
boat, the poor man stands bereft of his property and
stripped of his many labours. This is wrong, and the
Pharaoh will suppress it by his excellent measures. If
there be a poor man who pays the taxes to the two
deputies, and he be robbed of his property and his boat,
my majesty commands: that every officer who collects the
taxes and takes the boat of any citizen, this law shall
be executed against him, and his nose shall be cut off,
and he shall be sent in exile to Tharu. Furthermore,
concerning the tax of timber, my majesty commands that
if any officer find a poor man without a boat, then he
shall bring him a craft belonging to another man in which
to carry the timber; and in return for this let the
former man do the loading of the timber for the latter."

The tax-collectors were wont to commandeer the services of all the
slaves in the town, and to detain them for six or seven days, "so that
it was an excessive detention indeed." Often, too, they used to
appropriate a portion of the tax for themselves. The new law, therefore,
was as follows:--

"If there be any place where the officials are
tax-collecting, and any one shall hear the report saying
that they are tax-collecting to take the produce for
themselves, and another shall come to report saying, 'My
man slave or my female slave has been taken away and
detained many days at work by the officials,' the
offender's nose shall be cut off, and he shall be sent to
Tharu."

One more law may here be quoted. The police used often to steal the
hides which the peasants had collected to hand over to the Government as
their tax. Horemheb, having satisfied himself that a tale of this kind
was not merely an excuse for not paying the tax, made this law:--

"As for any policeman concerning whom one shall hear it
said that he goes about stealing hides, beginning with
this day the law shall be executed against him, by
beating him a hundred blows, opening five wounds, and
taking from him by force the hides which he took."

To carry out these laws he appointed two chief judges of very high
standing, who are said to have been "perfect in speech, excellent in
good qualities, knowing how to judge the heart." Of these men the King
writes: "I have directed them to the way of life, I have led them to the
truth, I have taught them, saying, 'Do not receive the reward of
another. How, then, shall those like you judge others, while there is
one among you committing a crime against justice?'" Under these two
officials Horemheb appointed many judges, who went on circuit around the
country; and the King took the wise step of arranging, on the one hand,
that their pay should be so good that they would not be tempted to take
bribes, and, on the other hand, that the penalty for this crime should
be most severe.

So many were the King's reforms that one is inclined to forget that he
was primarily a soldier. He appears to have made some successful
expeditions against the Syrians, but the fighting was probably near his
own frontiers, for the empire lost by Akhnaton was not recovered for
many years, and Horemheb seems to have felt that Egypt needed to learn
to rule herself before she attempted to rule other nations. An
expedition against some tribes in the Sudan was successfully carried
through, and it is said that "his name was mighty in the land of Kush,
his battle-cry was in their dwelling-places." Except for a semi-military
expedition which was dispatched to the land of Punt, these are the only
recorded foreign activities of the King; but that he had spent much
time in the organisation and improvement of the army is shown by the
fact that three years after his death the Egyptian soldiers were
swarming over the Lebanon and hammering at the doors of the cities of
Jezreel.

Had he lived for another few years he might have been famous as a
conqueror as well as an administrator, though old age might retard and
tired bones refuse their office. As it is, however, his name is written
sufficiently large in the book of the world's great men; and when he
died, about B.C. 1315, after a reign of some thirty-five years, he had
done more for Egypt than had almost any other Pharaoh. He found the
country in the wildest disorder, and he left it the master of itself,
and ready to become once more the master of the empire which Akhnaton's
doctrine of Peace and Goodwill had lost. Under his direction the purged
worship of the old gods, which for him meant but the maintenance of some
time-proved customs, had gained the mastery over the chimerical worship
of Aton; without force or violence he had substituted the practical for
the visionary; and to Amon and Order his grateful subjects were able to
cry, "The sun of him who knew thee not has set, but he who knows thee
shines; the sanctuary of him who assailed thee is overwhelmed in
darkness, but the whole earth is now in light."

The tomb of this great Pharaoh was cut in the rocks on the west side of
the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, not far from the resting-place of
Amenhotep II. In the days of the later Ramesside kings the
tomb-plunderers entered the sepulchre, pulled the embalmed body of the
king to pieces in the search for hidden jewels, scattered the bones of
the three members of his family who were buried with him, and stole
almost everything of value which they found. There must have been other
robberies after this, and finally the Government inspectors of about
B.C. 1100 entered the tomb, and, seeing its condition, closed its mouth
with a compact mass of stones. The torrents of rain which sometimes fall
in winter in Egypt percolated through this filling, and left it
congealed and difficult to cut through; and on the top of this hard mass
tons of rubbish were tossed from other excavations, thus completely
hiding the entrance.

In this condition the tomb was found by Mr Davis in February 1908. Mr
Davis had been working on the side of the valley opposite to the tomb of
Rameses III., where the accumulations of _debris_ had entirely hidden
the face of the rocks, and, as this was a central and likely spot for a
"find," it was hoped that when the skin of rubbish had been cleared away
the entrance of at least one royal tomb would be exposed. Of all the
XVIIIth-Dynasty kings, the burial-places of only Thutmosis II.,
Tutankhamon, and Horemheb remained undiscovered, and the hopes of the
excavators concentrated on these three Pharaohs.

After a few weeks of digging, the mouth of a large shaft cut into the
limestone was cleared. This proved to lead into a small chamber
half-filled with rubbish, amongst which some fine jewellery, evidently
hidden here, was found. This is now well published by Mr Davis in
facsimile, and further mention of it here is unnecessary. Continuing the
work, it was not long before traces of another tomb became apparent, and
in a few days' time we were able to look down from the surrounding
mounds of rubbish upon the commencement of a rectangular cutting in the
rock. The size and style of the entrance left no doubt that the work was
to be dated to the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and the excavators were
confident that the tomb of either Tutankhamon or Horemheb lay before
them. Steps leading down to the entrance were presently uncovered, and
finally the doorway itself was freed from _debris_.

On one of the door-posts an inscription was now seen, written in black
ink by one of the Government inspectors of B.C. 1100. This stated, that
in the fourth year of an unknown king the tomb had been inspected, and
had been found to be that of Horemheb.


[Illustration: PL. XXII. The mouth of the tomb of Horemheb at the time
of its discovery. The author is seen emerging
from the tomb after the first entrance had
been effected. On the hillside the workmen
are grouped.]

[_Photo by Lady Glyn._


We had hoped now to pass into the tomb without further difficulty, but
in this we were disappointed, for the first corridor was quite choked
with the rubbish placed there by the inspectors. This corridor led down
at a steep angle through the limestone hillside, and, like all other
parts of the tomb, it was carefully worked. It was not until two days
later that enough clearing had been done to allow us to crawl in over
the rubbish, which was still piled up so nearly to the roof that there
was only just room to wriggle downwards over it with our backs pressing
against the stone above. At the lower end of the corridor there was a
flight of steps towards which the rubbish shelved, and, sliding down the
slope, we were here able to stand once more. It was obvious that the
tomb did not stop here, and work, therefore, had to be begun on the
rubbish which choked the stairway in order to expose the entrance to
further passages. A doorway soon became visible, and at last this was
sufficiently cleared to permit of our crawling into the next corridor,
though now we were even more closely squeezed between the roof and the
_debris_ than before.

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