Horemheb: General Who Became Pharaoh After Amarna

Horemheb was a career soldier who rose to become commander of Egypt’s army under Tutankhamun and then, in about 1319 BC, king himself. The last ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty, he completed the restoration of the old gods after Akhenaten’s religious revolution and issued a famous edict against corruption. He left two tombs, a grand private one at Saqqara and a royal one in the Valley of the Kings, and chose the founder of the next dynasty as his heir.

Rise under Tutankhamun

Little is known of Horemheb’s early life. His later coronation inscription names Hutnesut, a town in Middle Egypt, as his home, and he was not born into the royal family. He may already have served at the court of Akhenaten, but this is not certain.

Under the young king Tutankhamun, Horemheb held the titles of great commander of the army and “deputy of the king”, making him one of the two most powerful men in Egypt alongside the elderly courtier Ay. Reliefs in his tomb at Saqqara show him presenting foreign captives and receiving rewards of gold collars from the king.

When Tutankhamun died, about 1323 BC, it was Ay, not Horemheb, who took the throne. After Ay’s short reign of about four years, Horemheb became king.

Coronation and reign

Horemheb’s coronation is described in an inscription on a statue of him with his queen, Mutnodjmet, now in the Egyptian Museum in Turin. It tells how the god Horus of Hutnesut guided him from youth and how Amun crowned him at Thebes during the Opet festival.

The length of his reign is disputed. Older reconstructions gave him about 27 years, from about 1319 to 1292 BC, partly because later Ramesside documents count his years from the end of Amenhotep III’s reign, treating the Amarna kings as if they had never ruled. Many Egyptologists now favour a reign of around 14 years, since the highest year clearly dated to him in contemporary sources is year 14.

Erasing Amarna and the Great Edict

Horemheb went further than his predecessors in wiping out the memory of the Amarna period. He dismantled the temples of the Aten at Thebes and reused their small stone blocks, known as talatat, as fill inside new gateways (pylons) at the Karnak Temple Complex. He also carved his own name over Tutankhamun’s and Ay’s on several monuments, including the Restoration Stela.

His best-known text is the Great Edict, inscribed on a stela beside the tenth pylon at Karnak. It lists abuses by soldiers and officials, such as seizing boats, slaves and hides from farmers or taking food under false pretences. The penalties were severe: offenders could have their noses cut off and be exiled to Tjaru, a fortress on the eastern border. The edict also reorganised the courts and the payment of officials.

Two tombs

Before he became king, Horemheb built a large tomb at Saqqara, the cemetery of Memphis. Objects from it reached European museums in the nineteenth century, but its location was lost until a joint expedition of the Egypt Exploration Society and the Leiden museum, led by Geoffrey Martin, rediscovered it in 1975. Its fine reliefs show military scenes and foreign prisoners, and his royal uraeus was later added to some of the figures.

As king, he built tomb KV57 in the Valley of the Kings, discovered in February 1908 by Edward Ayrton, working for the American sponsor Theodore Davis. It was the first royal tomb decorated with the Book of Gates, a guide to the night journey of the sun. Its decoration was left unfinished, showing different stages of the painters’ work, which makes it valuable for understanding how tombs were decorated.

Succession

Horemheb had no surviving son. He chose as his heir his vizier Paramessu, a military officer from the eastern Delta. On Horemheb’s death Paramessu became king as Ramesses I, founding the Nineteenth Dynasty, the family of Seti I and Ramesses II. Later Ramesside kings honoured Horemheb as a founding figure of their line.

Key people

• Horemheb – army commander who became the last king of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
• Tutankhamun – the boy king whom Horemheb served as deputy.
• Ay – senior courtier who reigned briefly between Tutankhamun and Horemheb.
• Mutnodjmet – Horemheb’s queen, named beside him on his coronation statue.
• Paramessu (Ramesses I) – vizier chosen as heir, founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty.

Timeline

• c. 1332 BC: Tutankhamun becomes king; Horemheb serves as army commander and royal deputy.
• c. 1323 BC: Tutankhamun dies and Ay takes the throne.
• c. 1319 BC: Horemheb is crowned king at Thebes.
• c. 1305 BC: Year 14, the highest securely attested date of his reign.
• c. 1292 BC: Latest conventional date for his death; Ramesses I succeeds.
• 1908, February: Edward Ayrton discovers tomb KV57.
• 1975: Geoffrey Martin’s team rediscovers the Saqqara tomb.

Why it matters

Horemheb bridged two eras. A general who rose without royal birth, he consolidated the return to Egypt’s traditional order after Akhenaten and passed power to the Ramesside family, whose kings would lead Egypt into its last great age of empire.