3. THE REIGN OF HOREMHEB.
There was now no question who should succeed. All eyes were turned to Horemheb, who had already almost as much power as the Pharaoh. The commander-in-chief at once ascended the throne, and was received by the populace with the utmost rejoicings. At this time there was living at Thebes the Princess Nezemmut, the sister of Akhnaton’s Queen Nefertiti, and hence the daughter of Dushratta, King of Mitanni. Owing to previous inter-marriages between the royal house of Egypt and that of Mitanni, both Nefertiti and Nezemmut were descendants of Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Nezemmut had come to Egypt early in the reign of Akhnaton, and later had perhaps married some Egyptian nobleman; but she was now a widow, and had recently been appointed to the post of “Divine Consort,”—that is to say, High Priestess—of Amon. As she was probably the younger sister of Nefertiti, she may have been about six years of age when Nefertiti was married to Akhnaton at the age of eight. Hence she would have been about twenty-three at his death, and would now be just over thirty.
To this princess, as representing both the rights of the old line of Pharaohs and those of the god Amon, without the now condemning close relationship to Akhnaton which characterised the other existing royal princesses, Horemheb was at once married. The religion of the Aton was now fast disappearing. In a tomb dating from the third year of Horemheb’s reign, the words “Ra whose body is Aton” occur; but this is the last mention of the Aton, and henceforth Amon-Ra is unquestionably supreme. A certain Pa-atonemheb, who had been one of Akhnaton’s favourites, was at about this time appointed High Priest of Ra-Horakhti at Heliopolis, and thus the last traces of the religion of the Aton were merged into the Heliopolitan theology, from which that religion at the beginning had emanated.
The Temple at Luxor.
The neglected shrines of the old gods once more echoed with the chants of the priests throughout the whole land of Egypt. Inscriptions tell us that Horemheb “restored the temples from the pools of the Delta marshes to Nubia. He fashioned a hundred images ... with all splendid and 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 necessary equipment.” By these gifts to the neglected gods Horemheb was striving to bring Egypt back to its natural condition; and with a strong hand he was guiding the country from chaos to order, from fantastic Utopia to the solid old Egypt of the past. He was, in fact, the preacher of sanity, the very apostle of the Normal.
He led his armies into the Sudan, and returned with a procession of captive chieftains roped before him. He had none of Akhnaton’s qualms regarding human suffering, and these unfortunate prisoners are seen to have their arms bound in the most cruel manner. Finding the country to be lawless he drafted a number of stern laws, and with sound justice administered his kingdom. Knowing that Syria could not long remain quiet, he organised the Egyptian troops, and so prepared them that, but a few years after his death, the soldiers of the reigning Pharaoh were swarming once more over the lands which Akhnaton had lost.