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 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 his 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 battlecry 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.” In later years the names of Akhnaton, Smenkhkara, Tutankhamon, and Ay were all removed from the records as being tainted with the Aton-worship; and Horemheb was described as the immediate successor of Amenophis III., some thirty years thus being added to the actual length of his reign.