Firmly established on the throne of the Upper and Lower Nile Horemheb’s objective was to rid his country once and for all of the memory of the Aten cult and firmly re-establish the old ways. The act would be well received by his subjects and would doubly reinforce his position as Pharaoh.
He had the great avenue of sphinxes that flanked the processional way to the Temple of Amun in Karnak, which at the time of his coronation alternated with the heads of the heretic and his principal wife, resculpted to anonimity with the heads of rams. He ordered the razing of Akhetaten and the removal of all references to Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, Ay and their families from the great temples and obelisks of Thebes and from the king list. He began an ambitious and complex building programme. He ordered the construction of new pylons at Karnak, liberally sculptured in reliefs attesting to his grandeur, and he had the bodies of the pylons ballasted with dismantled stonework from the temples at Akhetaten, the beauty of their sculpture and the vivaciously painted friezes becoming sealed for ever as disembodied fragments within the cores of these massive, processional gateways.
His was to become a long and glorious reign. Although he lived barely long enough to celebrate his first Sed Festival, wealth and stability nevertheless returned to the great land that straddled the beneficent Nile. The people would rejoice in the new-found harmony of their old ways. There would at last be true maat. Horemheb would be worshipped by the faithful. The general was a very happy man.
An excerpt from Tutankhamun Uncovered, by Michael J. Marfleet.
Copyright 2009-2010 Michael J. Marfleet. All rights reserved.
Published by Apex Publishing Ltd.
