Horemheb - Reign Length: 26/27 Years or 14 Years?

Reign Length: 26/27 Years or 14 Years?

This pharaoh's reign length is a matter of debate among scholars. Horemheb's highest clearly known dates are a pair of Year 13 and Year 14 wine labels from this king's wine estates which were found in his royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings. It is traditionally believed that Horemheb's highest year-date is likely attested in an anonymous hieratic graffito written on the shoulder of a now fragmented statue from his mortuary temple in Karnak which mentions the appearance of the king himself, or a royal cult statue representing the king, for a religious feast. The ink graffito reads Year 27, first Month of Shemu day 9, the day on which Horemheb, who loves Amun and hates his enemies entered the temple for this event. (JNES 25, p. 123) Donald Redford, in a BASOR 211(1973) No.37 footnote observes that the use of Horemheb's name and the addition of a long "Meryamun" (Beloved of Amun) epithet in the graffito suggests a living, eulogised king rather than a long deceased one.

The Egyptologist Rolf Krauss, in a DE 30(1994) paper, has argued that this date may well reflect Horemheb's accession where a feast or public holiday was traditionally proclaimed to honour the accession date of a deceased or a current king. Krauss supports his hypothesis with evidence from Ostraca IFAO 1254 which was initially published by Jac Janssen in a BIFAO 84(1984) paper under the title "A Curious Error." The ostraca records the number of days on which an unknown Deir el-Medinah workman was absent from work and covers the period from Year 26 III Peret day 11 to Year 27 II Akhet day 12 before breaking off. The significant fact here is that a Year change occurred in the ostraca from Year 26 to Year 27 around the interval IV Peret day 28 and I Shemu day 13. The Year 27 date of Horemheb is located within this interval and would reflect Horemheb's accession date, Krauss suggests. Ay's accession date occurred somewhere in the month of III Peret. Since Manetho gives Ay reign of 4 years and 1 month, this ruler would have died sometime around the month of IV Peret or the first half of I Shemu at the very latest. This is precisely the time period noted in Ostraca IFAO 1254. The fact that the ostraca records the case of only one worker rather than an entire group of workmen means the necropolis scribe cannot be presumed – at first glance – to have committed a dating error in altering the unknown king's Year date in the interval between IV Peret 28 and I Shemu 13.

Janssen, in his original BIFAO paper, noted the curious fact that no known New Kingdom pharaohs who reigned for a quarter of a century including Ramesses II and Ramesses III had their accession date in this time frame and suggests the Year change was an error committed on behalf of the scribe. He then attributed the ostraca to Ramesses III, whose accession date was I Shemu day 26 and expressed his view that the scribe may have inadvertently implemented the Year change two weeks early instead. Janssen also observed that the palaeography of the ostraca suggests a date in the 20th Dynasty partly because it followed the later New Kingdom form of writing and due to its provenance in the Grand Putit region, which features numerous Dynasty 20 ostracas. However, this form of writing is also attested in monuments of Ramesses II and it would, therefore, not be unexpected to find it in a document from the very late 18th Dynasty since the transition from the Early New Kingdom to the Late New Kingdom Form of writing had already occurred prior to the end of Horemheb's reign, as Frank Yurco once noted. Indeed, Janssen's palaeographical reference for his paper–Prof. Georges Posener–himself suggested a date in the 19th Dynasty due to the form of the wsf (absent) and akhet (inundation) text. As Janssen himself writes, a few 19th Dynasty ostracas have been found in the Grand Putit area prior to the 20th Dynasty's intensive exploitation of this region. This does not exclude some late 18th Dynasty work here either. Secondly, both Janssen and Krauss stress in their papers that the relative scarcity of the hieratic text in Ostraca IFAO 1254 precludes a clear dating of the document to Ramesses III's reign and that palaeography, in general, does not give a precise date for a document's creation. Hence, a dating of the ostraca to Horemheb's reign on the basis of the Year change is eminently plausible. On other matters, a damaged wall fragment painting from the Petrie Collection reportedly mentions Horemheb's 15th or 25th Year.

Another important text, The Inscription of Mes, records that a court case decision was rendered in favour by a rival branch of Mes' family in Year 59 of Horemheb. Since the Mes inscription was composed during the reign of Ramesses II when the Amarna-era Pharaohs were struck from the official king-lists, the Year 59 Horemheb date certainly includes the nearly 17 year long reign of Akhenaten, the 2 year independent reign of Neferneferuaten, the 9 year reign of Tutankhamun and the 4 year reign of Ay. Once all these rulers reigns are deducted from the Year 59 date, Horemheb would still have easily enjoyed a reign of 26–27 years.

At a well known 1987 Conference from Gothenburg Sweden, Kenneth Kitchen astutely noted that any attempt to explain away the Year 59 Horemheb date as a "scribal error" fails to consider the long and volumnious listed series of court trials and legal setbacks which Mes' family endured in order to win back control over certain valuable lands which had been stolen from his family's line. Indeed, Mes likely ordered the protracted legal dispute, which is presented as a series of court depositions and testimonies of various plaintiffs and witnesses, to be inscribed on his tomb walls in order to create a permanent ('carved in stone') record of his family's ultimately victorious struggle to win back these lands. Mes, hence, could hardly be expected to forget the beginning of his family's legal tribulations in Year 59 of Horemheb. Kitchen also observes in his paper that Horemheb's extensive building projects at Karnak supported the theory of a long reign for this Pharaoh and stressed that "a good number of the undated 'late 18th Dynasty' private monuments that are in both Egypt and the world's Museums must, in fact, belong to his reign." Horemheb, hence, probably was assumed to have died after a minimum reign of 27 or, at most, 28 years.