Like many other nobles of the period, he had constructed for himself a tomb at Sakkara, in the shadow of the pyramids of the old kings of Egypt; and fragments of this tomb, which of course was abandoned when he became Pharaoh, are now to be seen in various museums.  In one of the scenes there sculptured Horemheb is shown in the presence of a king who is almost certainly Akhnaton; and yet in a speech to him inscribed above the reliefs, Horemheb makes reference to the god Amon whose very name was anathema to the King.  The royal figure is drawn according to the canons of art prescribed by Akhnaton, and upon which, as a protest against the conventional art of the old order, he laid the greatest stress in his revolution; and thus, at all events, Horemheb was in sympathy with this aspect of the movement.  But the inscriptions which refer to Amon, and yet are impregnated with the Aton style of expression, show that Horemheb was not to be held down to any one mode of thought.  Akhnaton was, perhaps, already dead when these inscriptions were added, and thus Horemheb may have had no further reason to hide his views; or it may be that they constituted a protest against that narrowness which marred the last years of a pious king.

Those who read the history of the period in the last chapter will remember how Akhnaton came to persecute the worshippers of Amon, and how he erased that god’s name wherever it was written throughout the length and breadth of Egypt.  Evidently with this action Horemheb did not agree; nor was this his only cause for complaint.  As an officer, and now a highly placed general of the army, he must have seen with feelings of the utmost bitterness the neglected condition of the Syrian provinces.  Revolt after revolt occurred in these states; but Akhnaton, dreaming and praying in the sunshine of El Amarna, would send no expedition to punish the rebels.  Good-fellowship with all men was the King’s watchword, and a policy more or less democratic did not permit him to make war on his fellow-creatures.  Horemheb could smell battle in the distance, but could not taste of it.  The battalions which he had trained were kept useless in Egypt; and even when, during the last years of Akhnaton’s reign, or under his successor Smenkhkara, he was made commander-in-chief of all the forces, there was no means of using his power to check the loss of the cities of Asia.  Horemheb must have watched these cities fall one by one into the hands of those who preached the doctrine of the sword, and there can be little wonder that he turned in disgust from the doings at El Amarna.

During the times which followed, when Smenkhkara held the throne for a year or so, and afterwards, when Tutankhamon became Pharaoh, Horemheb seems to have been the leader of the reactionary movement.  He did not concern himself so much with the religious aspect of the questions:  there was as much to be said on behalf of Aton as there was on behalf of Amon.  But it was he who knocked at the doors of