Given his age, the king probably had very powerful advisers, presumably including General Horemheb, the Vizier Ay, and Maya, the " Overseer of the Treasury ".

After Ay's reign which lasted for a little over four years, however, Horemheb managed to seize power presumably from his position as Commander of the Army to assume what he must have perceived to be his just reward for having ably served Egypt under Tutankhamun and Ay.

Since Horemheb was childless, he ultimately chose Ramesses to be his heir in the final years of his reign presumably because Ramesses I was both an able administrator and had a son ( Seti I ) and a grandson ( the future Ramesses II ) to succeed him and thus avoid any succession difficulties.

Since Horemheb remained childless, he appointed his Vizier, Paramesse as his chosen successor before his death both to reward Paramesse's loyalty and because the latter had both a son and grandson to secure Egypt's royal succession.

His successor was Horemheb, who had been a diplomat in the administration of Tutankhamun and may have been intended as his successor by the childless Tutankhamun.

Horemheb is believed to have originated from Herakleopolis Magna or ancient Hnes ( modern Ihnasya el-Medina ) on the west bank of the Nile near the entrance to the Fayum since his coronation text formally credits the God Horus of Hnes for establishing him on the throne.

When Tutankhamun died while still a teenager, Horemheb had already been officially designated as the rpat or iry-pat ( basically the " Hereditary or Crown Prince ") and idnw (" Deputy of the King " in the entire land ) by the child pharaoh ; these titles are found inscribed in Horemheb's then private Memphite tomb at Saqqara which dates to the reign of Tutankhamun since the child king's ...

As for the Year 27 hieratic graffito at Horemheb's Funerary temple at Medinet Habu and the Year 59 date from the inscription of Mes, Van Dijk argues that the first date likely inaugurated a statue of Horemheb during Year 27 of Ramesses II or III in Horemheb's temple while the latter date of Mes " can hardly be taken seriously, and indeed is not taken at face value by even the staunchest supporters of a long reign " for Horemheb since there was no standard Egptian practise of including the years of all the rulers between Amenhotep III and Horemheb as Wolfgang Helck makes clear.

Horemheb is believed to have unsuccessfully attempted to father an heir to the throne since the mummy of his second wife was found with a fetus in it.

Hence, Ay's precise reign length is unknown and he could have ruled for as long as 7 to 9 years since most of his monuments and his funerary temple at Medinet Habu were either destroyed or usurped by his successor, Horemheb.

However, Ay's plan for his succession went awry since Horemheb became the last king of Egypt's 18th Dynasty instead of Nakhtmin.

His success encouraged the widow ( who is called Dakhamunzu in the annals ) of the Egyptian king Nibhururiya ( usually identified with Tutankhamun ) to write to him, asking him to send one of his sons to be her husband and rule Egypt, since she had no heir and was on the verge of being forced to marry " a servant ", usually thought to be the Egyptian general Horemheb or her late husband's vizier Ay.

Horemheb records that the king appointed him " lord of the land " as hereditary prince to maintain law.

Horemheb " appointed judges and regional tribunes ... reintroduced local religious authorities " and divided legal power " between Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt " between " the Viziers of Thebes and Memphis respectively.

Ramesses I found favor with Horemheb, the last pharaoh of the tumultuous Eighteenth dynasty, who appointed the former as his Vizier.

( In actual history, Ramses was known as Paramesse prior to succeeding Horemheb, the historical pharaoh of this period.

" This means that Horemheb was the openly recognised heir to Tutankhamun's throne and not Ay, Tutankhamun's ultimate successor.

' Records and monuments that can be clearly attributed to Ay are rare, not only due to his short length of reign, but also because his successor, Horemheb, instigated a campaign of damnatio memoriae against him and other pharaohs associated with the unpopular Amarna Period.

This could also be a daughter of Ay's by his wife Tey, and it is known that his successor Horemheb married a woman with the name Mutnodjimet .< ref name =" Sunset 98 "> Dodson, Aidan.

The Commander of the Army, Horemheb, had actually been designated as the " idnw " or " Deputy of the Lord of the Two Lands " under Tutankhamun and was presumed to be the boy king's heir apparent and successor.

It has been proposed that Mutbenret was their daughter and later married Horemheb, Ay's successor on the throne.

In the former work, Velikovsky separated the 18th and 19th dynasties, specifically arguing that over a century separated Ay and Horemheb, conventionally regarded as his successor.

This is in stark contrast to the situation with Horemheb, Ramesses I and Ramesses II who all lived to an advanced age.

* Horemheb is identified with the Pharaoh who destroyed Gezer and later gave it to Solomon, together with one of his daughters as a wife.

Supporting historical characters include the old Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his conniving favorite wife Tiy, the wife of Akhenaten Nefertiti, the listless young Tutankhamun ( King Tut ) who succeeded as Pharaoh after Akhenaten's downfall, and the two common-born successors who were, according to this author, integral parts of the rise and fall of the Amarna heresy of Akhenaten, the priest and later Pharaoh Ay, and the warrior-general and then finally Pharaoh Horemheb.

According to the French ( Sorbonne ) Egyptologist Nicolas Grimal, Horemheb does not appear to be the same person as Paatenemheb ( Aten Is Present In Jubilation ) who was the Commander-in-chief of Akhenaten's army.

Having pushed Horemheb's claims aside, Ay proceeded to nominate the aforementioned military officer named Nakhtmin who was possibly Ay's son or adopted son, to succeed him rather than Horemheb.

Horemheb was a prolific builder who erected numerous temples and buildings throughout Egypt during his lifetime.

He is not known to have any children by his first wife Amenia who died before Horemheb assumed power.

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.

It appears that Horemheb was outmaneuvered to the throne by Ay who married Ankhesenamun, the widow of Tutankhamun, in order to legitimise his claim to the throne.

While Ramesses I was the founder of the 19th Dynasty, in reality his brief reign marked the transition between the reign of Horemheb who had stabilised Egypt in the late 18th dynasty and the rule of the powerful Pharaohs of this dynasty, in particular his son Seti I and grandson Ramesses II, who would bring Egypt up to new heights of imperial power.

Horemheb himself had been a nobleman from outside the immediate royal family, who rose through the ranks of the Egyptian army to serve as the royal advisor to Tutankhamun and Ay and, ultimately, Pharaoh.

The " great king " who crowned Horemheb was the Assyrian king.

These images were later recarved by Horemheb who also usurped Tutankhamun's restoration inscriptions.

Again, it was Horemheb who built this last pylon, using the Talatat from the dismantled Temple of Amenhotep IV as core building material.

A key graffito located at the entrance to the Speos of Horemheb at Gebel el-Silsila depicts Bay standing in a pose of adoration directly behind Siptah, who is making an offering to Amun ; a following inscription in the graffito reads:

The Year 27 date of Horemheb is located within this interval and would reflect Horemheb's accession date, Krauss suggests.

Once all these rulers reigns are deducted from the Year 59 date, Horemheb would still have easily enjoyed a reign of 26 – 27 years.

Even if we assume that Horemheb did not begin the work on his royal tomb until his Year 7 or 8 ,... it remains a mystery how the work could not have been completed had he lived on for another 20 or more years.

* 1319 BC ( or 1306 BC )— Horemheb assumes the throne of Ancient Egypt.

The aged Vizier Ay sidelined Horemheb's claim to the throne and instead succeeded Tutankhamun likely because Horemheb was in Asia with the army ( no objects belonging to Horemheb was found in Tutankhamun's tomb whereas items donated by other high-ranking officials such as Maya and Nakhtmin were found in tomb KV62 by Egyptologists in the 20th century ) and because Tutankhamun's queen, Ankhesenamun, refused to marry Horemheb, a commoner, and make him the next king of Egypt.

Horemheb quickly removed Naktmin's rival claim to the throne and arranged to have Ay's WV23 tomb desecrated by smashing the latter's sarcophagus into several pieces, systematically chiselling out Ay's name and figure out of the tomb walls and probably destroying Ay's mummy.

Because of his unexpected rise to the throne, Horemheb had two tombs constructed for himself: the first – when he was a mere nobleman – at Saqqara near Memphis, and the other – in the Valley of the Kings, in Thebes, in tomb KV57, as king.

Horemheb may have taken the throne away from Ay in a coup.

File: StatueOfHoremhebAndTheGodHorus-DetailOfHoremheb02 KunsthistorischesMuseum Nov13-10. jpg | After the death of Ay, Horemheb assumed the throne.