e 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 the heart of Egypt, and
urged the nation to awake to the danger in the East. An expedition
against the rebels was organised, and one reads that Horemheb was the
"companion of his Lord upon the battlefield on that day of the slaying
of the Asiatics." Akhnaton had been opposed to warfare, and had dreamed
that dream of universal peace which still is a far-off light to mankind.
Horemheb was a practical man in whom such a dr