Inventory number

General description

Accession day of King Horemheb

The incomplete state of the verso text slightly hampers a definite reconstruction of the event recorded in lines 4 and 5 (verso=back), but parallel records in other journal texts may help to offer a solution. Notably during the 20th Dynasty, the anniversaries of both the accession to the throne and the date of death of several deified or venerated monarchs were observed in the community of Deir el-Medina. Among these are first the founder patrons of the village, Amenhotep I and his mother Ahmose-Nefertari, and further Sethi I, Ramesses II and Ramesses III. In the journal texts these events are usually noted in similar terms: Xa – “accession of king NN”, or xnw n – “sailing of king NN”.

One event recorded in a journal text but not yet noticed in this respect is the so-called "Journal of Year 3" (P. Turin Cat. 1898 + Cat. 1937 + Cat. 2094/244) rt. 5,10: III Smw 22 DA Hr-m-Hb.  DA “crossing” may well be an earlier version for the later used term Xnw “sailing”, to indicate the date of death of a monarch. If so, we would have here a dated note observing the day of death of king Horemheb on III Smw 22. This finding will allow us a possible reconstruction of the dated note in lines 4 and 5 verso of the journal fragment under discussion as: “Regnal Year 15, I Ax.t 18. Observing the accession day of King Horemheb”.