Successor Harkhebi Mother Tabaktenamun? Children Harkhebi Uncle Piye | Father Shabaka Parents Shabaka Grandparents Kashta, Pebatjma Pharaohs Taharqa, Tantamani | |
House Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt Cousins Taharqa, Shepenupet II, Tabekenamun, Takahatenamun, Qalhata | ||
Haremakhet, also Horemakhet or Harmakhis, was an ancient Egyptian prince and High Priest of Amun during the 25th Dynasty.
A son of pharaoh Shabaka and possibly of his queen Tabaktenamun, he was appointed by his father as the High Priest of Amun in Thebes and he officiated during the reigns of Taharqa and Tanutamani. Haremakhet's immediate predecessors are unknown and it is possible that the charge of High Priest of Amun was vacant since decades. In any case, this once powerful and influential title had long lost his appeal in favor of the God's Wife of Amun, a position which at the time of Haremakhet was held by Shepenupet II.
Haremakhet is mainly known from a statue discovered in the Great Temple cachette at Karnak, formerly exhibited at the Cairo Egyptian Museum (CG 42204 / JE 38580) and now at the Nubian Museum of Aswan. On the statue, he is referred as
Noticeably, in this inscription king Shebitqo – who is commonly assumed to have ruled between Shabaka and Taharqa – is completely absent. In recent times some scholars questioned about placing Shebitqo's reign before Shabaka's rather than after as conventionally assumed, and they believed that this statue is a strong argument in favor of the new placement.
After his death, Haremakhet was succeeded by his son Harkhebi, who is known to have been in charge as High Priest of Amun at the time of Nitocris I's adoption and later, thus during the reign of the founder of the 26th Dynasty, pharaoh Psamtik I.