Horemheb and the Amarna Royals

With the current excitement stemming from two different trials of DNA studies carried out
on the mummies found in Egypt, most notably The Elder Lady, the Young Man, the Younger
Woman, and Pharaoh Tutankhamun, showing familial markings, comes a new era of marvelous
archaeological research and publishing.
Aidan Dodson's book AMARNA SUNSET and Charlotte Booth's HOREMHEB, The Forgotten Pharaoh, are no doubt two of the newest in a wave of provocative and fascinating archaeological explorations; both authors have given us their ideas of what may have happened during the reign of Amenhotep III, his son, Akhenaten, his grandson, Tutankhamun, and what followed in the wake of the demise of the Atenist cult.
When I was a graduate student at U.C.L.A., my professor Alexander Badawy disliked Horemheb practically as if he had known him; indeed, Badawy was quite elderly and I often used to smile at the idea of the two ever having met. But this is an ancient prejudice among many students of Egyptology; who could possibly like an army General who might have brought about the death of the boy-king, Tutankhamun, as well as usurped his throne? Of course, if Horemheb did have anything to do with the death of Tutankhamun, why then did he allow Aye to be Pharaoh for some three to four plus years afterwards? Was this a staging period for the move back to Thebes and Memphis?
We have questions. But since the DNA reports of Dr. Zahi Hawass were announced, as well as the information about the illnesses which Tutankhamun suffered in his lifetime, a serious form of malaria, a broken femur, a seriously misformed foot---if not both feet---and a problem which his grandfather had as well, the scene is being set for what happened during this complex time period.
I welcome the challenges to old ideas about the personality of each player as well as the marvelous bibliographies published for our perusal.
The first time I saw the coffin of the lady in KV55, it was a photograph published by Christianne
Desroches Noblecourt. Her take on whose sarcophagus it was as well as how it got where it was and how all of this fit into the time of Tutankhamun seems very far away now. But I did not forget it. I wondered about that face, first a woman's, covered in heavy gold foil with inlaid
eyes, then a man's, probably a king's, with an attached beard and a uraeus, arms folded, holding
the crook and the flail (?).
But now we are told that the body found there was none other than Akhenaten's and what a
facinating story is emerging from all of this, from the first archaeologists to find the tomb up to today! And then, there are the thoughts each of us have as we attempt to reconstruct what might have happened as Amarna fell and the Restoration of the Old Gods took place.
These are wonderful things, to quote Carter, and I do believe more shall be revealed.
Stay tuned!