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Yuya |
| Yuya in hieroglyphs |
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Yuya (sometimes Iouiya) also known as Yaa, Ya, Yiya, Yayi, Yu, Yuyu, Yaya, Yiay, Yia, Yuy1 was a powerful Egyptian courtier of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt (circa 1390 BC). He was married to Tjuyu, an Egyptian noblewoman. Their daughter Tiye became the Great Royal Wife of Amenhotep III.2 They may also have been the parents of Ay,3 an Egyptian courtier active during the reign of pharaoh Akhenaten, and who eventually became pharaoh himself, as Kheperkheprure Ay. However, there is no conclusive evidence regarding the kinship of Yuya and Ay, although both men certainly came from Akhmim.4 Yuya and Tjuyu are also known to have a son named Anen, who carried the titles Chancellor of Lower Egypt, Second Prophet of Amun, sm-priest of Heliopolis and Divine Father.5
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Yuya came from the Upper Egyptian town of Akhmim, where he probably owned an estate and was a member of this town's local nobility. His origins remain unclear. As the study of his mummy showed, Yuya had been a man of taller than average stature, and the anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith considered that his appearance was not typically Egyptian. Taking into account his unusual name and features, some Egyptologists believe that Yuya was of foreign origin, although this is far from certain.6 The name Yuya can be spelled in five different ways as Gaston Maspero noted decades ago in Theodore Davis's 1907 book--The Tomb of Iouiya and Touiyou.7 These include "iAy", ywiA", yw [reed-leaf with walking feet]A, ywiw" and, in orthography--normally a sign of something foreign--"y[man with hand to mouth]iA".8 It was abnormal for a person to have so many different ways to write his name in Egyptian; this may suggest that Yuya's ancestors had a foreign, though not necessarily Mitannian, origin.
One solution is that Yuya had some Mitannian ancestry; this argument is based on the fact that the knowledge of horses and chariotry was introduced into Egypt from Asia and Yuya was the king’s "Master of the Horse." It was also suggested Yuya was the brother of queen Mutemwiya, who was the mother of pharaoh Amenhotep III and may have had Mitannian royal origins.9 However, this hypothesis cannot be substantiated since nothing is known of Mutemwiya's background. While Yuya lived in Upper Egypt, an area which was predominantly native Egyptian, he could have been an assimiliated descendant of Asiatic immigrants or slaves who rose to become a member of the local nobility at Akhmin. If he was not a foreigner, however, then Yuya would have been a native Egyptian whose daughter was married Amenhotep III.
Yuya served as a key adviser for Amenhotep III,10 and held posts such as "King’s Lieutenant" and "Master of the Horse"; his title "Father-of-the-god" possibly referred specifically to his being Amenhotep's father-in-law. In his native town of Akhmin, Yuya was a prophet of Min, the chief god of the area, and served as this deity's "Superintendent of Cattle".4
Yuya and his wife were buried in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes, where their private KV46 tomb was discovered in 1905 11 by James Quibell, who was working on behalf of Theodore M. Davis'. Although the tomb had been penetrated, the tomb-robbers were perhaps disturbed, and Quibell found most of the funerary goods and the two mummies virtually intact.4 As the late Egyptologist Cyril Aldred notes:
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