`Yuia, the Syrian'

A reference to Yuai was found on a small (3 in. diam.) thick with blue-glaze rimmed ware which features hieroglyphics, though apparently not free of errors, inside the triangular radiant sun beams reading, "King's wife Tuyu, King's Prince Yuia, prince of Zahi". The signs of Yuia's title do not appear anywhere else like on his funerary furniture, nor is he called anywhere else `prince of Zahi'. "But the testimony of this little relic is definite to his origin. He was a Syrian chief ..."

We must not, however, turn our backs upon Ay without mentioning some facts which many historians have ignored, while others have held diametrically opposed views concerning them. There is, at all events, an incontestable affinity between him and that Yuia whom we have seen to have been the father of Queen Tiye and consequently the father-in-law of Amenophis III. Yuia in his tomb at Thebes bore the title 'overseer of horses', while Ay at El-'Amarna is 'overseer of all the horses of His Majesty'. Even more remarkable is the connection of both with the town of Akhmim, where Yuia was a prophet of Min as well as superintendent of that god's cattle, and where King Ay, erected a shrine and left a long inscription. Just as Yuia's wife Tjuia was the mother of Queen Tiye, or Queen Tey, the spouse of King Ay, had previously been the nurse of Queen Nefertiti. Little wonder if, in view of these facts, P.E. Newberry propounded the theory that Yuia and Ay, as well as their wives Tjuia and Tey, were actually identical. It must be understood that the names which, is purely conventional manner, we render in these divergent ways, offer no real obstacle to this theory; such is the nature of hieroglyphic writing at this period that we cannot be sure if what appears to be written as Yuia may not have been pronounced Ay, and similarly with the names of the wives. Chronologically, however, Newberry's view, which he himself never published, is absolutely impossible; since, moreover, the mummies of both Yuia and Tjuia, evidently very aged people, were discovered in their Theban tomb, it would be necessary to assume that Yuia or Ay, whichever pronunciation we might prefer for him, had before his death been forced to renounce his kingly title, and to revert to the position of commoner. C. Aldred has mad the plausible suggestion that the future monarch Ay was the son of Yuia. This certainly would explain the similarity of their titles and their close connection with Akhmim, but is unsupported by any definite evidence. Needless to say, the tomb which Akhenaten had granted to Ay at El-'Amarna was never used. On Ay's return to Thebes and to orthodoxy he cased a sepulcher to be prepared for himself in the western valley of the Biban el-Moluk near that of Amenophis III. It is a small affair, and only one room at the end of the passage approached by a flight of steps decorated. The religious scenes show a close resemblance to those in Tut'ankhamun's burial chamber, but there is a picture of the king fowling in the marshes for which analogies are found only in the tombs of non-royal personages. The rose-colored granite sarcophagus, later broken to pieces, excited the admiration of the early Egyptologists. Throughout the tomb the cartouches have been erased.