Tiye

Tiye
The Great Royal Wife Tiye, matriarch of the Amarna Dynasty - now in the Neues Museum/Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin, Germany
Queen consort of Egypt
Tenure	c. 1390 BC – 1353 BC (37 years)
Born	c. 1398 BC Akhmim, Upper Egypt
Died	1338 BC
Burial	KV35, Valley of the Kings, Thebes
Spouse	Amenhotep III
Issue	Sitamun Iset Henuttaneb Nebetah Thutmose Akhenaten Smenkhkare (possibly) "The Younger Lady" Beketaten
Egyptian name
Father	Yuya
Mother	Tjuyu
Religion	Ancient Egyptian religion

Tiye (c. 1398 BC – 1338 BC, also spelled Taia, Tiy and Tiyi) was the daughter of Yuya and Tjuyu (also spelled Thuyu). She became the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III. She was the mother of Akhenaten and grandmother of Tutankhamun. Her mummy was identified as "The Elder Lady" found in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV35) in 2010.

Tiye's father, Yuya, was a non-royal, wealthy landowner from the Upper Egyptian town of Akhmin, where he served as a priest and superintendent of oxen or commander of the chariotry. Tiye's mother, Thuya, was involved in many religious cults, as her different titles attested (Singer of Hathor, Chief of the Entertainers of both Amun and Min...), which suggests that she was a member of the royal family.

Egyptologists have suggested that Tiye's father, Yuya, was of foreign origin due to the features of his mummy and the many different spellings of his name, which might imply it was a non-Egyptian name in origin. Some suggest that the queen's strong political and unconventional religious views might have been due not just to a strong character, but to foreign descent.

Tiye also had a brother, Anen, who was Second Prophet of Amun. Other Egyptologists speculated that Ay, a successor of Tutankhamun as pharaoh after the latter's death, also might have been descended from Tiye. No clear date or monument can confirm the link between the two, but these Egyptologists presumed this by Ay's origins, also from Akhmin, and because he inherited most of the titles that Tiye's father, Yuya, held during his lifetime, at the court of Amenhotep III.

Tiye was married to Amenhotep III by the second year of his reign. He had been born of a secondary wife of his father and needed a stronger tie to the royal lineage. He appears to have been crowned while still a child, perhaps between the ages of six to twelve. They had at least seven, possibly more children: