Yuya

Yuya King’s Lieutenant Master of the Horse Father-of-the-god
Gilded mummy mask of Yuya, now in the Cairo Museum
Dynasty	18th Dynasty
Pharaoh	Amenhotep III
Wife	Tjuyu
Children	Tiye, Anen, possibly Ay
Burial	KV46

Yuya (sometimes Iouiya, also known as Yaa, Ya, Yiya, Yayi, Yu, Yuyu, Yaya, Yiay, Yia, and Yuy) was a powerful Egyptian courtier during the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt (circa 1390 BC). He was married to Tjuyu, an Egyptian noblewoman associated with the royal family, who held high offices in the governmental and religious hierarchies. Their daughter, Tiye, became the Great Royal Wife of Amenhotep III.

They also may have been the parents of Ay, an Egyptian courtier active during the reign of pharaoh Akhenaten, who eventually became pharaoh, as Kheperkheprure Ay. There is no conclusive evidence, however, regarding the kinship of Yuya and Ay, although certainly, both men came from the town of Akhmim. Yuya and Tjuyu also are known to have had a son named Anen, who carried the titles Chancellor of Lower Egypt, Second Prophet of Amun, sm-priest of Heliopolis, and Divine Father.

The tomb of Yuya and Tjuyu was, until the discovery of Tutankhamun's, one of the most spectacular ever found in the Valley of the Kings despite Yuya not even being a pharaoh. Although the burial site was robbed in antiquity, many objects not considered worth plundering by the robbers remained. Both the mummies were largely intact and were in an amazing state of preservation. Their faces in particular were relatively undistorted by the process of mummification, and provide an extraordinary insight into the actual appearance of the deceased while alive (see photographs).

Yuya came from the Upper Egyptian town of Akhmim, where he probably owned an estate and was a wealthy member of the town's local nobility. His origins remain unclear. The study of his mummy showed that 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. The name Yuya may be spelled in a number of different ways as Gaston Maspero noted in Theodore Davis's 1907 book—The Tomb of Iouiya and Touiyou. 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".