Tiye

Queen Tiye (c. 1398–1338 BC) reached the center of Egyptian power from outside the royal family. Her parents, Yuya and Thuya, were wealthy provincial notables associated with Akhmim — Yuya held military and priestly offices — and their intact tomb, found in the Valley of the Kings in 1905, remains one of the richest non-royal burials known. Tiye married Amenhotep III early in his reign, and the king took the unusual step of proclaiming the marriage, and her parentage, on commemorative scarabs distributed across the empire.

As Great Royal Wife she held a visibility few Egyptian queens matched. She appears beside the king at equal scale in some statuary, was the first queen regularly shown with attributes linking her to goddesses, and had a temple dedicated to her at Sedeinga in Nubia. Her standing extended into diplomacy: after Amenhotep III's death, Tushratta of Mitanni wrote to her directly and urged the new king to consult his mother on the details of past dealings between the courts — testimony, preserved in the Amarna letters, to her command of foreign affairs.

Tiye bore Amenhotep III several daughters and at least two sons: the crown prince Thutmose, who died young, and Amenhotep IV, the future Akhenaten. She lived well into her son's reign and is depicted visiting his new capital at Akhetaten, where a shrine was prepared for her. Her death is placed around 1338 BC.

Her burial history is tangled, but her body appears to have been identified. The mummy known as the "Elder Lady," found cached in tomb KV35, was matched to Tiye by genetic testing published in 2010 and by comparison with a lock of hair buried, labeled as hers, among Tutankhamun's grave goods — a keepsake suggesting the young king's attachment to his grandmother. Through Akhenaten, Tiye stands at the head of the Amarna line, the commoner's daughter whose descendants included Nefertiti's daughters' husband, Tutankhamun, and with him the end of the dynasty's direct succession.