- Queen Tuya
Queen Tuya (also called Tuy or
Mut -Tuya [Joyce Tyldesley, Ramesses: Egypt's Greatest Pharaohs, Penguin Books, 2000. p.116] ) was the wife ofPharaoh Seti I ofEgypt and mother ofRamesses II ,Princess Tia and perhapsHenutmire . She was the daughter ofRaia who was a military officer based on his title of Lieutenant of the chariotry. [Tyldesley, op. cit., p.116] Tuya's daughter Princess Tia was married to an a high ranking civil servant with and identical name: Tia. [Tyldesley, op. cit., p.116]As the mother of Ramesses II, enjoyed a privileged existence of a respected king's mother and was allowed the opportunity to correspond with the Hittite royal court after the Year 21 peace treaty between Egypt and Hatti under Ramesses II. A "graceful standing statue of the queen" is today housed "in the
Vatican Museum where Tuya appears with her daughter or granddaughter Hentmire" [Tyldesley, op. cit., p.122] while a carved alabaster canopic jar stopper in the form of her head today resides in the collection of theLuxor Museum . [C. Desroche Noblecourt, "Abou Simbel, Ramses, et les dames de la couronne" in E. Bleiberg & R. Freed (eds) "Fragments of a Shattered Visage: the Proceedings of the International Symposium of Ramesses the Great", 1991. Memphis: p.129] Tuya likely died soon after Year 22 of Ramesses' reign and was buried in an impressive tomb in the Valley of the Queens (QV80). [Tyldesley, op. cit., p.122] In her tomb, Tuya: "was stripped of the first part of her name to become plain Tuya for eternity; the loss of the prefix
Mut - suggests that her death had ended in an almost divine earthly status." [Tyldesley, op. cit., p.122]Queen Tuya in media
*Queen Tuya appears in
The Prince of Egypt as the adoptive mother of Moses.she was undoubtedly the most attractive and luxuriously beautiful of all the queens of egypt during the middle kingdom
References
* Grajetzki, Wolfram (2005) Ancient Egyptian Queens – a hieroglyphic dictionary
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