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 of Pharaoh Seti I of Egypt and mother of Ramesses II, Princess Tia and perhaps Henutmire. She was the daughter of Raia 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 the Luxor 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