Yuya - Origins

Origins

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 A, ywiw" and, in orthography—normally a sign of something foreign--"yiA".

It was not typical for an Egyptian person to have so many different ways to write his name; this may suggest that Yuya's ancestors had a foreign origin. In "The Hebrew Pharaohs of Egypt" (ISBN 1-59143-022-4) one solution is that Yuya had some Mitannian ancestry; this argument is based on the fact that the knowledge of horses and chariotry was introduced into Egypt from Asia and Yuya was the king’s "Master of the Horse." It was also suggested that Yuya was the brother of queen Mutemwiya, who was the mother of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and may have had Mitannian royal origins. However, this hypothesis can not be substantiated, since nothing is known of Mutemwiya's background. While Yuya lived in Upper Egypt, an area that was predominantly native Egyptian, he could have been an assimilated descendant of Asiatic immigrants or slaves who rose to become a member of the local nobility at Akhmin. If he was not a foreigner, however, then Yuya would have been the native Egyptian whose daughter was married to Amenhotep III. Yuya is believed to have died around 1374BC in his mid 50s.