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Queen Tiye in hieroglyphs: her name and where to see it

22 October 2026

Tiye was the Great Royal Wife of Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt from about 1390 to 1352 BC, and the mother of Akhenaten. Her name is short: tiy, said "tee-yee", written with a pestle for ti, two reed leaves and two small strokes. In her lifetime it was often written in a cartouche, like a king's.

She came from outside the royal family, yet her name stands beside her husband's on scarabs, statues and temple walls, and foreign kings wrote to her. A small wooden head of her in Berlin and a seven-metre statue of the couple in Cairo are the places to see her today.

A pestle and two reeds spell tiy

The usual spelling has four signs. The pestle (U33) reads ti. Two flowering reeds (M17) follow, and two small strokes (Z4) end the name and mark its y. Egyptologists transliterate the name tiy or tjj, and books spell it Tiye, Tiy, Teye or Taia. Egyptian writing left out vowels, so "tee-yee" is a modern way of saying it.

A small seated queen often closes the name as a silent determinative, marking it as a woman's name. Whatever the spelling, the shape to look for is a short name ending in a cluster of reed leaves and strokes.

Pestle Flowering reed Two strokes

Her cartouche stands beside the king's

Earlier queens of the dynasty had cartouches too. Tiye's stands beside Amenhotep III's on small objects as well as on temple walls and statues. Her title was ḥmt-nswt-wrt, said "hemet nesut weret", "great wife of the king". Next to her oval stands his throne name, Nebmaatre, nb-mꜣꜥt-rꜥ, "Lord of truth is Ra": the sun disc (N5) at the top, the seated goddess Maat (C10) and the basket (V30).

Statues show her at the same scale as the king, and at Sedeinga in Nubia he built a temple for her. Ancient texts give her no royal father, which makes this prominence unusual.

Cartouche Sun Goddess Maat Basket

Read Amenhotep III's names

The marriage scarab names her parents

Early in his reign Amenhotep III issued large stone scarabs carrying news, and one series announces his marriage. More than fifty survive. After the king's names, the text gives "the Great Royal Wife Tiye", then: "The name of her father is Yuya, the name of her mother is Tuya. She is the wife of the mighty king whose southern boundary is as far as Karoy, whose northern is as far as Naharin."

Yuya was a high official from Akhmim, a master of the horse and a priest of the god Min there. His wife Tjuyu, also spelled Tuya or Thuya, held titles in Min's cult. Their tomb in the Valley of the Kings, KV46, was found almost intact in 1905, and their mummies are among the best preserved from Egypt.

Scarab beetle

Foreign kings wrote to her as a widow

Tiye outlived her husband into the reign of her son, Amenhotep IV, who renamed himself Akhenaten. She is last named in a text of his 12th year. Among the Amarna letters, the clay tablets in Akkadian found at Akhenaten's capital, letter EA 26 is addressed to her by Tushratta, king of Mitanni. He recalls his friendship with her late husband and asks her to keep it alive with her son.

In letters to Akhenaten, Tushratta tells the young king that his mother knows every word that passed between the two courts, and that he should ask her. Her name in hieroglyphs also appears at Amarna, in the tomb of her steward Huya.

Read Akhenaten's name

Berlin and Cairo hold her best portraits

In the Neues Museum in Berlin, a small head of yew wood, inventory ÄM 21834, shows her with heavy lidded eyes and down-turned lips. It is said to come from a palace at Gurob in the Faiyum. It was reworked later in her life: a wig with blue beads now covers a gold and silver headdress, and a crown with cow horns, a sun disc and feathers gave her the look of a goddess.

In the main hall of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the limestone group of Amenhotep III and Tiye rises seven metres. It once stood at Medinet Habu in western Thebes, most likely at a gate of the king's memorial temple. She sits at his left, as tall as he is, with three small daughters before them. The middle one is Henuttaneb, and the one beside the king is Nebetah.

DNA tied the Elder Lady to her parents

In 1898 Victor Loret found a cache of royal mummies in the tomb of Amenhotep II, KV35. In a side room lay an unnamed woman, known since as the Elder Lady. In 1976 her hair was matched to a lock found in a set of miniature coffins in Tutankhamun's tomb, labelled with Tiye's name.

A study led by Zahi Hawass, published in 2010, found that the Elder Lady was the daughter of Yuya and Tjuyu, and named her as Tiye. The same study placed her as the mother of the man in tomb KV55, thought to be Tutankhamun's father, which would make her the boy king's grandmother. Several ancient-DNA specialists replied that the results could come from modern contamination. The team said it had repeated the tests in a second laboratory.

Her cartouche takes three signs to draw

Draw a tall oval and put the loaf at the top, a flat half circle. Below it set one reed, then two reeds side by side, their leaves curling the same way. The name fits in a single column, so a small cartouche works.

To match her monuments, add Nebmaatre in a second oval beside it, the sun disc first.

Bread loaf

Write Tiye in a cartouche

Questions

Who was Queen Tiye?

The chief wife of Amenhotep III and the mother of Akhenaten, in the 18th Dynasty. Her parents, Yuya and Tjuyu, came from Akhmim, and she held unusual power at court and in foreign affairs.

Was Queen Tiye Tutankhamun's grandmother?

Most likely she was. The 2010 DNA study made her the mother of the KV55 man, whom it identified as Tutankhamun's father. Who that man was, Akhenaten or another son, is still argued.

How do you pronounce Tiye?

Most English speakers say "TEE-yee" or "TEE". The Egyptian name was tiy, and the vowels are a modern guess.

Was Tiye Nefertiti's mother?

No ancient text says so. Nefertiti was married to Tiye's son Akhenaten, which made her Tiye's daughter-in-law. Some scholars have suggested that Nefertiti's father was Ay, possibly Tiye's brother, but her parents are unknown.

Glossary

cartouche: An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
determinative: A sign at the end of a word that is not read aloud. It shows what kind of thing the word means, such as a seated man for men and their jobs.
dynasty: A line of kings counted together, usually one family. Egyptologists number Egypt's kings in about 30 dynasties, following the priest Manetho.
Maat: Truth, justice and the right order of the world, shown as a goddess with an ostrich feather on her head. Kings claimed to uphold it.
mummy: A body dried and wrapped in linen so that it would last. Egyptians believed the spirit needed it in the afterlife.
priest: A servant of a god in a temple, who washed, dressed and fed the god's statue each day. A high priest led the staff of a great temple.
scarab: The dung beetle, sign of the rising sun and of the word ḫpr, "to come into being". Carved scarabs were used as seals and amulets.
temple: The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.
throne name: The name a king took when he came to the throne, written in the first cartouche after the title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt". Egyptologists also call it the prenomen.
tomb: A burial place: a pit, a mastaba, a pyramid or rooms cut into rock. Its chapel was where the family brought offerings.
transliteration: Writing Egyptian in Latin letters, one letter for each sound sign, such as ꜥnḫ for ankh. Egyptologists say the words with an e between consonants.
Valley of the Kings: A desert valley on the west bank at Luxor where the New Kingdom kings were buried in tombs cut into the rock, Tutankhamun among them.