Bay (chancellor)

Although the king is not named, the dating of the ostracon under [[Siptah]] is certain and accords well with Bay’s last known public appearance in Regnal Year 4 of this king. It is not known what event or palace conspiracy brought about Bay’s sudden downfall. However, the prime beneficiary of his death appears to be Twosret, who assumed the throne without opposition a year later when Siptah died. The intention of the public announcement was to tell the Deir el-Medina workmen to abandon all work on completing Bay’s tomb. Bay, hence, was not buried in the dignified style which he sought and instead met a traitor’s fate.<ref>Callender, p.54</ref> After his fall, his tomb was subsequently usurped in the 20th Dynasty for prince [[Mentuherkhepshef]], a son of [[Rameses IX]]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20061112214840/http://www.leidenuniv.nl/nino/aeb92/aeb92_5.html#V.f]

Although the king is not named, the dating of the ostracon under [[Siptah]] is certain and accords well with Bay’s last known public appearance in Regnal Year 4 of this king. It is not known what event or palace conspiracy brought about Bay’s sudden downfall. However, the prime beneficiary of his death appears to be Twosret, who assumed the throne without opposition a year later when Siptah died. The intention of the public announcement was to tell the Deir el-Medina workmen to abandon all work on completing Bay’s tomb. Bay, hence, was not buried in the dignified style which he sought and instead met a traitor’s fate.<ref>Callender, p.54</ref> After his fall, his tomb was subsequently usurped in the 20th Dynasty for prince [[Mentuherkhepshef]], a son of [[Rameses IX]]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20061112214840/http://www.leidenuniv.nl/nino/aeb92/aeb92_5.html#V.f]

The ostracon’s information was essentially a royal order for the workmen to stop all further work on Bay’s tomb since the latter had now been deemed a traitor to the state.<ref>Gae Callender, The Cripple, the Queen & the Man from the North, [[Kmt (magazine)|KMT]], Spring 2006, p. 54</ref> Aidan Dodson believes that Queen [[Tausret]] engineered Bay’s downfall so that she would have total control at the palace court and need no longer share power with her political rival. As Dodson writes:

{{quote|Although [this act was nominally] carried out in the name of the still young Siptah, one can probably safely assume that the initiative was taken by Tawosret, signaling her intention to share power no longer with her erstwhile colleague in regency [Bay]. While Bay’s name remained intact on many of his monuments, it was probably at this point that his extraordinary representations in the bark-shrine at Karnak were erased.<ref>A. Dodson, Poisoned Legacy The Fall of the Nineteenth Egyptian Dynasty, American University in Cairo 2010, p. 107</ref>}}

With Bay’s demise, Twosret was the prime beneficiary of this major powerplay since King [[Siptah]] was essentially a cripple with a deformed left foot and a shortened left leg who would died one year later in his 6th year

==References==

==References==