Page "Ay" Paragraph 15

It appears that one of Horemheb's undertakings as Pharaoh was to eliminate all references to the monotheistic experiment, a process that included expunging the name of his immediate predecessors, especially Ay, from the historical record.

Horemheb desecrated Ay's burial and had most of Ay's royal cartouches in his WV23 Tomb Wall paintings erased while his sarcophagus was smashed into numerous fragments.

However, the sarcophagus lid was discovered in 1972 by Otto Schaden, the US Egyptologist who opened Tomb KV63 in the Valley of the Kings in 2006.

It still preserved Ay's cartouche.

The sarcophagus had been buried under debris in this king's tomb.

Horemheb also usurped Ay's mortuary temple at Medinet Habu for his own use.

Uvo Hölscher ( 1878 – 1963 ) who excavated the temple in the early 1930s provides these interesting details concerning the state of Ay-Horemheb's mortuary temple: