Editing Merneferre Ay (section)

===Reign length===
Until recently, the duration of Merneferre Ay's reign, which is recorded in the Turin canon, was disputed by Jürgen von Beckerath who read the damaged figure on the papyrus fragment as 13 years<ref>Jürgen von Beckerath: ''Untersuchungen zur politischen Geschichte der Zweiten Zwischenzeit in Ägypten'', Glückstadt, J.J. Augustin, 1964</ref> while both [[Alan Gardiner]] and [[Kenneth Kitchen]] maintained it should be read as 23 years.<ref>[[Alan Gardiner]]: ''The Royal Canon of Turin'', Griffith Institute new edition (1988), {{ISBN|978-0900416484}}</ref><ref>[[Kenneth Kitchen]]: ''The Basics of Egyptian Chronology in Relation to the Bronze Age at the "High, Middle or Low"'', University of Göteborg conference, 1987, {{JSTOR|505957}}</ref> The dispute was settled in the latest study of the Turin canon by [[Kim Ryholt]] who confirms that Merneferre Ay's reign length as recorded on the papyrus is "23 years, 8 months and 18 days".<ref name="ryholt">[[Kim Ryholt|K.S.B. Ryholt]]: ''The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, c.1800–1550 BC'', Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications, vol. 20. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1997, [https://books.google.com/books?id=ANRi7cM5ZwsC&q=Aya excerpts available online here.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210325033406/https://books.google.com/books?id=ANRi7cM5ZwsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=ryholt&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RieiUcXVDIrLhAex3oCIBg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Aya&f=false |date=2021-03-25 }}</ref>
Ryholt insists that "the tick that distinguishes 20 and 30 from 10 is preserved and beyond dispute. Accordingly, 23 years or, less likely, 33 years must be read."<ref name="ryholt"/> This makes Merneferre Ay the longest-ruling pharaoh of the 13th Dynasty at a time when numerous short-lived kings ruled Egypt.