Editing Merneferre Ay (section)

==Legacy==
[[File:Cylinder Seal of King Merneferre Aya MET LC-10 130 1639 EGDP030251.jpg|thumb|upright|Cylinder seal of Merneferre Ay]]
Even though Merneferre Ay is well attested, the number of objects attributable to him is relatively small given his nearly 24 year-long reign.<ref name="encyclo"/> This may point to serious problems in Egypt at the time and indeed Ryholt and others believe that by the end of Ay's reign "the administration [of the Egyptian state] seems to have completely collapsed".<ref name="ryholt"/>

Merneferre Ay is the last Egyptian king of the 13th Dynasty who is attested by objects from outside of Upper Egypt.<ref name="schneider"/> This may indicate the abandonment of the old capital of the Middle Kingdom [[Itjtawy]] in favor of [[Thebes, Egypt|Thebes]].<ref name="bentor"/> Daphna Ben Tor believes that this event was triggered by the invasion of the eastern Delta and the Memphite region by Canaanite rulers. Indeed some egyptologists believe that by the end of Ay's reign the 13th dynasty had lost control of Lower Egypt, including the Delta region and possibly Memphis itself. For these authors, this marks the end of the Middle Kingdom and the beginning of the [[Second Intermediate Period]].<ref name="bentor">Daphna Ben Tor: ''Sequences and chronology of Second Intermediate Period royal-name scarabs, based on excavated series from Egypt and the Levant'', in: ''The Second Intermediate Period (Thirteenth-Seventeenth Dynasties), Current Research, Future Prospects'' edited by Marcel Maree, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 192, 2010, p. 91</ref> This analysis is rejected by Ryholt and Baker however, who note that the stele of [[Seheqenre Sankhptahi]], reigning toward the very end of the 13th Dynasty, strongly suggests that he reigned over Memphis. Unfortunately, the stele is of unknown provenance.<ref name="ryholt"/><ref name="encyclo"/>