Tiye's family came from the world of influential provincial officials and temple service. Her father Yuya held important court and religious offices, and her mother Tjuyu was associated with religious institutions. Their connections with Akhmim help explain the standing of the household into which Tiye was born. Calling her non-royal is not the same as calling her poor or socially obscure. She became Amenhotep III's Great Royal Wife early in his reign. The large commemorative scarabs conventionally called marriage scarabs give her name and those of her parents alongside the king's titles and the extent of his dominion. They are evidence of public recognition, but they do not tell us that the king defied a required cousin-marriage or chose a bride against his court's wishes. Those are modern additions to a story the objects themselves tell more sparingly.

The burial of Tiye's parents provides another measure of their position. In 1905 the expedition funded by Theodore Davis, with James Quibell directing the excavation, opened KV46 in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb contained the burials of Yuya and Tjuyu, with coffins, funerary equipment and valuable furnishings. Although ancient robbers had disturbed it, much survived. Its importance lies both in the quality of the objects and in the presence of the queen's parents in a cemetery closely associated with royal burials. The finds give Tiye a family context that many ancient royal women lack: named parents, documented offices and a substantial archaeological record. They do not, however, turn every reconstruction of her wider family into fact; proposed relationships with other prominent people of the period still require their own evidence.

During Amenhotep III's reign, Tiye appeared in royal monuments and received unusually prominent honours. At Sedeinga, in Nubia, the king built a temple for her, where her royal image was associated with Hathor. Her honour there belonged to a landscape in which Egyptian kingship and divine protection were expressed through temples far beyond the northern court. The royal family included the prince Thutmose, who died before succeeding his father, and Amenhotep, who became Akhenaten. Among the daughters was Sitamun, who later also held the title Great Royal Wife. These relationships placed Tiye at the centre of the royal household, but they should not be reduced to a confident account of private feelings or a fixed list assembled from disputed identifications. The monuments show prominence; the everyday workings of her authority are only partly recoverable.

One of the clearest written traces of her influence is Amarna Letter EA 26. Tushratta, king of Mitanni, addressed Tiye after Amenhotep III's death and appealed to her knowledge of the dealings between their courts. He recalled earlier exchanges, raised concerns about gifts and asked her to help maintain the relationship with the new king. The letter matters because it treats her as a person who knew what had been agreed and whose intervention could still count. It is not simply praise attached to a royal title. At the same time, diplomatic deference is not proof that Tiye formally ruled Egypt as a co-pharaoh. Her documented role is substantial enough without adding an unattested crown: she was a senior royal correspondent whose memory and position could be invoked in negotiations between kingdoms.

Tiye remained visible in the reign of her son Akhenaten. At Amarna, the tomb of her steward Huya records her importance to the royal household and depicts her in the company of the king and his family. Scenes associated with her sunshade sanctuary connect her with the ceremonial landscape of the new capital. Such evidence shows that she was honoured there, although it does not establish every detail of a permanent move or reveal her personal response to the Aten cult. The shift from Amenhotep III's court to Akhenaten's religious programme was a change she lived through, not one whose motives can be read from a single relief. Her final years and the history of her burial remain difficult to reconstruct precisely. Approximate dates are more honest than a day-by-day biography built around the gaps.

The later history of her remains connects several famous tombs. The unnamed mummy called the Elder Lady was found in 1898 in KV35, the tomb of Amenhotep II, among royal remains moved there in antiquity. A small coffin from Tutankhamun's burial contained hair associated by its inscription with Tiye. Comparison with that hair helped support the identification of the Elder Lady, but it was not the only evidence. A genetic study published in 2010 identified the Elder Lady as a daughter of Yuya and Tjuyu within its reconstruction of Tutankhamun's family and identified her as Tiye. That conclusion is a modern identification based on studied remains, rather than a named coffin found intact around the mummy in KV35. The hair, inscriptions and research together preserve a connection across generations without telling us exactly who placed the keepsake in the young king's tomb or what private memory it represented.