Ay had himself painted burying Tutankhamun and took the throne, and Horemheb then erased Ay and dated his own reign from Amenhotep III

When Tutankhamun died, the general Horemheb, who had advised the young king, was campaigning against the Hittites in the north. The vizier Ay took the throne. A wall of Tutankhamun's burial chamber shows Ay, in a leopard skin and the khepresh, the king's blue crown, performing the Opening of the Mouth on the dead king. No other known scene shows a successor performing this rite for his predecessor. Ay married Tutankhamun's widow Ankhesenamun. He ruled about four years and named the general Nakhtmin, probably his son or grandson, as crown prince. Nakhtmin never reigned. Horemheb took the throne. He had most of Ay's cartouches in Ay's tomb, WV23, erased and the sarcophagus smashed into fragments. He took over Ay's mortuary temple at Medinet Habu. He dated his reign from the death of Amenhotep III, so that Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Ay vanished from the count. The city of Akhetaten was pulled down and its blocks used as building fill. A generation later, Seti I's king list at Abydos named 76 kings and ran straight from Amenhotep III to Horemheb. Horemheb had no heir and named his vizier Paramessu, who became Ramesses I. Ay's mummy has not been located. The lid of his sarcophagus was found under debris in 1972.