Merneferre Ai or Ay was an Ancient Egyptian ruler of the Thirteenth Dynasty. He assumed the throne around 1700 BC. His reign length--as preserved in the damaged Turin King List--was disputed in the past with Jürgen von Beckerath reading the damaged figure on the papyrus fragment as only 13 years in his 1964 work Untersuchungen zur politischen Geschichte der zweiten Zwischenzeit in Ägypten, while both Alan Gardiner--in The Royal Canon of Turin (1959)--and Kenneth Kitchen in his 1987 Conference paper "High, Middle or Low" maintained that it was 23 Years. The latest examination of the damaged figure by Kim Ryholt confirms that it must be read as 23 Years. (Ryholt: p.192) Ryholt stresses in his 1997 book on the Second Intermediate Period that "the tick that distinguishes 20 and 30 from 10 is p