In celebration of International Women’s Day, the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir is displaying as its March piece the statue of King Tutankhamun’s wet nurse Maia.
The statue is displayed in the foyer of the museum and depicts the wet-nurse in a semi-squatting position, supporting the child-king on her lap with the aid of two cushions.
Museum director Sabah Abdel-Razak said that the golden King Tutankhamun is wearing a scarab pendant and his feet are resting on a footstool decorated with the figures of prostrated captives.
The statue likely stood in or near Maia’s tomb at Saqqara before being moved to the nearby Sacred Animal Necropolis, possibly in the Late Period or the Ptolemaic era. It was excavated by W. B. Emery for the Egypt Exploration Society in 1968.
Maia’s tomb was re-used in the Late Period for burials of cats associated with the cult of the goddess Bastet.
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