Dec 22, 2015 The tomb of Maia, King Tutankhamun’s nurse, was recently opened after almost 2 decades of excavation.
The ancient burial site, which is located in Saqqara, south of Cairo, was originally discovered in 1996 by French Egyptologist Alain Zivie.
Inscriptions inside Maia’s tomb include images of king Tutankhamun sitting on her lap among other images that include the two of them.
According to Egypt’s Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al-Damaty, the tomb was reused over the different dynasties.
“The tomb of Maia, the nurse of King Tutankhamun, one of the most important tombs in Saqqara, actually in this area, because this place known as the catacombs of Bastet, or the tombs of Bubastis. Bubastis are dated to two dynasties, 22nd and 23rd dynasties, and the worship of the divine cat, Bastet. For this reason this area used as a catacomb of the divine cat, during the two dynasties, 22nd and 23rd, the priests this time reused these tombs, but originally the tombs belonged to the 18th dynasty, some of them, and others to the 19th dynasty, but the most important tomb of them is the tomb of Maia, which includes beautiful scenes related to the lady nursing Tutankhamun as a child,”
King Tutankhamun, who became king at the age of nine and died at 19, has been the center of several archaeological researches since his tomb was discovered in 1922 at Luxor’s Valley of the Kings.
Commenting on Maia’s tomb, French Egyptologist, Alain Zivie said:
“Known during years and years as a witness, witness or nanny, some people say, okay, ‘she’s beautiful’, she was, it’s important, but just secondary for the connection with that period and Akhenaten. It took years to excavate the tomb because it was transformed in cats catacombs later and, as his excellency explained, it took years. We discovered no Maia inside, just a fragment of a canopic jar. You know these jars where they put the mummified organs, outside, that’s all. So, but with the title so of “great of the harim” meaning that she was the most important person in the royal palace, female.”