Maya (Egyptian)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maya was the Treasurer during the reign of Pharaoh Tutankhamun of the eighteenth dynasty of Ancient Egypt.

Maya collected taxes and performed other services for these pharaohs, including supervising the preparation of their tombs. Maya's own tomb at Saqqara was excavated in 1843 by the archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius,and its impressive reliefs were recorded in sketches. Over time the tomb was covered by sand, and its location was lost. In 1975, however, a joint expedition of archaeologists from the Egypt Exploration Society in London and the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, the Netherlands, began an attempt to rediscover the tomb, and in 1986 they succeeded.

Statues of Maya and his wife Merit have been on display in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, the Netherlands since 1823.