Lost. Then Found. Then Lost. Then Found.
Maya was Overseer of the Treasury and Overseer of Works during the reign of Tutankhamun (1333-1323 B.C.). This made him responsible for Egypt's home affairs during the unsettled time following the heresy of King Akhenaten, who had closed all the temples and only adored the sun god Aten.
It was Maya who helped to re-establish the traditional cults and who fashioned new statues for the numerous sanctuaries throughout Egypt, while his colleague, the General Horemheb , pacified the revolting foreign countries.
At Tutankhamun's death, Maya was responsible for the royal burial, which contained objects inscribed with his name.
Maya’s tomb at Saqqara was partly excavated by German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius in 1843, however it had been plundered twenty years earlier when this statue of Maya and his wife Merit was sold to the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands.
After Lepsius’ probing the tomb was lost to the desert sands for 140 years. Then in the 1970s a joint expedition of archaeologists from the Egypt Exploration Society in London and the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, Netherlands began a quest to rediscover the tomb. In February 1986 they finally succeeded.
Today’s Maya and Merit’s wonderfully restored tomb is a highlight of a visit to the ancient necropolis of Saqqara.
