MAIA NURSER TUTANKHAMON
MAIA NURSER TUTANKHAMUN was an ancient Egyptian official; he held very high positions at the end of the 18th Dynasty during the reigns of Tutankhamun, Ay and Horemheb.
His titles included Fan-bearer at the king’s right, Overseer of the treasury, Overseer of the work in the necropolis, and Leader of the festival of Amun at Karnak.
The life of Maya and Merit was the son of an official named Iuy and his wife Weret.
The lives of Maya and Merit He was married to Merit, who bore the title Singer of Amon.
Their daughters Mayamenti and Tjauenmaya are also depicted in the tomb of Maya and Merit in Sakkara, as is Maya’s half-brother Nahuher.
Little is known about the beginning of Maya’s life; he may have started his career during the reign of Amenhotep III. He may be the same person as a royal scribe named Maya mentioned in regnal year 34.
However, he is well known from the reign of Tutankhamun.
His title, Overseer of the Treasury, can be compared to a Minister of Finance.
He restored the tombs of several kings in the Valley of the Kings in the years after Tutankhamun and Ay.
He left a personal note on a wall in the tomb of ThutmosesIV, stating that he restored the tomb on behalf of the king.
MAIA NURSER TUTANKHAMON
in taxes and oversaw construction work for these pharaohs, including the construction of their tombs and preparations for their burial.
Two objects were found in Tutankhamun’s tomb that were a personal gift from Maya to the king:
a shabti and a figure of the king as Osiris. Both objects bear an inscription mentioning Maya.
He probably died in or around regnal year 9 of Horemheb.
In year 8 he is mentioned as responsible for collecting taxes from the entire country and for making sacrifices to the gods.
He is depicted in tomb TT50 of Neferhotep, godfather (a priest) of Amun.
Here he stands between King Horemheb and the viziers, indicating that he had a close relationship with the king.
During the reigns of Akhnaton, Tutankhamun, and Ay, Horemheb was a general;
Maya and Horemheb must have known each other well as high-ranking courtiers.
The grave of Maya and Merit
When Richard Lepsius was in Egypt as leader of the Prussian expedition. They visited Sakkara in 1843, and Lepsius already partially explored the grave of Maya & Merit.
Several blocks were then taken from the grave and ended up in the Berlin museum.
Unfortunately, these blocks are so damaged that they must be considered lost.
But fortunately, good drawings were already made so that we can still see what was on the blocks. Lepsius saw the double statue in place, but it was too badly damaged to take away.
But behind the image there were reliefs that he wanted.
He therefore pushed the statue off its pedestal, causing its nose to end up in the sand.
When the grave was found again in 1986 by the Dutch expedition led by Maarten Raven and Rene van Walsem, it was still with its nose in the sand.
But the researchers could see that the statue was made from a block of stone that came from the Old Kingdom because there was a relief on the bottom. They also discovered that the block came from King Unas’ causeway.
But the statue is standing again. A second double statue has been in the Rijksmuseum in Leiden in the Netherlands since 1828, together with two single statues, one of Maya and the other of his wife Merit.
Because Lepsius had already had a visit in 1825 and had already taken the 3 statues with him.
And they ended up in a large collection that was purchased by the Rijksmuseum in one go in 1828.
In the Chr. Periodically, a number of blocks from the tomb were used in the monastery near Apa Jeremias.
These blocks were recovered by James Quibell in 1910 and are now in the museum in Cairo.
The grave has largely been completely rebuilt from clay stone, such as the pylon and the warehouses and chapels.
But the reliefs of the burial chambers have also been moved, something that is already very unique in Sakkara because the burial chambers there are not painted.
But unfortunately the original burial chambers that lay under the floor of the second court were very poor and many
of the reliefs had fallen off the wall.
Jacobus van Dijk, together with two other colleagues, then designed a plan for a completely new space
to make under the first court. But then the new rooms would be one behind the other instead of at different heights.
The new rooms have now been built and the reliefs are beautifully back in place.
The entire grave has a white background and all figures are yellow.
Now yellow was seen as gold and since the Egyptians believed that gold was the flesh of the sun god Ra and
that the bones of the gods were made of silver.
