Egyptian Museum Shows Statue of King Tutankhamun's Breastfeeding Mother on International Women's Day

On the occasion of the International Women's Day, which falls on March 8 of each year and Mother's Day which Egypt celebrates on March 21 each year, the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, downtown Cairo, chose a statue of Maya, the nursing mother of King Tutankhamun, to be the March piece, which is displayed in the main entrance hall of the museum.

The museum’s director general, Sabah Abdel-Razek, said that this statue was made of limestone, and was preserved in the museum’s warehouse.

The statue depicts the nursing mother Maya carrying King Tutankhamun on her legs.

The baby king wears a necklace in the form of a winged scarab, and resting his feet on a footstool decorated with the figures of the prone prisoners.

She indicated that this statue was discovered in the sacred animal cemetery at Saqqara in 1968, and it is likely that it was located in a compartment near the Maya tomb in Saqqara before it was transferred to the animal cemetery, perhaps in the Late Period or the Ptolemaic period.

She noted that Maya's tomb was used in the late era for burial Cats that symbolized the goddess Bastet.

Contributed by Ahmed Moamar

[caption id="attachment_220020" align="alignnone" width="648"]  Egyptian Museum Shows Statue of King Tutankhamun's Breastfeeding Mother on International Women's Day[/caption]