Maya was an important Egyptian official during the reign of the last three pharaohs of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt: Tutankhamun, Kheperkheprure Ay, and Horemheb.

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. 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.