Nursing Woman. Said to be from Giza; Fifth Dynasty, probably reign of Niuserre (ca. 2420–2389 B.C.E.). Limestone with remains of paint; H. 4 1/8 in. (10.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Edward S. Harkness Gift, 1926 (26.7.1405).

This inspired, indeed bawdy, composition belongs to a Chaucerian world of folk vignettes, a world occasionally glimpsed in milder form in Old Kingdom relief scenes. To judge from relief scenes of serving women with children, this figure may have been a working mother who was also responsible for grinding grain or tending a baking oven.