Commentary from Kathleen Jenks:

"I'm touched by how skillfully the swineherd is holding
the little pig so that it can lap up the milk. In later times,
Egyptians abhored swineherds, refused to allow them into the
temples and also forbid them to marry women not of their own caste.
It was believed that pigs were ritually "unclean" (same belief exists
among Jews and Moslems to this day) and the "uncleanness" extended to
their caretakers too. But clearly in earlier dynastic times there was
no such taboo or this skillful pig-herder and his orphaned pig
wouldn't have been depicted so beautifully in a tomb."