Deir el-Medina: Village of the Royal Tomb Builders

Deir el-Medina was the village of the craftsmen who built and decorated the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes (modern Luxor). Occupied from around 1500 BC to around 1070 BC, it was a state-run community of stonecutters, plasterers, sculptors, painters and scribes. Because its people wrote so much, and because the dry desert preserved it, the village gives the most detailed picture of everyday life anywhere in ancient Egypt.

Founding and setting

The village lies in a small, dry valley between the Theban hills and the hill of Qurnet Murai, a short walk over the mountain from the Valley of the Kings. Bricks stamped with the name of Thutmose I suggest that it was founded in his reign, in the early 18th Dynasty. Its inhabitants later worshipped the earlier king Amenhotep I and his mother Ahmose-Nefertari as patrons of the community.

The Egyptians called the workforce “Servants in the Place of Truth”, and the necropolis they worked in “the Place of Truth” (Set Maat). The modern Arabic name, meaning “Monastery of the Town”, comes from a Christian monastery that later occupied the Ptolemaic temple at the site.

The village was enclosed by a wall and had a main street running north to south. At its largest, under the Ramesside kings of the 19th and 20th Dynasties, it contained about 68 houses inside the wall, with more buildings outside. Each long, narrow house typically had an entrance room with a raised platform, a main room with columns, smaller rooms behind and a kitchen open to the sky, with stairs to the roof.

Life and work in the village

The tomb-builders were organised as a “gang” divided into two “sides”, right and left, like a ship’s crew. Each side had a foreman and a deputy, and a scribe of the tomb kept the records. The size of the crew changed with need, from around 30 to more than 100 men.

The workmen usually spent their working days in the Valley of the Kings, sleeping in simple huts on the pass between the valley and the village, and returned home on rest days. The Egyptian week was ten days long. Records show that the men were often absent, and one famous register from year 40 of Ramesses II lists reasons such as illness, scorpion stings, brewing beer, embalming a relative and a wife’s or daughter’s menstruation.

The village had no well. Water was carried up by donkey, and the state delivered rations of grain, fish, vegetables, firewood and pottery through a support staff of water carriers, fishermen, woodcutters and potters. Wages paid in grain were used to make bread and beer, and anything surplus could be traded. Villagers also earned extra income by making coffins, statues and furniture for private clients.

The written records

Deir el-Medina is famous above all for its texts. Many of its inhabitants could read and write, an unusually high level of literacy for ancient Egypt. They wrote on ostraca, flakes of limestone and broken pottery, which were cheap and plentiful. Many thousands of ostraca have been found, including a large deposit of several thousand excavated in the so-called Great Pit north of the village between 1949 and 1951.

The texts include work registers, delivery lists, letters, wills, contracts, love poems, hymns, school exercises, medical spells and records of lawsuits heard by the village court. A family library kept by the scribe Qenherkhepeshef and his descendants contained papyri such as a dream book that explained the meaning of dreams.

These records name individual people over many generations. Historians can follow families, quarrels, marriages, divorces, debts and careers. The most notorious figure is the foreman Paneb, accused around 1200 BC by Amennakht, the brother of a previous foreman, of theft from royal tombs, bribery, violence and adultery, in charges preserved in the papyrus known as Papyrus Salt 124.

The first recorded strike

Under Ramesses III the Egyptian state came under economic pressure, and the rations owed to the tomb-builders arrived late. In year 29 of his reign, around 1157 BC, the workmen downed tools. According to the Turin Strike Papyrus, written by the scribe Amennakht, they marched out of the necropolis and sat down behind the mortuary temple of Thutmose III, complaining that they were hungry and had not received their grain for 18 days.

The officials brought them some food, but the protests continued over several months. The men occupied the area around the Ramesseum and other temples, and the dispute was eased only when officials ordered grain released from temple stores. It is the earliest labour strike in history recorded in such detail, and late wage payments and further stoppages are documented later in the 20th Dynasty.

Religion and tombs

The villagers built a series of chapels and shrines around the settlement. They worshipped the great state gods, but also gods close to everyday life, such as Hathor, Ptah, the cobra goddess Meretseger of the Theban peak and the household god Bes. Many votive stelae show workmen asking a god for forgiveness or healing, a sign of personal piety.

On the hillside above the village the workmen cut tombs for themselves and their families, often small pyramids over painted burial chambers. Using the same skills they used for the kings, they decorated them richly. The tomb of Sennedjem (TT1), discovered intact in 1886, is one of the best-preserved painted tombs in Egypt, and the tomb of Inherkhau is similarly famous.

Decline and rediscovery

In the late 20th Dynasty raids by Libyan groups and growing insecurity on the west bank led the workmen to move inside the fortified walls of Ramesses III’s temple at Medinet Habu. When royal tomb building ended under Ramesses XI, around 1070 BC, the village was abandoned. In the Ptolemaic period a temple of Hathor and Maat was built on the site, begun by Ptolemy IV, and it was later used by Christian monks.

Local diggers and collectors removed many papyri and objects in the 19th century, which is why material from the village is scattered among museums in Turin, London, Paris and elsewhere. Systematic excavation began with Ernesto Schiaparelli for the Egyptian Museum of Turin between 1905 and 1909. The French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, led by Bernard Bruyère, cleared the village and its cemeteries between 1922 and 1951, and scholars such as Jaroslav Černý spent decades publishing the texts.

Timeline

• c. 1500 BC: The village is founded, probably under Thutmose I.
• c. 1240 BC: In year 40 of Ramesses II, a scribe records the reasons for workmen’s absences on an ostracon now in the British Museum.
• c. 1200 BC: The foreman Paneb is accused of crimes in charges preserved in Papyrus Salt 124.
• c. 1157 BC: In year 29 of Ramesses III, the workmen strike over late rations.
• c. 1070 BC: Royal tomb building ends and the village is abandoned.
• 1886: The intact tomb of Sennedjem is discovered.
• 1905–1909: Ernesto Schiaparelli excavates for the Turin museum.
• 1922–1951: Bernard Bruyère carries out large-scale French excavations.

Why it matters

Most of what survives from ancient Egypt was made for kings, priests and the elite. Deir el-Medina is different: it shows working families, their wages, illnesses, quarrels, prayers and jokes in their own words. Its records also show the state struggling to pay its workers at the end of the New Kingdom, making the village a key witness to how that great age came to an end.