Women at Deir el-Medîna

The village of Deir el-Medîna, home to the expert craftsmen who excavated and decorated the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens, is a major source for everyday life in Ancient Egypt during the New Kingdom (1550-1070 bce). The village was built in the desert, near the Valley of the Kings. Its remote situation and dry climate preserved thousands of documents and artifacts from every aspect of village life: houses, tombs, chapels, furniture, grave goods, pottery, work records, receipts, letters, and love poems.1 These items provide considerable information about the tomb-builders and their families, although only a small proportion of the original material has survived. (Jac J. Janssen2 calculates that about 10 percent of the journal of the necropolis texts survived, but other text types may be less well attested.) The village was built in the late fourteenth to early thirteenth centuries, 3 and contains 68 houses, with other houses beyond the village wall.4 It was built over an earlier village dating to about 1500.5 Most of the information about the New Kingdom village dates to the thirteenth to eleventh centuries; before that point, sources are meagre.6 The total population was probably about 450-500 men, women, and children, including servants.7.