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Peasant
Farmers |
Craftsmen | Scribes | Priests
| Back
to Life
in Ancient Egypt |
The skills of
the craftsmen
Craftsmen in Ancient Egypt were usually trained and skilled labourers. Well
respected within the community, they led comfortable lifestyles, although their
lifestyle and social standing would ultimately depend on their skills and
experience. Craftsmen usually worked together in workshops, and
depending on the nature of their craft, would be based in either temple or
palace workshops. Those catering towards the local community were based in
smaller local workshops.
Craftsmen involved with the decoration of a royal tomb and
the production of funerary equipment and goods for the tomb would often live on
site in purpose built villages for the workmen. Well known and excavated
workmen's villages include:
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Deir el-Medina
This New Kingdom workman's village was located in Thebes and around one
hundred or so people, including children, lived in the community, together
with a significant number of "foreigners". In addition to the
names of the viziers and other high officials who oversaw from Thebes, the
names, families, and other details of the workmen’s lives are known. The
tomb of Sennedjem and his wife and family is probably one of the best
known.Deir el-Medina
has produced an incredible wealth of material providing invaluable
information about the way these people lived: their marriages,
inheritances, divorces, legal business and advice from the gods. Scribes
would use papyri and pieces of limestone (ostraca) as notepads, and
thousands of these were discovered inscribed with letters, notes, records,
and many other kinds of evidence concerning the lives of the men and their
families, most dating from the 19th and 20th dynasties. |
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Kahun
This Middle Kingdom worker's village is located at Fayoum Oasis, at the
site of the Pyramid of el-Lahun (Hawara) built by Senosret II. Originally
excavated by Flinders Petrie in 1889 and 1890, the site revealed many
treasures of daily life in the Middle Kingdom. Although principally a
workman's town, the town housed several different social classes. Kahun
would have been a complete functioning unit, accommodating doctors,
lawyers, scribes and priests as well as those trained for manual labour.
There were workers' houses, houses for the “middle classes” and larger
mansion style houses.
After a century of occupation the town was deserted.
Whatever the reason, the inhabitants of the town left suddenly,
practically overnight, leaving behind many of everyday belongings,
including high-quality tools, papyri, serving-dishes, 'magical' wands and
masks. |
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Giza
The Old Kingdom worker's villages of the Giza plateau are currently being
excavated. Since the reign of Snefru, an entire town was associated with
each pyramid, full of people employed to maintain the king’s afterlife.
New villages and agricultural estates were founded, specifically to supply
the pyramid cult and those who worked for it.
To build and
maintain the pyramids an enormous support system must have existed.
Production, facilities for food, pottery, building materials, and
supplies, storage depots, and housing for the workmen and those
responsible for servicing the pyramid temples were necessary. Evidence of
a sewage system was uncovered. The oldest known paved street, with
drainage facilities, and the oldest known hypostyle hall have been found
here. |
Buried in style -
the workers' tombs
Although nowhere to the scale of a royal burial, tomb
workers and craftsmen from Deir el-Medina were buried in often elaborate
and highly decorated tombs.
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| The
beautiful wall paintings from the tomb of Sennedjem, Deir el-Medina |
The tomb of the worker Sennedjem has a tiny
underground chamber that contained his body and that of his wife and
several relatives - twenty in all, nine enclosed in coffins, eleven simply
wrapped in bandages. The nine coffins housed the bodies of Sennedjem and
his wife lyneferti, his son Khonsu and his wife Tamaket, and his other
four children. The coffins and funerary furniture found in the vault are
exquisite pieces, and recall the high quality of the tomb paintings. Sennedjem's tomb was directly facing the house in which he had lived, in the
new quarter of the village of the tomb workmen, at Deir el-Medina. Deir
el-Medina was known as the "Place of Truth", and the workers and craftmen
who lived in the village held the
title "Servant in the Place of Truth".
Discover life as a scribe in Ancient Egypt >>
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