Egypt: Deir el-Medina, A Feature Tour Egypt Story Deir el-Medina By Marie Parsons Deir el-Medina, like Kahun and the town being uncovered at Giza , is a community of workmen and their families, supervisors and foremen and their families, all dedicated to building the great tombs of the Egyptian Kings. The image of hundreds, perhaps thousands of toiling slaves, whipped by overseers, seems seared into the modern consciousness, and "everyone" is convinced that the despots who ruled Egypt with iron greedy fists must have built their wealth and glory on the bleeding backs of this tortured labor. Nothing can be farther from truth (except perhaps that aliens in space ships pressed a button and built the Giza complex, and other great monuments.) The more work being done on these villages sounds a clear message that, while they worked hard, these villages were made up of mostly free and willing citizens, doing their part to ensure the afterlife of their King. The Giza town dates from the Old Kingdom , Kahun from the Middle Kingdom, and Deir el-Medina from the New Kingdom . In each, we can see the daily lives and some of the larger politics that fascinate us so about Egypt. 1 / 20 Egypt: Deir el-Medina, A Feature Tour Egypt Story Deir el-Medina, which in Arabic means "monastery of the city", was called Pa-demi by the workmen, simply, "the town," though it was also called Set Maa, "the place of truth." is one of the most well-preserved ancient settlements in all Egypt. It lies near Thebes and was a highly skilled community of craftsmen who passed their expertise on from father to son. The community included the workmen and their wives, children and other dependents, as well as coppersmiths, carpenters, potters, basket-makers, and a part-time physician. The workers belonged to what we today would call the middle class, having no royal or noble connections, and much of their work was unglamorous. These workers cut and prepared the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and in the Valley of the Queens , bo th on the West Bank at Thebes , and were administered directly by the vizier . They were better educated and better paid than the vast majority of their contemporaries elsewhere in Egypt. A number of the inhabitants augmented their income by producing furniture and funerary items for surrounding communities, and so they bought and sold in the west Theban markets, intermarried with the Theban population, and visited the Theban temples. The village was located southeast of the Valley, on the Nile side of the western mountains, in a barren, waterless pocket in the hills. One hundred or more individuals including children lived in the community, and more than 30 foreign names have been identified there. 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. 2 / 20 Egypt: Deir el-Medina, A Feature Tour Egypt Story The site has yielded a wealth of textual material providing information about the way these people lived, their marriages, inheritances, divorces, how they sought legal redress, advice from the gods. In addition to papyri, large flakes of limestone were used by scribes as note pads. Thousands of these ostraca were found 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. For much of the time Deir el-Medina was a community of women. They were entrusted with many responsibilities of their own, and in one case a foreman’s wife paid out the workmen’s wages in her husband’s absence. Many of the wives may have been literate, since messages were sent to them at times, when it is doubtful that scribes were present, who might have translated the messages. Many of the women also held religious titles such as chantress, singer or priestess, including duties in major temple cults outside the village. There are stelae showing women making offerings venerating their ancestors. At least one example is recorded of the wife of a scribe who willed distribution of goods from her estate to her sons, indicating that women had legal rights. The Town At its height, Deir el-Medina comprised an area with seventy homes within, another 40-50 outside the wall. 3 / 20 Egypt: Deir el-Medina, A Feature Tour Egypt Story The original village was bisected by one main street which ran from north to south, but a few side alleys were created when the village was expanded. Outside the north gate lay the community well, filled by water-carriers from the Nile. The entrance to the town was at the north. The houses were lined up along either side of the main street, and each opened directly on to it. The original houses were of mud-brick and had no foundations. Later houses were single-story, built on rubble with basements of stone or brick. An average house consisted of four rooms. The chief feature of the entrance hall was a large brick structure in one corner. It was approached by a flight of stairs. The block was topped by a brick superstructure rising almost to the ceiling so that it resembled a large canopied four-poster brick bed. The exterior of the block could be plain or decorated in frescoes. The most common decoration depicts the god Bes , deity associated with childbirth. It has been assumed that the brick bed was used for childbearing, but it may also have been merely an altar. This room also contained niches for offering-tables, stelae or ancestral busts and may have been an informal chapel for the family. The second room was loftier than the first. Its main feature was a low platform of mud-brick with higher projecting sides at each end, with the top being plastered and whitewashed. It served as a seating area by day and bed at night. The room also contained a false-door stela dedicated to a favored deity, and there might be more niches for shrines or stelae. Underneath the platform might be a small cellar to store household goods. Child burials have been discovered under some of these rooms. The room was lit by windows set high in the walls. Off this main living-room were one or two small rooms which may have served as store-rooms, work areas and sleeping quarters for the females of the household. At the back of the house 4 / 20 Egypt: Deir el-Medina, A Feature Tour Egypt Story was a walled open area serving as the kitchen, where grain was ground into flour to be baked into bread. The Workers The workmen were called ‘Servants of the Place of Truth’, since the ancient name of the site was Set Maat, the Place of Truth. They were known collectively as men of the gang, and divided into two gangs or iswt, Left side and Right side. This term was taken from the personnel manning a boat, and here meant perhaps depending which side of the tomb on which they worked. The term iswt signified a military-style unit working under a foreman who controlled the everyday tomb-building activity. Several scribes were in attendance to record the work that took place, worker’s absences, payments, supplies received, etc. In the middle of the reign of Ramesses II there were at least 48 men, but by the end of the reign that number was down to 32, perhaps because the tomb had been completed. In the reign of Ramesses III , 40 men were named, but in the reign of his successor Ramesses IV the gang was expanded to 120 men. But Ramesses IV ruled only 6 years and the gang was cut back to 60. Each gang consisted of stone-masons, carpenters, chief carpenters, sculptors, and draughtsmen. They were controlled by two foremen, each known as the ‘overseer of construction in the Great place’ in the 18th Dynasty , and then just the ‘chief of the gang in the Place of Truth.’ The stonecutters excavated the royal tombs in the soft limestone hills, sometimes hundred of feet into the cliffs or the valley floors. The draftsmen guided the decorations by laying out the designs and enlarged them from gridline drawings to fit the available space, checking and frequently correcting those guidelines. The painters had a wide variety of pigments available, enabling them to brush remarkable detail into the figures. 5 / 20 Egypt: Deir el-Medina, A Feature Tour Egypt Story The foremen and scribes constituted the leaders of the village, between the inhabitants and the higher authorities, including vizier and overseer of the treasury. They oversaw the removal of material from the royal storehouses for use in constructing the tomb, received and distributed the wages among the workers, sat as chief magistrates on the local court and acted as chief witnesses for oaths. They also recommended candidates for replacements in the work-force, which could sometimes be swayed by bribery. Other positions in the village were the ‘guardians of the Tomb’ who controlled the royal storehouses where the tools and other constructions materials were kept. They handed the materials over under the supervision of the foremen and scribes. The ‘door-keeper’ of the Tomb guarded the entrance to the royal tomb, acted as bailiffs and debt-collectors. There were the police, or Medjay, stationed on the west bank to prevent unauthorized entry to the tombs. They were directly under the authority of the mayor of Thebes-West.