preview

Deir El-Medina Research Paper

Decent Essays

When one looks to the village of Deir el-Medina one is given a few indications of every day life of Ancient Egyptians. Mainly workmen and their families occupied the village (except when Akhenaten was in power). Evidence from this village gives us insight into the economy of everyday man in ancient Egypt as well as how the workers lived. We are even given evidence of a strike. All of this cuts away the modern misconception of Egyptian workers in the guise of slaves. Deir el-Medina was not a place in which a king was to lounge and live. It is a place in which workers and craftsman lived and worked on tombs for not only the Valley of the Kings but also the Valley of the Queens as well. You could perhaps call these people middle class for they had no royal ties yet were fairly well taken care of. The state provided anything from food and water to raw materials and tools that were needed for work in the tombs. It was a full community so not all of the inhabitants worked on the tombs alone. Many had other tasked they tended to. Among them many would make items to barter with in the surrounding Theban areas. The village was a densely populated one with houses typically consisting of anywhere from four …show more content…

When there were larger tombs being built of course there was a larger number of inhabitants. When there wasn’t as much monumental crafting happening then the number of inhabitants fell. However the most interesting of all of this is that near the end of the reign of Rameses III the works at Deir el-Medina went on a strike. Which to many modern people may sound absurd for ancient Egyptian workers. However these people were paid workers of the state and when they did not receive their rations they went on strike. The workers did not receive the wrath of the king. They received their rations. For they were not slaves and simply were everyday Egyptians trying to survive and live in an ancient

Get Access