Deir el-Medina

ABSTRACT: This video re-enactment draws upon preserved late Dynasty 20 papyri and other data regarding robberies of royal tombs in the West Bank of Thebes and the Valley of the Kings, including official accusations of corruption within all levels of society from the pharaoh’s tomb builders (at Deir el-Medina), to other towns persons, the police, officials, priests, and even the mayor of West Thebes.  This documentary response sheet contains a series of sequential questions drawn from the video, TLC: Ancient Egyptians, episode 2: Tomb Robbers (shown in-class; also available online via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAqXqsXcTds [50 minutes]).  These sequential questions aim to maximize both student attention to various pertinent points made throughout the documentary and greater retention of the materials covered by the documentary.  In addition, the documentary has been vetted for overall content accuracy (albeit updated and/or corrected in-class), and selected to provide supplementary visual aids (e.g., images of regions, sites, finds, and other materials; re-enactments), and other data to aid in student comprehension of the course lectures and readings from the textbooks. REVISED: Adding time marker for each question, plus value for reflection question (March 2017).

Much may be inferred about item S.8391, a folding cubit rod that belonged to Kha (TT 8, 18 Dyn.), by analyzing the results of the measurement survey conducted in 2011 from the perspective of woodwork.
When Schiaparelli discovered the rod, it was folded inside a leather bag with handles. The extremely rare folding cubit rod was loved by Kha, who was the overseer of works in Deir el-Medina and its related sites, where it was in practical use. This rod folds in half with a simple bronze hinge at the center; there are absolutely no inscriptions. The carved tally marks are only rough divisions into palms and the digits, and compared with other rods, the cubit measure is somewhat long, so the rod’s precision was in doubt. However, a metrological argument concerning the differences in the values of the palms and digits is proposed based on the presumed manner in which the wooden rod was created and actually used.
The rod’s total length is 527.6mm, not greatly different from that reported by Senigalliesi in 1961. The size of each measurement interval, which Senigalliesi did not report, suggests how the rod was made. The tally marks are fine white lines; the left-hand palm is 75mm long, which is the common measurement of one palm, subdivided into four digits that vary little in size. Taking this into account, it is unthinkable that the makers lacked the ability to make tally marks accurately. The variations of values were supposedly caused by the process of creating the hinge. The center interval, including the hinge, is especially small, at (36mm + 36mm =) 72mm. For example, if we assume a play of about 3mm, a commonly used value, the center interval would become (36mm + 36mm) + 3mm = 75mm. The inclination of the lines and the variations in size, shown by arrows in Figure 3, indicates that tally marks were etched in the closed position. S.8391 can also be used as a half-cubit measure in a closed position, and the first palm on the left side can measure digits.
Traces of trial and error in remaking the hinge were found. In this study, I discovered that the clever hinge that makes this cubit rod possible satisfies two contradictory requirements to realize this rare folding rod. The appearance of this folding cubit rod, with no inscriptions and purely functional design, shows that it took incalculable effort to make it a prized instrument for the owner.
( JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 26580024)

The theme of my poster will be the story of digitization and 3D visualization of ancient Egyptian mummies from the Hrdlička Museum of Man, part of the Faculty of Science, Charles University. This project is embodied in an extensive and elaborated research in charge of National Museum – Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures which follows the previous  tradition of an anthropological examination of the ancient Egyptian mummified material in the Czech Republic (primarily the X-ray examination of the entire mummified material on the territory of the former Czechoslovakia in 1970s). The interdisciplinary project would not be possible without a collaboration between archaeology, anthropology and other natural sciences (especially those which are using computer applications as CT scan for example).

The tomb of Sennedjem is one of the best known at Deir el-Medina. Its good state of preservation and the care given by the painter in the decoration of the monument has allowed it to go down in history. However, few have discussed the author due to a lack of evidence. In this article, a hypothesis about the artists of the burial chamber is proposed and the traces that have led to them.

This article surveys questions addressed to the oracle at Deir el-Medîna, and accounts of oracular consultations in legal texts and personal letters, from the viewpoint of gender. Women are underrepresented in texts and images referring to oracular consultations, but it seems that both women and men consulted the oracle about property disputes, whereas men also resorted to it to solve issues related to their work.


I also discuss O Berlin P 10629, where a woman consults the oracle about a family property dispute. The goods her mother took away from her may be family property, in which case the petitioner is asking the oracle to establish the value of these objects and confirm her future inheritance rights. Alternatively, the daughter may be asking the oracle to establish the truth if the mother is making a false claim to her daughter’s personal property.


The editors of the Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache cannot allow me to post an offprint of my article, but they have given me kind permission to post my original manuscript (for those of you who don’t have access to the Akadamieverlag site). I have added bold red letters to mark the ZÄS pagination.

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Ritrovato perfettamente conservato nella sua tomba, il Libro dei Morti di Kha è uno dei papiri più importanti del Museo Egizio. Il testo, diviso in 33 capitoli, doveva guidare il suo proprietario nel viaggio attraverso l’Oltretomba, ricordandogli le formule da recitare per superare gli ostacoli tra lui e la vita eterna. In questo agile volume, Susanne Töpfer illustra nel dettaglio tutti gli aspetti legati al Libro dei Morti di Kha, dalla storia alla struttura del papiro, dai geroglifici alle suggestive illustrazioni, facendo luce sulle credenze della religione egizia.

Butehamun was one of the most famous scribes involved in the building of the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings, and a member of the most illustrious family of scribes there. Butehamun presided over the closure of the Valley and the workers’ village of Deir elMedina, and the move from building new tombs to the preserving and moving (some would say plundering) of the mummies left behind, marking the transition from the New Kingdom to the Third Intermediate Period, as Egypt splintered into what were essentially two realms. By studying the primary sources associated with Butehamun, including letters, reburial ‘dockets’, graffiti, the apparently unique decorations on Butehamun’s coffin, and the finds at his excavated house in Medinet Habu, this paper investigates what can be learned about Butehamun and the reburial project. Some of the sources seem to indicate he experienced some kind of religious crisis, which may have been brought on by feelings of guilt over his treatment of the royal mummies, two of whom were worshipped as gods in Deir el-Medina.

Making full use of the thousands of documentary texts preserved from Deir el-Medina and its environs, this Handbook explores the methods used by the artisans in the design and creation of exquisitely-crafted tombs for their royal masters, as well as revealing the minutiae of everyday working life in the royal tombs of the Ramesside period. It has also mined this unique treasure trove of documentation in order to delve deeply into the colourful world of life within an ancient Egyptian community. It presents a society in microcosm, founded upon a highly developed system of personal piety and spirituality, an incredibly intricate and thriving network of personal business dealings, and a local legal system designed to dispense justice when the moral code was deemed to have been violated. Also featuring in this book are many well-known personalities whose actions (good or bad) are indelibly etched on the history of the village.

The volume presents ceramic material received in 1937 as a donation from the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, originating from its excavations at Deir el-Medina and held currently in the collections of the National Museum in Prague (Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures). The core of the volume is the analytical catalogue of the ceramic finds, mostly complete vessels, accompanied by the original inventory, discussion of the marks preserved on some of the vessels, a detailed analysis of a single imported Mycenaean stirrup jar, as well as results of investigations into the contents of some of the vessels. Results of the individual analyses are evaluated and interpreted in the final chapter. Until recently, pottery from this collection received only limited scholarly attention. Over the past decades, several pieces were presented to both scholarly and general public by means of series of exhibitions, either dedicated to ancient Egypt in general, or to Deir el-Medina in particular. However, for the first time, this volume presents now the Deir el-Medina pottery collection to broader readership in its entirety.

Since ancient Egyptians seldom mentioned their age, it is difficult to identify elder women at Deir el-Medîna, although women who can be dated to two chronologically distant points, women depicted with white hair or known to have had grandchildren or several grown children, and the mummies of elder women indicate that some women in this community lived to a good old age.
This paper lists the tasks known to have been performed by women at Deir el-Medîna, outlines the requirements for doing such tasks (skill, knowledge, strength, etc.), and attempts to assess how growing older could have affected the performance of these tasks. Tasks requiring a great deal of physical effort may have become difficult, although skills that improved with practice and experience might have given elder women an advantage in some cases.

El objetivo del presente artículo es hacer una revisión de la iconografía del templo de Hathor en Deir el-Medina, así como de su conjunto como espacio de expresión artística para un fin religioso. Se trata de un estudio no exhaustivo de la iconografía del templo a través de las fuentes primarias y secundarias, prestando especial atención al estudio de las escenas de ofrenda. La iconografía del templo es una prueba de su importancia durante los ritos de Djeme y de la «Bella Fiesta del Valle», así como de la legitimación del poder de los reyes Ptolomeos.

The aim of this article is to review the iconography of the Temple of Hathor in Deir el-Medina, as well its role as a space of artistic expression for a religious purpose. It is a non-exhaustive study of the iconography of the temple through primary and secondary sources, with a special analysis of the offering scenes. The iconography of the temple is a proof of its importance during the Djeme rites and the «Beautiful Feast of the Valley», and legitimation of the power of the Ptolemaic kings.

Relatively few scholars have published on the human remains from Deir el-Medina, despite the wealth of information bioarchaeological research can contribute to our understanding of daily life in the village. This study examines health and disease at Deir el-Medina through research on the human remains from TT 291, which I examined as part of the 2012-2014 IFAO mission at Deir el-Medina. These remains most likely comprise the extended family network of Iry-Nefer and date from the 19th to the 21st dynasties. A detailed analysis of physiological stress in the skeletal remains indicates that men at Deir el-Medina consistently would have experienced more health problems than women, and that this increase in physiological stress began in childhood and extended into adulthood. Epidemiological data and texts from Deir el-Medina offer several viable explanations for the health patterns evidence in the human remains. Textual evidence from medical papyri and seasonal morbidity patterns in absence records suggest that short-term infectious diseases, such as those causing gastrointestinal problems, were key factors influencing these patterns of health in the villagers.

The authors look at the Deir el-Medina evidence in the Egyptian Museum of Turin against the backdrop of its archaeological context and of archive records related to Schiaparelli’s early-twentieth-century excavation of the site, singling out several case studies to exemplify potentially fruitful approaches to a holistic study of this evidence.
After an introductory overview (Sections 1 and 2), in Section 3 Federico Poole investigates unprovenanced artifacts from the early-nineteenth-century Drovetti collection. By crosschecking historical-artistic and archaeological evidence against prosopographical information or the results of later, better-documented explorations, several of these artifacts — including stelae, shabtis and votive statuettes — can be traced to their owners and/or probable find-spot. In Section 4, Paolo Del Vesco reconstructs the history of the excavations of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Egypt, directed by Ernesto Schiaparelli, at Deir
el-Medina (1905, 1906, 1908–1909) on the basis of a variety of archive documents, including inventories,
reports, drawings, and photographs. He locates the areas explored by the mission and follows the progress of the excavation with the gradual unearthing of its principal finds, tapping the potential of the documentation to precisely localize the places of origin of some, including a stela of Amenmesse, a Demotic archive, and chapel seats, and shedding new light on others, such as several large storage jars decorated with Aegean motifs.

The Goddess Renenutet, worshiped from the Old Kingdom until the Ptolemaic Period, is the subject of a vast literature, but With the only exception of Frédéric Mougenot6, a historical approach to the study of Renenutet seems to be missing: scholars usually tend to describe her worship through the ages without making a temporal distinction.
My contribution tries to determine the features that influence the perception of this deity in the private worship and popular piety at Thebes between the 18th and 20th Dynasty, through the context analysis, the iconography and, whenever is possible, through her epithets.

The aim of Professor Kenneth Kitchen's magisterial Ramesside Inscriptions is simple-to make available the principal historical and biographical texts of the Ramesside age (c.1300-1070 bc) in a comprehensive, compact and accurate edition that should be comprehensive but handy to use. It does not, however, include purely literary, ritual and funerary texts. This book presents the hieroglyphic texts from the long, prosperous and relatively well-sourced reign of Ramesses II (c.1279-1213 bc). The previous volume (II) made available the 'official' and royal records issued or engraved in the king's name, personifying (as he did) the effective government of ancient Egypt for his time. Here, by contrast, we have records that concern primarily , or were left us by, the king's subjects at all levels of society, from viziers and viceroys at the head of the royal administration (along with priesthoods and the military) down through society's echelons to the workmen who laboured in the royal tombs in Western Thebes (based in Deir el-Medina village) and the humble folk that served them. For Deir el-Medina, both collective ('official') records and the mementos of individuals and families have been kept together , not to split up data that in effect belong together. First published in twenty-eight individual fascicles between 1978 and 1980 by B. H. Blackwell (Oxford), this volume is reprinted here for the first time in a single, handsome, book.

Quest'opera è distribuita con Licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione 4.0 Internazionale This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Qualunque parte di questa pubblicazione può essere riprodotta, memorizzata in un sistema di recupero dati o trasmessa in qualsiasi forma o con qualsiasi mezzo, elettronico o meccanico, senza autorizzazione, a condizione che se ne citi la fonte. Any part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission provided that the source is fully credited. Edizioni Ca' Foscari -Digital Publishing Università Ca' Foscari Venezia Dorsoduro 3246, 30123 Venezia http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/ | [email protected] 1a edizione giugno 2018 ISBN 978-88-6969-232-1 [ebook] ISBN 978-88-6969-251-2 [print]

Available online: https://rivista.museoegizio.it/article/the-turin-papyrus-online-platform-tpop-an-introduction/     

In recent years, scholarly communities as well as the general public have been increasingly requesting open access to museum collections, prompting institutions to offer online catalogues, mostly of selected objects, in some cases even of their complete collections. Major Egyptian papyrus collections, however, have so far been extremely slow in adopting this open-access approach. Until recently, this was also true of the Museo Egizio in Turin, which houses one of the largest collections of Egyptian antiquities worldwide.

The TPOP project aims to conserve, document, digitize and contextualize hundreds of papyrus manuscripts and thousands of fragments in a newly created online platform. This platform will enable scholars to work collaboratively on the material and will provide a straightforward publication outlet for both the scholarly and the general public. It aims to generate value beyond the mere preservation of material culture. The virtual “restoration” of papyri by digitally reconstructing them and joining fragments online makes possible what physical restoration does not allow, namely, the long-term preservation of written cultural heritage and its accessibility by anyone from anywhere and at any time.

ABSTRACT: The Valley of the Kings contains many royal and private burials from the New Kingdom, with continuing discoveries of new tombs, caches, huts, walling systems, and other features.  This necropolis is inextricably linked to a broader ritual and secular landscape in West Thebes, from which we have a patchwork of earlier and later occupation, desert routes, other royal tombs, memorial and cult temples, processional routes, palaces and villas, harbor basins and waterways, private cemeteries, and a main town and a workmen’s village serving the production, maintenance, and security of both royal and private tombs.  Remote sensing includes diverse space-, aerial-, and ground-based technologies (e.g., WorldView; ASTER; LiDAR; Thermography; GPR; Electrical Resistivity), which are improving continuously and offer a cost-effective and efficient means of detecting surface, sub-surface, and buried sites, structures, and features in this region.  This remote sensing study has located a huge, sub-surface structure at Qurnet Murai that is suggestive of a Coptic monastic complex, and hut clusters elsewhere.  UPDATE: This penultimate draft copy excludes the latest minor additions, including a brief statement confirming the presence of visible surface/subsurface architecture at Qurnet Murai, which was observed during the authors' brief trip to Deir el-Medineh in late December 2014.  Published in late December 2015 / early January 2016.

The purpose of Professor Kenneth Kitchen’s magisterial Ramesside Inscriptions is simple—to make available the principal historical and biographical texts of the Ramesside age (c.1300–1070 bc) in a comprehensive, compact and accurate edition that should be comprehensive but handy to use. It does not, however, include purely literary, ritual and funerary texts.
Almost all of the texts in this volume come from the very beginning of this new era in Egypt’s history at the beginning of the 13th century bc—either from the reign of Ramesses I, founding father of the Egyptian 19th Dynasty, or that of his dynamic son and successor Sethos I. As Ramesses I reigned only into his second year, and the reign of Sethos I lasted between eleven and fifteen years, virtually everything here dates within a span of only twelve/seventeen years, at most.
Arranged by category, this hieroglyphic edition covers foreign wars and diplomacy (esp. dated), then internal affairs (dated documents, special topics or groups), a geographical series of royal monuments (from north to south), the principal documents of the reign (papryi, ostraca, letters, legal documents, and the like), in addition to further inscriptions pertaining to the royal family. A further twenty-eight categories are devoted to the private monuments of the principal administrators of the Empire, along with the vast store of documentation pertaining to the activities of the royal artisans from the village of Deir el-Medina in western Thebes.
First published in eight individual fascicles between 1969 and 1975 by B. H. Blackwell (Oxford), this volume is here re-printed for the first time in a single, handsome, book.

"The study of the Household Religion in Ancient Egypt is based on tex-tual and material sources, though the greatest contribution comes from these latter. However, to the relevance of these sources is added a large number of difficulties that must be overcome in order to maximize the information available.
To illustrate these difficulties and simultaneously the contribution of the archaeological sources, this article presents to concrete examples; The Box Beds and the clay figurines. Through these cases it is possible to real-ize the interpretation difficulties when dealing with material sources, the relevance of comparison, but also the diversity of information they pro-vide."

Mohammed Ali EtmAn, Mostafa REzk ibRAhim & Pierre tAllEt Une nouvelle statue du fils royal et grand des voyants Ahmès. 9-25 Matthieu bEgon Note sur la tablette MacGregor 27-30 Matthieu bEgon Une mention d'Iry-Hor dans le sud du désert Oriental 31-36 Emmanuel lARozE Le dessin des portes monumentales aux époques ptolémaïque et romaine 37-61

Publication of a stela commemorating the vizier To of Ramesses III excavated at Medinet Habu dated to after year 2 of Ramesses V or VI. It is concluded that the stela was commissioned by Nebnefer in honor of his forefathers Bakenwerel and Pentaweret (all of whom are shown on the stela).

Three unpublished papyri kept in the Turin Egyptian Museum are presented: pCGT 54041, 54042 and 54043, dating from the 19th-20th dynasty,
and coming from Deir el Medina. These manuscripts are important for many reasons: they are the oldest versions of the Ritual of the Opening of
the mouth written on papyrus, and they present a variety of applications of this ritual which is otherwise attested at a much later time, in the
Graeco-Roman Period. Papyrus CGT 54041 is for the benefit of a private person, called Pay, while pCGT 54042 and pCGT 54043 are for the benefit
of gods, Amun-Ra, and Amun-Ra together with Ptah-Sokar- Osiris respectively.

Ancestor worship—both royal and private (i.e., non-royal)—formed a major part in the religious life of the inhabitants of the ancient Egyptian settlement of Deir el-Medina, and images of royal ancestors figured prominently on their private monuments. This book focuses on the post-mortem deification of royal figures—the means by which worship was enacted, what it meant for the participants involved, and the relationship between these “deities” and the living. It also discusses the position of deified royal ancestors within the ancient Egyptian divine hierarchy, as well as the effect that social status had on the degree of access that an individual could have to his/her gods. The evidence used is mainly restricted to material dating from the New Kingdom (18th–20th Dynasties), ranging from scenes in tombs at Deir el-Medina to personal stelae, offering-tables, door-jambs, and non-literary sources written on papyri and ostraca from the village. This fascinating new work also contains a detailed catalogue of those monuments from Deir el-Medina on which evidence for royal ancestor worship can be detected.

T he start of the 19th Dynasty (circa 1292 BC) not only marked the beginning of a new ruling line, the Ramessides, but it was also a time of remarkable innovation that developed, in part, as a complex reaction to the dramatic cultural and religious changes brought about by Akhenaten during the Amarna period and as a means of politically legitimizing a new dynasty with non-royal origins. This early Ramesside creative spirit impacted the spheres of religion, art, as well as the ideology of Egyptian kingship and queenship, and the funerary realm was one of the chief settings for this upsurge of new ideas. Seti I, the second king of Dynasty 19, effectively redesigned the architectural and decorative template of pharaohs' tombs, a model that was largely followed, though with variations, SCRIBE SPRING AMERICAN RESEARCH CENTER IN EGYPT