A site as intensely studied as Deir el-Medina, with its wealth of written sources, has produced a huge literature – the navigation of which is immeasurably eased by the present volume. Originally published in the Dutch Egyptologische Uitgaven series in 1999, this revised and augmented volume incorporates a quarter-century of discoveries and publications better to understand the families of the workers who built the royal tombs at Western Thebes in the Ramesside Period.
The book is arranged hierarchically. The ‘gang’ who quarried and decorated the royal tombs were, like a ship’s crew, divided into the left and right ‘sides’, a bifurcation of labour that accounts for visual discrepancies you can still spot on opposite walls in royal tombs. Each side was headed by a Chief Workman, and these two leaders were joined by a Senior Scribe to form a troika that reported to the Vizier about progress on the royal tomb.
Davies traces chronologically the families of the Chief Workmen, their deputies (usually an eldest son) and senior scribes, before examining specialist draughtsmen, sculptors and guardians, and finally addressing the families of ordinary workmen. Individual names may be fairly well-known, such as Sennedjem, or Paneb, the notorious adulterer. But the ‘gang’ at Deir el-Medina was both relatively small and disproportionately highly literate, so it is possible to trace the names, connections, and families of even relatively minor players in the life of the community.
