Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
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.
This is an extremely useful reference companion, but one that needs to be approached with specific research questions in mind, rather than a casual interest. Despite its subject, the book is entirely unillustrated – but what it lacks in images it more than makes up for in being jam-packed with detail, and it will remain a standard reference work for many years to come.
REVIEW BY CAMPBELL PRICE
Who’s Who at Deir el-Medina: A Prosopography of the Necropolis Workmen during the Ramesside Period
by Benedict G Davies
Abercromby Press, 2026 (revised and augmented 2nd edition)
ISBN 978-1-912246-36-6
Hardback, £79.95
