What happened to Pharaoh's workers?

[Adsos Letter]

Source: Al-Ahram Weekly
Jill Kamil




It appears that the workers, or should we say workmen and artisans, the people who built the rock-cut tombs of the Pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings from about 1500 BC onwards, may have later been employed on a project aimed at "emptying" and "recycling" their contents -- or that, at least, is what Rob Demaree of Leiden University thinks.

In his recent talk at the Dutch Institute in Cairo, Demaree said that an impressive number of texts on papyri, ostraca and graffiti had provided researchers with extensive information on the workers' community at Deir Al-Medina, especially from the Ramasside Period and the second half of the New Kingdom, but that in spite of all our knowledge we did not know what happened at the end of this period when the Ramasside line of kings was no longer in power and no more royal tombs were built. "Now, thanks to a largely unpublished dossier of texts, we are gradually beginning to understand what happened to them," he said.

Demaree, who studied Egyptology in Leiden, Copenhagen and Oxford, and who obtained his PhD on "Ancestor Worship in Ancient Egypt", was aware that not all members of the audience were au fait with the earlier phases of the workmen's village on the Theban necropolis, let alone the final phase, so he started his presentation by outlining what had taken place earlier. To recap, he said that the settlement was founded some time in the early 18th Dynasty, in the reign of Tuthmosis I (1550--1525 BC), the first Pharaoh definitely to be buried in the Valley of the Kings, and that in its earliest stage there was no resident community -- just a village of some 40 houses to accommodate itinerant workmen hired for short periods of time. Later the settlement was expanded to accommodate a special group of artisans -- "expert artists" might be a better word -- and, from literary evidence recovered from the village, it appears that more than 100 people, including children, lived in the village, off and on, for several centuries.

"The situation changed after the Amarna period, in the 19th and 20th dynasties (1307--1070 BC) when the workers who plied their trade in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens lived, worked and died at Deir Al-Medina, and built large and finely-decorated tombs for themselves," Demaree said. He went on to explain that texts had survived which told us about their lives and the organisation of their work.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/938/he1.htm

And with that I bid all you patient souls a good evening/morning; I hope everyone's upcoming day goes better than they expect. I have to return to finishing The Puritan Lectureships so I can get on to the next book, as my comp exams are rapidly approaching. This news-dump always affords me a nice break in my reading day, which usually lasts till about 2:30 am PST.

:hi:

[BlooInBloo]

1. They died.

This has been another episode of Simple Answers To Simple Questions.

:rofl:

[ddeclue]

2. They were laid off when Cleopatra merged with Marc Antony?

:rofl:

[aquart]

4. Honestly, not as funny as you think.

[ddeclue]

5. Considering I've been laid off since 12/15/2008 and

went through several jobs like this in the last year, yeah it's funny to me...

You've got to laugh man or you'll end up crying...

:rofl:

[aquart]

3. Those walls are magnificent.

[ashling]

6. So they became grave robbers?

may have later been employed on a project aimed at "emptying" and "recycling" their contents

:rofl:

now, having made that comment, let me apologize for killing your thread ... my posts seem to do that
:shrug: