Deir el-Medina is a New Kingdom (18th-20th dynasty) residential village of the workmen who built and decorated Egyptian tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The town, first laid out under the Pharaoh Tuthmosis I (ca 1504-1492 BC), lay between the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens, and was used by most of the New Kingdom pharaohs with the exception of the heretic Ahkenaten, whose tomb builders were from Amarna.
Excavations at the site have revealed about 70 houses along a winding road and a few short alleys, and a cemetery. Found within the cemetery and site was a large library of written documents, religious texts, poetry, economic transactions, work journals and recipes, in the form of papyrus, ostraca, graffiti and carved stone stele.
Deir el-Medina's Written Record
The written record at Deir el-Medina include such details of the work as how many workmen were assigned to a tomb, the length of the work week, and what to do if they finished a tomb before the pharaoh died--they were set to work on the tomb for the pharaoh's queens and children. They also contain personal writings, such as complaints about the scribe Qenherkhepeshef, known to have worked for Rameses II (Ramses the Great), and descriptions of what may have been the first workers' strike in history.
Sources
Meskell, Lynn 1999 Archaeologies of life and death. American Journal of Archaeology 103:181-199.
Meskell, Lynn 1998 An archaeology of social relations in an Egyptian village. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 5(3):209-243.
Further information on Deir el-Medina may be found at Kent Week's Theban Mapping project and Marie Parsons' article in Tour Egypt. And be sure to try your hand at the Deir el-Medina Trivia Quiz, while you're at it.
