ANCIENT EGYPT | Deir el-Medina and the artists of the afterlife

Everyone knows the Valley of the Kings, which houses the burials of the pharaohs of the 18th, 19th and 20th dynasty; not everyone, however, knows Deir el-Medina, the village where workers and artisans responsible for the construction of the royal tombs lived. This village is a very important source of documentary information regarding urban planning, social, funerary customs, and literature in ancient Egypt.

A village hidden in a small valley, between the spurs of the Thebes mountain and the hill of Gurnet Murai, Deir el-Medina owes its present name to a small monastery, built not far from the Ptolemaic temple consecrated to Hathor-Maat. The Arabic toponym that indicates this place, in fact, means “monastery of the city”.

The layout of the village

The complex includes about 120 houses and is surrounded by a wall, while inside there are walls that separate the different districts; from the point of view of the dimensions it is rather modest, but what is striking is precisely the careful planning of the spaces, used for housing and for public use, a division that guaranteed the isolation of the community from the outside, fundamental for the protection of the royal necropolis.

Deir el-Medina was inhabited by about 500 people, divided into two sections through a main road running from north to south; on the spot there was the team of “workers”, but actually they were not considered as such, since they were made up of scribes, painters, engravers, sculptors, draftsmen, that we would refer to them today as “artists”, flanked by the workforce of unskilled workers, quarrymen, cement workers and miners, who took turns periodically.

The houses were made of raw bricks (bricks whose mixture of clay and chopped straw was left to dry in the sun), on a base of rough stone that rested directly on the ground, without foundations, and they are all very similar.

Those of the workers, despite being small and simple, are composed of an entrance hall, where an altar was located for domestic offerings, as a place of welcome and prayer. Continuing the exploration, we find a main room with a high ceiling, supported by a central column and equipped with a window with a grate for lighting, then a living room, a kitchen with a cellar below and, finally, the terrace, a place of meeting and refreshments.

 

Religion come into houses

Ancestor worship at home was very important, and so was the religion in general; we have the cults of Osiris, the God of the Underworld and prince of eternity as he reflects the incarnation of the life cycle; Ptah, the God of Creator and patron of cratftmens; Thoth, god-ibis patron of the scribes; Hathor, the celestial cow that swallows the sun at sunset to give it life in the morning, as well as the “lady of the necropolis”, who welcomes the dead into the afterlife, as well as Amon-Ra, king of all the gods of the Egyptian pantheon. The devotion to these deities was manifested through some stelae, in which various hymns and prayers appear: forgiveness for sins, as well as protection and health are asked.

A school in Deir el-Medina

In addition to stelae, Deir el-Medina has left us many other evidence, not only administrative documents, but also private ones, mainly in the form of ostraka (pottery shards). There are scholastic ostrakas, which therefore attest to the presence of a school (for painters and scribes) in this village, and which report passages from the Kemit, a text that contains models of letters, advice and rules of life, useful for future scribes .

Among the literary texts reproduced in these ostraka, there are mainly passages from the “Satire of the Trades” and the “Teaching of Amenemhat”. The Satire of the Trades includes writings that exalt the virtues of one’s trade, the scribe, compared to other trades, often described in sarcastic terms; this trade is therefore exalted, since an official like this is considered a true teacher of life. The “Teachings”, on the other hand, are a very widespread typology of texts, in which life advice, instructions and teachings are given, in fact, from father to son.

 

The democratization of funerary architecture

The maximum artistic expressiveness, however, must be sought in the tombs of the workers: in this period we are witnessing the birth of a real workers ‘ necropolis, in which the burials have nothing to envy to the noble tombs, in terms of decoration. Originally, there was no pre-established overall plan, only with the nineteenth dynasty the family tombs will be concentrated on the north-western side of the necropolis.

These are tombs with so-called “composite” architecture: the superstructure consists of a small pyramid (hence the definition of “pyramid tomb”), built in poor and perishable material, which demonstrates the democratization process started with the transcription, on papyrus, of the “Book of the Dead; then there is a hypogeum with an underground room, covered by a brick vault. The reliefs and pictorial works on the walls are often of the highest quality and, rare in Egypt, we are witnessing the use of “fresco” painting by the pisé technique (clay mixed with mud on which plaster is applied, which serves as a basis for painting).

 

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