Tour Egypt reader Stephen
McLaughlin
submitted this picture of
a pair of tomb deities from
Deir el Medina.
Deir el-Medina was a community
of workmen and their families,
supervisors and foremen and
their families, all dedicated to
building the great tombs of the
Egyptian Kings. These workers
cut and prepared the tombs in
the
Valley of the Kings and the
Valley of the Queens,
both on the West Bank at Thebes.
The site has yielded a wealth
of textual material providing
information about the way these
people lived, their marriages,
inheritances, divorces, how they
sought legal redress, advice
from the gods. In addition to
papyri, large flakes of
limestone were used by scribes
as note pads. Thousands of these
ostraca were found inscribed
with letters, notes, records,
and many other kinds of evidence
concerning the lives of the men
and their families, most dating
from the
19th and
20th
dynasties.
