This book investigates the family histories and relationships of the royal artisans who lived in the village of Deir el-Medîna during the Ramesside Period - from the highest ranking officials to the ordinary workman. The author has provided a unique reference work that traces the careers of the community's most important personalities. The results of his meticulous research will undoubtedly serve as an indispensable tool in the identification of individuals and in the dating and interpretation of texts from this unique Egyptian settlement.

Pharaoh's Workers focuses on the archaeological site at Deir el Medina on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor. The workers who prepared the royal tombs and lived there in what has been called "the earliest known artists' colony" left a rich store of artifacts and documents through which we can glimpse not only their working conditions and domestic activities, but also their religious beliefs and private thoughts.

The site of Deir el-Medina is unique in its particularly well-preserved archaeological remains, which represent an exceptional ensemble in Egypt (consisting of a village, a necropolis and a temple), and in the rich documentation that it has delivered across the millennia. The inhabitants of Deir el-Medina--artists as well as craftsmen--dug and decorated the hypogea of the sovereigns in the Valley of the Kings and Queens. They did not restrict the use of their talents to the only benefit of the sovereigns, but decorated, or had decorated by the most skilled amongst them, their own tombs and were buried with hundreds of cult objects and grave goods. The scribes kept archives, which constitute an incredible wealth of information for the history of the New Kingdom and the functioning of the royal sites. They also had literary interests, and some of them established libraries, which are considered among the richest of those that have survived. Walking around the site of Deir el-Medina and studying the paintings that adorn the walls of the rock tombs, the visitor will get to know the spirit of its occupants, their earthly ambitions, the religious and funerary universe of their conception of the afterlife and also the feasts of the multiple deities who composed the local pantheon. Coming upon the temple, built in the Ptolemaic period, comes as a perfect ending to this archaeological walk.

In this compelling guide and sourcebook, renowned author and scholar Michael Rice introduces us to the inhabitants of ancient Egypt, allowing us to encounter their world through their own eyes. Here are the great and the famous, from Cleopatra to Tutankhamun, but here also are the grave-robber Amenwah, Nakht the gardener and Sebaster the hairdresser. The whole arena of Egyptian life is expressed in these pages. Not only are there nearly a thousand biographies, there is also a chapter on 'Encountering Ancient Egyptians', sections on kingship and on religion, a chronology, a glossary and maps. A combination of erudite scholarship and a clear and accessible style, this volume opens up the world of the ancient Egyptians to all those with an interest in the subject in a way that has never been done before.

Cutting-edge research by twenty-four international scholars on female power, agency, health, and literacy in ancient Egypt There has been considerable scholarship in the last fifty years on the role of ancient Egyptian women in society. With their ability to work outside the home, inherit and dispense of property, initiate divorce, testify in court, and serve in local government, Egyptian women exercised more legal rights and economic independence than their counterparts throughout antiquity. Yet, their agency and autonomy are often downplayed, undermined, or outright ignored. In Women in Ancient Egypt twenty-four international scholars offer a corrective to this view by presenting the latest cutting-edge research on women and gender in ancient Egypt. Covering the entirety of Egyptian history, from earliest times to Late Antiquity, this volume commences with a thorough study of the earliest written evidence of Egyptian women, both royal and non-royal, before moving on to chapters that deal with various aspects of Egyptian queens, followed by studies on the legal status and economic roles of non-royal women and, finally, on women’s health and body adornment. Within this sweeping chronological range, each study is intensely focused on the evidence recovered from a particular site or a specific time-period. Rather than following a strictly chronological arrangement, the thematic organization of chapters enables readers to discern diachronic patterns of continuity and change within each group of women. · Clémentine Audouit, Paul Valery University, Montpellier, France · Anne Austin, University of Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri, USA · Mariam F. Ayad, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt · Romane Betbeze, Université de Genève, Switzerland, and Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France · Anke Ilona Blöbaum, Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany · Eva-Maria Engel, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany · Renate Fellinger, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK · Kathrin Gabler, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland · Rahel Glanzmann, independent scholar, Basel, Switzerland. · Izold Guegan, Swansea University, UK, and Sorbonne University, Paris, France · Fayza Haikal, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt · Janet H. Johnson, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Il, USA · Katarzyna Kapiec, Institute of the Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland · Susan Anne Kelly, Macquarie University Sydney, Sydney, Australia · AnneMarie Luijendijk, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA · Suzanne Onstine, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA · José Ramón Pérez-Accino Picatoste, Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain · Tara Sewell-Lasater, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA · Yasmin El Shazly, American Research Center in Egypt, Cairo, Egypt · Reinert Skumsnes, Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway · Isabel Stünkel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, USA · Inmaculada Vivas Sainz, National Distance Education University), Madrid, Spain · Hana Vymazalová, Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, Czeck Republic · Jacquelyn Williamson, George Mason University, Fairfax, Viriginia, USA · Annik Wüthrich, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austrian Archaeological Institute, Vienna, Austria

The non-literary Deir el-Medina ostraca texts form the main source material for this study of the women of the royal workmen's community. The life-span of the household provides the frame within which women's social roles and status are discussed by examining women's titles, actions, circumstances, as well as opinions voiced by and about women.

This book makes the hieratic ostraca from the Fitzwilliam Museum available for the first time. Most of these come from the village of Deir el-Medina near Thebes, and they include new literary texts, administrative notes, religious hymns, and copies of tomb inscriptions.

Scribal Repertoires in Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Early Islamic Period deals with the possibility of glimpsing pre-modern and early modern Egyptian scribes, the actual people who produced ancient documents, through the ways in which they organized and wrote those documents. While traditional research has focused on identifying a 'pure' or 'original' text behind the actual manuscripts that have come down to us from pre-modern Egypt, the volume looks instead at variation - different ways of saying the same thing - as a rich source for understanding the complex social and cultural environments in which scribes lived and worked, breaking with the traditional conception of variation in scribal texts as 'free' or indicative of 'corruption'. As such, it presents a novel reconceptualization of scribal variation in pre-modern Egypt from the point of view of contemporary historical sociolinguistics, seeing scribes as agents embedded in particular geographical, temporal, and socio-cultural environments. Introducing to Egyptology concepts such as scribal communities, networks, and repertoires, among others, the authors then apply them to a variety of phenomena, including features of lexicon, grammar, orthography, palaeography, layout, and format. After first presenting this conceptual framework, they demonstrate how it has been applied to better-studied pre-modern societies by drawing upon the well-established domain of scribal variation in pre-modern English, before proceeding to a series of case studies applying these concepts to scribal variation spanning thousands of years, from the languages and writing systems of Pharaonic times, to those of Late Antique and Islamic Egypt.

In The Notebook of Dhutmose Regina Hölzl, Michael Neumann and Robert Demarée document the surprising discovery and the contents of a papyrus scroll found in an ibis mummy jar in the Kunsthistorisch Museum in Vienna. The twenty-four columns of text constitute a unique notebook of the Scribe Dhutmose who is well-known as the author of administrative documents and a private correspondence. He was active as chief administrator of the institution responsible for the creation of royal tombs in Western Thebes at the end of the Ramesside Period, around 1100 BCE. The texts concern financial accounts relating to the acquisition of copper tools and weapons, but also private affairs like an inventory of his amulets and jewelry and a report about the robbery of his personal belongings.

Richard A. Fazzini has inspired and mentored many scholars of Egyptology through his tireless efforts as curator and then chairman of the Brooklyn Museum's Deptartment of Egyptian, Classical and Ancient Middle Eastern Art (ECAMEA); field archaeologist of the Pricinct of Mut at Karnak; scholar; and teacher, The 35 contributions to this volume in his honor represent the variety of Professor Fazzini's own research interests namely in ancient Egyptian art, religious iconography, and archaeology, particularly of the New Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period, and Late Period. Reflections on Professor Fazzini's scholarship and teaching are accompanied by an extensive bibliography of his works.