Learn Secrets of Deir el-Medina Cemeteries

The necropolis of Deir al-Madina is located in the western mainland of Taiba, specifically at the southern end between the Valley of the Queens in the west and the Ramsium in the east and the Qurnat Merhi area in the south.

Zahi Hawass, the Egyptian archaeologist said that the name of the city’s monastery was called in the ancient Egyptian texts under the name “Six Maat”, which means Dar Al-Haq, and the current name of the village is due to the monastery built by the Copts in that place in the early Coptic era.

The workers who work in this village were called "those who work in the right place." Their main job was the construction of royal tombs and temples, the workers inherited their profession for their children. The workers at Deir el-Medina were pided into two groups.

The first pision operates on the right side of the cemetery, is called the Maymana Group.

The second group operates on the left side of the cemetery and is called the facilitator group.

The average number of workers per group was approximately sixty, and each group had two supervisors, in addition to the presence of a clerk responsible for the administrative side of the team, as it was responsible for organizing attendance and leaving and providing daily reports on the progress of work in cemeteries.

These reports were raised To the minister’s office or to the royal delegate; the minister usually visited the royal graves where work is being done to follow up and supervise the work. The worker used to take three days leave every month, in addition to other holidays.

The area contained many monuments, the most important of which is the cowardice of the workers, in which more than fifty ornate tombs were found and decorated with exquisite scenes, most of which date back to the age of the nineteenth and twentieth families.

The tombs of the workers in Deir al-Madinah differed from the tombs of Al-Ashraf, which were constructed on the western mainland. The pyramid facing the courtyard contains a niche in which a small statue of the deceased was depicted, represented by kneeling at times or holding another funerary painting at other times.

Inside this pyramid, there is a sacrifice booth with a domed roof, the walls of which are decorated with daily and funerary views. As for the part engraved in the ground, we may reach it through a deep well, either to the northern side in the open courtyard, or through a stairway downward, and from it we reach a small room or two rooms that can be colored. A burial room, which is a rectangular room with A domed roof, whose walls are covered with plaster, filling many scenes of the underworld, can be found.

The life and daily problems of Deir al-Madinah workers are among the most remarkable of us on the daily life pictures from Pharaonic Egypt; it reflects many aspects of life in the time of the pharaohs, the magic of this group of artists and workers in their village, which was founded with the beginning of the eighteenth family.