Customer Reviews

Pharaoh's Workers: The Villages of Deir El Medina

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I was initially expecting this to be a single-author work, but this book is actually a collection of scholarly essays by various authors dealing with the village of Deir el-Medina. Each essay forms one chapter of the overall book. There were a couple of places where the individual authors got a tad dry, or were dealing with a "pet topic"--such as interpreting the linguistic origins of certain villagers' names and how that reflected foreign nationals working in the village; or the function of box beds found in the ruins of houses.
But, that being said, the book overall is highly informative and not quite as deeply entrenched in academia as other books I've soldiered through. I came away with a more vivid picture of what life in the tomb builders' village was probably like, and its place in New Kingdom Egyptian history. Everyday Egyptian life is an often-overlooked subject, as the authors point out, and it's worth picking up this book to learn more about it.