ancient egypt job specialization ancient egypt legacy

This is the village now called Deir el-Medina, the home of the craftsmen who cut and decorated the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. On the westernmost edge of the sprawling ancient city, however, the remains of one small community escaped the general disintegration. Daily life is less well documented because, unlike the stone monuments we see today, the majority of homes, which were made of sun-dried brick, have succumbed to the damp of the floodplain, along with the furnishings and any written material that would have documented the lives of the literate few. Although some of the paintings in the private monuments preserve tantalizing pictures of the luxurious life of the nobility, on the whole, the remaining temples and tombs tell us more about religious experience and beliefs concerning the afterworld than about the experiences of the living.

Hundreds of private tombs, some of them magnificently painted, also dot the landscape along the base of the cliffs on the Nile's west bank. The nearby Valley of the Kings, on the west bank of the Nile, contains some 60 tombs, including that of the pharaoh Tutankhamen. During the period known as the New Kingdom (1539-1075 B.C.E.), Egypt's southern capital city of Thebes developed into one of the great urban centers of the ancient world. The article offers insight into the daily life of an ancient Egyptian village, now known as Deir el-Medina.

Ancient egypt job specialization ancient egypt legacy